The San Antonio Light

A Dissertation on Women. I have never believed there was any difference in the gossipy tendencies of the sexes, writes Howard to the Philadelphia Times. Men jabber quite as much as women chatter. The broad mantle of human nature covers them both. The great Queen Esther was a model to her sex. She stood up for Mordecai and turned the scaffold on Haman so completely that not alone he but his 10 sons went the way of the hempen twine. In public station women almost always do well. Victoria has a weakness, I dare say, but she has done remarkably well for a human being. The Queen of Madagascar is an ornament to her sex. Look at the women of the stage. They work day and night. They support themselves and nine times in 10 whole families beside. They submit to physical strains which would exhaust their lords and masters. Did you ever happen to think of that? These women have to rise early because rehearsals are called at 11 and often at 10 o'clock. Rehearsals last from one to five hours and sometimes longer. There may be a matinee. What time is there to rest? What for lunch? A hurried dinner brings them to 7 o'clock, and they must be in the theatre at 7:30. There they remain long after the curtain is down and the audience gone. Fun, isn't it? To play a queen and be in trouble: to play a happy wife and expect a beating at home; to play high life and live in drudgery; to wear diamonds on the stage and pawn a cloak for rent; to mingle with the great and good for an hour in mimic life; to be tied to a drunken, careless, ruffianly brute forever. It makes me sick to see it, but there it is. Newspaper men don't tell all they know. If they did the very stones in the street would cry out for shame-and the latest edition.