Women-wise and Otherwise

The story I have to tell you has two good points: it is true and it teaches a lesson. A lesson, I hope, you have no need to learn, but if it should happen that you have not quite mastered the lesson my story will surely shame you into becoming from now on very proficient in it. The heroine of the story is not a Jewess but despite this fact, or maybe on account of it, Jewish women ought to hear of her and ponder her actions.

As I said, she is not a Jewess but a Quakeress. Very pretty, petite, demure, with golden brown hair and gray candid eyes. In manner she is shy and gentle, but it is a deceptive gentleness. Underneath it she has a character as true as tempered steel. She is engaged, very much in love, and she delights in buying presents for her fiance, those little things, you know, that woman chooses with so much care, never satisfied merely to give a needed thing but insisting that it shall also be lovely in form and distinctive in execution.

One day last week, then, this, this young woman went shopping for a leather folder which should keep her fiance’s many papers in order and be at the same time an ornament for his desk. She went from one store to the other, seeing this and that, never quite satisfied, and by and by the afternoon slipped away. She was supposed to meet her young man for dinner and she liked to be punctual, yet she did not want to come without her gift. It was his birthday, she had promised him the folder, and a promise was to her always something sacred. Doubly so where not only her principles but also her heart urged her to make every effort to fulfill it abundantly.

Finally, when the day had already darkened into the dusk of a cloudy evening and the closing hour was at hand, she found the desired thing in one of Fifth avenue’s celebrated gift shops. It was just what she desired it to be—practical yet beautiful, simple yet distinctive—and she was so delighted with it and so elated that she told the saleswoman all about her vain hunt and for what occasion she needed the gift.

The girl behind the counter was very responsive—romance even at second hand stirs every heart—and making out the sales slip she praised her customer’s taste and lauded the folder, mentioning that it was imported—of European make.

The young Quakeress now looked more carefully for the details and with a little gasp she exclaimed: “Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t take it. It is made in Germany. I have pledged myself to the German boycott as long as Hitlerism is in power, and much as I love the folder for itself, and dearly as I want a gift for just today, I have to do without it.”

The saleswoman tried to argue the question. She said the young lady should for once make an exception, and the thing was now imported anyhow and if she did not buy it somebody else would, and so on and so forth—all those commonplaces with which one tries to deceive oneself. But our friend was adamant. “No,” she said, “compromise in such things means surrender. In the war for human decency no quarter can be given.”