public opinion... Send us some of your writings — and every matter in its own good time.
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My health is good on the whole, but on certain days I am seized by a painful headache that takes hold of me and stays with me for many long hours... I take aspirin in enormous quantities... They say aspirin is harmful. What is your opinion?
— Taking aspirin, of whatever kind, is not harmful if it is taken in very small quantities and at intermittent intervals; but once it becomes a habit it does harm — so beware of taking it in such abundance.
As for the headache: if it becomes chronic, it is an illness for which a specialist physician must be consulted. And we advise you, finally, not to place complete trust in aspirin and its derivatives.
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I feel in the depths of my soul that I am afflicted with the disease of self-belittlement: among my companions I always feel that I am weaker than they are, and worth less than they are in the eyes of young men... How can I manage to overcome this feeling?
— You did well to be frank with us about this feeling of yours, and you can easily overcome it if you follow our advice to the letter:
First: be honest and truthful.
Second: try to excel at some one thing — at playing the piano, for instance, at singing, at dancing, at playing tennis, and so on.
Third: keep abreast of the affairs of life; read the daily newspapers (at least one paper), so as to keep in touch with world events...
In the world today there are stifling political crises, and camps among which the parties differ and tendencies take many forms. And in the world there are social currents that run counter to one another in their course and their direction, in their strength and their weakness. Amid this clamorous sea humanity suffers what it suffers between the interplay of opinions and the clash of creeds, each striving for its own principle and demanding stability along with victory and triumph.
A perpetual motion in existence, which beats with the pulse of a life seething in its springs, gushing with its force into every field and every direction of thought.
And woman, in the melee of life, has shown the first signs of her awakening. She looks toward release from the foolish illusions that settled like rust upon the mentality of society in the past; she walks swiftly and briskly, wanting to direct her movement toward the good, to prove her vitality and assert her being beside the being of man; and she wants to declare that man enters the gate of this life — wide in its expanses, manifold in its aspects — with both his body and his spirit. Bodies — death effaces their trace; but the great spirits that rise to the summit of life grow wide enough to pour themselves out with it, and to crystallize with their works in the frame of everlasting immortality.
So we see woman, having understood this truth, holding women's congresses and striving, pulled between two forces: one
And do not neglect literature and poetry.
Be measured; do not act in haste, lest you regret it.
And beware of exposing your points of weakness before men, for a man holds the weak woman greatly in contempt.
We are confident that you will overcome this weakness of yours.
force that draws her back to the home, which is the nest of her happiness and the resting place of her affections; and another that pushes her out to public life beyond the home, where she aspires to share with man in work and in free movement. Between the one and the other she stands perplexed, clinging to this at one moment and drawn toward that at another.
Woman, then, is between two currents — or, in the common language of the politicians, between two camps: the camp of the home and the camp of the outside. Each camp has its conservatives, its approvers, and its ardent extremists; and each has its adversaries, its opponents, and its stubborn zealots.
O woman! The nature with which God has singled you out demands of you, first of all, attention to the home and labor for its comfort and happiness. Can you, then, free yourself from all that man has freed himself from, so as to work with him in every field on a basis of equality?
Even if you free yourself from the bonds of society, you remain bound by bonds of your own self and your own particular inclinations, which tie you to what man is not tied to. And you will never be rid of this swinging between the two currents unless you accept a middle solution between the two camps, and embrace moderate opinions between letting loose and binding fast.
No victorious camp can count its victory a complete triumph unless its principles come to accord with the principles of the second, stubborn camp, so that the two unite upon an arrangement that secures the success of both camps and guarantees the contentment of man and woman alike.
We do not wish today to go back to ages long past, when woman knew only that she was an instrument of amusement, her sole concern adornment and display, without a lofty aim for her heart to live for, and without high ideals gleaming on the horizon of her insight for her thoughts to hover about — when she was like