Reply to Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, August 17, 1902

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Jane Addams Quotes Bacon.

Jane Addams said she thought Dr. Andrews might have been misquoted.

"If he was not," she said, "he has taken a position as untenable, though in different ways, as that essayed by Bacon when he said: 'He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.' Bacon did not believe his own words, for later he married Alice Barnham. Then, again, Kipling wrote 'Down to Gehenna, up to the Throne, he travels the fastest who travels [alone].' And Kipling did not believe, for he married and since his marriage has done much of his best work.

"I do not think Dr. Andrews can believe in his heart what he is quoted as having said on the lecture platform. Not all the good men are married men, nor all the bad men bachelors. Some married men succeed who would have failed had they had no home ties, and some bachelors succeed who might have [page 2] failed had they had the responsibilities of married life weighing them down. There is no hard and fast rule for gauging these things, and Dr. Andrews is making the same mistake in protesting against all bachelorhood that Bacon and Kipling made in anathematizing the married estate."

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