Flights of Fancy!

Queens and Thrones

I can hardly open a newspaper or magazine without my eye lighting on the picture of a beauty queen — her height, her waist and bust measured in centimeters; her eyes, her hair, and her teeth appraised according to the beauty experts' notions in matters of grace and charm. These standards of beauty have so run riot that the beautiful qualities of soul and mind have shriveled, and many a woman who is not (very) beautiful has taken to complaining of "the complex"... Take comfort, you women who do not pass muster on the experts' touchstone... yours is the final round — in the field of companionship and daily contact, of proving your worth, and of the balance that endures...

Who Would Press the Button??

A certain statistical institute conducted a survey of the proportion of happiness and misery in marriage. In one of the studies the rate of marital happiness was 45% among wives and 51% among husbands. The members of the group were then asked the following question: if you could press a button and by a miracle become as though you had never married at all, would you press the button? The result was that 94% answered no, and only 6% yes.

The only explanation of this illogical contradiction is that a person, in the thick of grumbling over some little thing, turns a blind eye to the good sides of his life's partner; but the moment anything arises that threatens the existence of this partnership, the factor of good opinion prevails... and the grounds of displeasure shrink... Were it not for this feeling — this voice of reason within — many a woman would have blundered in an hour of pique and pressed the button...

A curse upon rashness!

Unbelief

I lost my faith in the justice of life when, on a visit a few days ago, I grew thirsty and asked for a glass of water. It was brought to me by a little girl of no more than eight, sweet and fresh as a rose, her fingers scarcely strong enough to hold the glass. I was told she was the servant...

I took the glass with pity, and fell to comparing her with those who are born with spoons of gold in their mouths, watched over by eyes of eagerness and care, of pride and tenderness...

And I remembered how, in a foreign country, the inspectress used to visit the houses to see that the servant girls were well — girls whom the households engage through a bureau supervised by the authorities, which lays down the manner of their treatment and the age of employment — asking the employers what they feed their maids, what they clothe them in, and how many hours a day they let them work...

Thus... is humanity respected... Do not blame me if I have lost my faith in the justice of life...

Vows

Our door was knocked at last week. I opened it and saw a woman of more or less respectable appearance, who greeted me with a well-mannered greeting and then said, "a vow-offering" — and I did not understand what she meant. I asked, what do you want? She said... I have made a vow to God... I said, and what is that to me? Whereupon she added: that I should beg...

I laughed... and set about analyzing the philosophy of begging-vows, and could not persuade myself that the motive of humility, of schooling the soul in lowliness, was uppermost. I can understand people vowing to their prophets and their saints such-and-such a sum, to be distributed among the poor or handed over to a charitable institution; or slaughtering an offering, or burning incense... or donating ornaments of gold... or... or...

But begging in fulfillment of a vow... I have heard of it nowhere but in this country... I did not, of course, give the woman anything, for it is my habit never to encourage smallness... Go stitch with some other bodkin, O ladies of vows!