kely to be a favorite, and not at all to come to some bad
end. Except, indeed, where the proverb tended to work its own
fulfillment. And this is the regrettable side of most proverbs of an
ill-nature, that they do help to work the evil they predict. Some foolish
boy, who had heard this proverb, and was sent out to the hen-coop in the
evening to slay for the Thanksgiving feast, thought he was a justifiable
little providence in wringing the neck of the crowing hen, because it was
proper (according to the saying) that she should come to some bad end.
And as years went on, and that kind of boy increased and got to be a man,
it became a fixed idea to kill the amusing, interesting, spirited,
emancipated hen, and naturally the barn-yard became tamer and tamer, the
production of crowing hens was discouraged (the wise old hens laid no
eggs with a crow in them, according to the well-known principle of
heredity), and the man who had in his youth exterminated the hen of
progress actually went about quoting that false couplet as an argument
against the higher education of woman.

As a matter of fact, also, the couplet is not true about woman; whether
it ought to be true is an ethical question that will not be considered
here. The whistling girl does not commonly come to a bad end. Quite as
often as any other girl she learns to whistle a cradle song, low and
sweet and charming, to the young voter in the cradle. She is a girl of
spirit, of independence of character, of dash and flavor; and as to lips,
why, you must have some sort of presentable lips to whistle; thin ones
will not. The whistling girl does not come to a bad end at all (if
marriage is still considered a good occupation), except a cloud may be
thrown upon her exuberant young life by this rascally proverb. Even if
she walks the lonely road of life, she has this advantage, that she can
whistle to keep her courage up. But in a larger sense, one that this
practical age can understand, it is not true that the whistling girl
comes to a bad end. Whistling pays. It has brought her money; it has
blown her name about the listening world. Scarcely has a non-whistling
woman been more famous. She has set aside the adage. She has done so much
towards the emancipation of her sex from the prejudice created by an
ill-natured proverb which never had root in fact.

But has the whistling woman come to stay? Is it well for woman to
whistle? Are the majority of women likely to be whistlers? Th