GIFT OF 
 
 R S . KATE CH ATJE-aARTZ 
 
 
 
 *#^i ■:- *, ' 1..,. ■■;^ 

 
 OFFTHOUGHTS 
 
 ABOUT 
 
 ¥o)iEN AND Other Things 
 
 SAMUEL EOCKAVELL EEED, 
 
 ( The S. R. R. of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. ) 
 
 CHICAGO, NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 BELFORD, CLARKE & CO. 
 
 1888.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 
 
 BELFORD, CLARKE & CO. 
 
 
 OONOHTTE & HENNEBKERT, 
 
 Printers and Binders, Cliicago.
 
 CO 
 
 CO 
 
 CD 
 
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 CONTENTS, 
 
 About Markying Rich, . . . 
 
 A Lift for the Down-trodden Sex, . 
 
 An Advanced Female Thinker, 
 
 Blighted Men, .... 
 
 Degeneracy of Knight Templarhood, 
 
 Early History of the Woman Movement, 
 
 Equal Rights op the Child, 
 
 Evils op the Higher Education of jVIales, 
 
 Fishing and Morals, 
 
 How AND When to Die, . 
 
 Intellectual Breeding, 
 
 Is Speech a Blessing? . . 
 
 Is Woman Superficial? 
 
 Is Woman a Living Lie? 
 
 Labor-Saving Machinery an Evil, 
 
 Lessons op the Flood, . 
 
 Love and Marriage, 
 
 Love and Music, 
 
 Marriage and the Higher Education op Women 
 
 Rise and Fall of Woman's Dress Reform, 
 
 Rules to Reform Girls, 
 
 Sacrilegious Plays, 
 
 Scientific — Spots on Domestic Animals, . 
 
 Second Love in the Modern Novel, 
 
 The Ancient and Honorable Cat, 
 
 The Baby and the Ballot, 
 
 The Case Against Woman — A Rehearing, 
 
 The Case of Shylock — Law Review, 
 
 The Chaperon Question, 
 
 iU 
 
 Page 
 
 09 
 
 84 
 
 30 
 
 88 
 
 89 
 
 113 
 
 158 
 
 831 
 
 198 
 
 117 
 
 239 
 
 20 
 
 97 
 
 155 
 
 135 
 
 181 
 
 5 
 
 243 
 
 146 
 
 123 
 
 61 
 
 165 
 
 81 
 
 39 
 
 . 46 
 
 51 
 
 202 
 
 225 
 
 256 
 
 or-'-S ./?^M
 
 IV 
 
 COKTENTS. 
 
 The Chicago Marriage Disability, 
 
 The Children of the Strong-Minded, 
 
 The Converted Prize-Fighter, 
 
 The Deluge op 1883, 
 
 The Devils and the Swine — A Lawsuit, 
 
 The Dog's Day, 
 
 The Final Chill, 
 
 The Married Man's Liabilities, . 
 
 The Mother-in Law, 
 
 The Real Disability of Woman, . 
 
 The Rights op Women op Society, 
 
 The Rise and Progress op Woman, 
 
 The Scandal-Mongers, 
 
 The Theatre, 
 
 The Time to j\L\rry, 
 
 The Trousers Movement, . 
 
 Trl-vL by Jury a Defeat of Justice, 
 
 Uneven Growth of ^L\n and Wife, 
 
 Wail for a Hat, 
 
 Was the Creation a Failure? 
 
 What to Do, 
 
 Why Our Women Grow Plump, 
 
 Widowers, 
 
 Will the Coming Woman Marry? 
 
 Woman and Maternity, 
 
 Woman's Reversible Polarity, 
 
 Woman's Superior Intuitions, 
 
 Woman's Untruthfulness,
 
 I. 
 
 LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 LIGHT come, liglit go, is an old adage. Much is said 
 ^ about too easy divorce, and nothing about too easy mar- 
 riage. Yet one follows the other. The coupling of cattle 
 is much more guarded than that of the human race. Peo- 
 ple think that easy marriage promotes morality, or they 
 think that the command to a i^eculiar family to increase and 
 multiply overrides all safeguards in our society, when the 
 earth needs no replenishing, and universal deluges have 
 gone out of fashion; and if any race is specially cliosen to 
 populate the earth it is not ours, and the greater the mul- 
 tiplying the harder the battle of life. 
 
 Ministers will get out of bed Avith the alacrity of the 
 boys that run with the machine to marry a runaway couple. 
 Perhaps next Sunday they will preach on the national 
 sin of easy divorce, and wonder why it does not fetch 
 another deluge. Such cases are always announced in the 
 public journals as the triumph of true love over cruel par- 
 ents and locksmiths. The girl is taught that love is a di- 
 vine sense and an infallible guide which she should follow, 
 in defiance of parents and all prudential considerations. 
 The parents have not entirely outgrown the same nonsense. 
 The lover thinks his passion gives him a sacred riglit to 
 gratify it, although he tramples upon the care and love of 
 parents and deludes a silly girl to trust her life to his 
 worthlessness. 
 
 Even the mothers disarm their prudence in a great 
 measure by making the marrying of their daughters in- 
 dispensable. In this they will take great risks for their 
 
 6
 
 6 LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 daughters. Hardly any degree of dissipation in a man will 
 prevent his getting a well-bred girl to marry him, with the 
 mother's consent, if he has mone}*. She will tamper with 
 her conscience by the feeble-minded plea that marriage will 
 reform him. And romantic girls marry hard-drinking 
 rakes to reform them. But hard-drinking young men are 
 apt to keep on the road that makes drunkards, and then, 
 after immeasurable misery in the family, comes a petition 
 for relief by divorce. 
 
 With all this looseness of ideas about entering into 
 marriage the truth must be admitted that in our imperfect 
 society — in which one sex is deprived of the elective fran- 
 chise, which, in the good time coming, is to cure all social 
 ills — marriage is, in a great degree, a necessity to women, 
 and therefore in many ways they have to take great risks. 
 At the best, man is a risky creature, and sometimes woman. 
 In taking the chances mistakes are unavoidable. There- 
 fore is divorce a rational provision for the chances. Com- 
 paratively few of these dreadful realizations are ever told. 
 Neither party can see any remedy, and so they grin and 
 bear the consciousness of their mistake. 
 
 If the heroic pluck with which men and women bear 
 in silence the sense of the mistake they made in marriage 
 under the guidance of the divine and infallible instinct of 
 love were known, an idea of the heroism of the human 
 race would be had surpassing all that has been celebrated 
 in war, pestilence and famine. Each heart alone can 
 know its own bitterness and the pluck of its own endur- 
 ance. After marriage people see that what they thought 
 a divine and infallible sense of love, whose dictates must 
 override the judgment of parents, relatives, and all calcu- 
 lations of prudence, was otherwise than spiritual, and as 
 an infallible guide was a delusion. 
 
 Yet, they can not say this, for it would put the fat in
 
 LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 7 
 
 the fire. They heroically make the best of it, and praise 
 marriage, and advise their friends to go into it. Happily, 
 the greater number of marriages are tolerable. But the 
 parties find out that when they popped into them, as it is 
 fitly termed, they were exalted above their right minds, 
 and were quite incaj^able of exercising sober judgment in 
 this momentous affair. Yet, they would not have taken 
 anybody's counsel; neither that of parents, nor of mar- 
 riage experience, nor of the constitutions of offspring, 
 nor of livelihood, nor any other. 
 
 Let any man make affirmation, supported by the solemn 
 ceremony of the uplifted hand, or the kissing of the book, 
 or the beheading of a cock, the breaking of a saucer, the 
 burning of paper with sacred words written thereon, pros- 
 trations to the sun, or any other form by which men bind 
 themselves to speak the truth, and then let him say, with 
 hand on his viscera, if, when he popped the fatal words 
 which plunged him into marriage, he was in his right 
 mind. If the parties were morally irresponsible, does not 
 what is called marriage for love make a case for divorce on 
 the ground of emotional insanity? 
 
 That love is brief madness is a maxim as old as the hu- 
 man race. How can a mad man and a mad woman be com- 
 petent to enter into a contract which is to rule their whole 
 lives and to fix the destiny of the unborn? Beyond ques- 
 tion the parents, even with all the weakness of tlie mother 
 for getting the daughter married, are vastly more compe- 
 tent to judge" whether the marriage is a judicious one than 
 the young people. This is the way they do in France, 
 where households are admitted to be models of affection 
 and harmony. The tendency of all high civilizations is to 
 this regulation. 
 
 Under the influence of our Declaration of Independence, 
 and of our star-spaugled-bannerism, parental control is
 
 8 LOVE AND MARRIAGE, 
 
 thrown off early in this country, and in particular do the 
 young people revolt at the idea of parental control or coun- 
 sel in the affairs of what they call love. But while the 
 tendency of democratic institutions is to make the young 
 ones free and equal, they have also a constant tendency to 
 paternalism in the shape of communism, or the extension 
 of the hand of government into the regulation of all 
 things of social welfare. 
 
 Marriage is a concern of society, which has to furnish the 
 binding and the loosing, and to take the consequences in 
 the burdens thrown on it by bad marriages, and by parties 
 becoming worthless after marrying. In a perfected social 
 state, society would sujiervise the marriages, and a com- 
 mittee of impartial scientific persons would judge what 
 males and females are physiologically compatible, and thus 
 would plant the harmony of wedlock on a scientific basis. 
 Of course, as soon as it had crossed the threshold of science, 
 it would have risen way above the notion that love is a 
 spiritual sense, or that compatibility can be in marriage 
 otherwise than physiologically. 
 
 This would make marriage as certain in its fitness, com- 
 patibility and consequences as a chemical union of affini- 
 tive properties. An inharmonious marriage would be im- 
 possible save by the slip of overlooking some latent prop- 
 erty in one or the other, such as may sometimes defeat 
 even a chemical process, or the prognostication of even so 
 exact a science as astrology. But with the ever accumu- 
 lating tests, the liability to make a mistake would be re- 
 duced to a mere nominality. While this would banish 
 divorce, it would steadily elevate the race, which under the 
 abandonment of physiological laws in leaving marriage to 
 chance, is degenerating in comparison with the animals 
 who are subjected to science. 
 
 The individual is no more able to rise to those scientific
 
 1 LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 9 
 
 principles which are for the welfare of the whole, than the 
 weakling is able to see the beneficence of the law of the 
 elevation of the race by the survival of the fittest. Only 
 society as a whole is able to rise to the height of the prin- 
 ciples which govern the welfare of the whole. This i)aper 
 comes out at the jilace where it went in, namely, that loose- 
 ness in entering into marriage, requires looseness in di- 
 vorce. It also points out the way to exterminate divorce 
 by scientific marriage. But all great truths for elevating 
 the human race have had to be promulgated to an unbe- 
 lieving world, and to lie dormant for centuries before they 
 were received. This is a lesson to the prophets to be mod- 
 erate in their exj)ectations.
 
 11. 
 
 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF WOMAN. 
 
 IF WOMAN would take a retrospect of the progress 
 which has been made toward her emancipation, she 
 woukl find in it ground for her ultimate hopes, although 
 she may be impatient at the pace. To the individual this 
 appears slow, but in the work of material creation by evo- 
 lution a thousand million years are but as a day, and all 
 scientists agree that the growth of morals is by like pro- 
 cess of evolution. Woman should think on the grand pa- 
 tience and majestic calmness of universal evolution. 
 
 The scientist gets some notion of this grand patience 
 when he contemplates the work of creation by develop- 
 ment, through millions of years — even through millions of 
 years before reaching that stage where the governing ob- 
 ject of creation, man with a soul, was evolved. Let wo- 
 man learn by thinking on the grand patience which is 
 shown in awaiting the evolution of even the minor cor- 
 poreal changes, as laid down by the evolution philosophers, 
 which allows for such little measures of development as a 
 terraqueous webfoot from a picary fin, a prehensile tail 
 from a tail for aquatic propulsion, the final extermination 
 of this natural and graceful termination of the spinal col- 
 umn, the extinction of the hair from the body by the habit 
 of sitting against trees and of lying on the back, as Dar- 
 win has ably described, this process aided by sexual selec- 
 tion— i. e., each mating with the most depilated, and so on 
 for any other change of form in the course of development, 
 a period of time so long that all fossil remains of transitioil 
 stages have been obliterated by the earth's changes, 
 
 10
 
 KISE AND PROGRESS OF WOMAN. 11 
 
 If woman could rightly contemplate the work of that 
 creation of which she is so essential a j)art, and could dis- 
 cern how gradual is all real progress, she would find reason 
 for api^rehension that her full emancipation may come be- 
 fore she can be adapted to it, rather than for impatience at 
 its slowness. The study of science teaches philosophical 
 patience to await the natural working of the eternal forces; , 
 therefore should woman be admitted to our colleges of 'A^ 
 science that she may calmly await her future, and be fitted 
 therefor. 
 
 For example, let woman's mind measure if it can the 
 immense stage achieved toward her emancipation when in 
 the fullness of time she had finally gained the right to the 
 sole possession of one man in marriage. From a variable 
 fraction she became a whole. From one of a lot of com- 
 peting slaves she rose to a place of command. 
 
 In the natural state man has a herd of women. In any "^ 
 number greater than one, the wives are the humblest slaves, 
 each rivaling the other in seeking his favor; each humbling 
 herself and trampling down the rest in soliciting his par- 
 tiality; the deepest affections and passions of their nature 
 directed to their mutual degradation before him. Woman, 
 accustomed to her present kingdom, can not conceive the ^ 
 immensity of the change made by lifting her from the 
 slavish state of polygamy, and giving her the exclusive 
 possession of a whole man in marriage, and placing him at 
 her mercy, with such talents as woman has for making his 
 life hapi^y or wretched. As this tremendous lift in her 
 state was achieved without the voting franchise, the think- 
 ing woman may perceive that there are other forces in op- \ 
 eration for her elevation — moral forces which have made 
 immensely greater advances for her than yet remain for \ 
 the voting franchise to do. Is not this retrospect a ground 
 for hopefulness? And does it not suggest that the suffrage
 
 12 RISE AND PROGRESS OF WOMAN. 
 
 women may be devoting their minds so entirely to one thing 
 ■p\' as an engine for woman's advancement as to neglect others 
 which have accomplished such great things? 
 
 And lest woman should think progress from polygamy 
 is nothing to speak of, it may be mentioned that in terri- 
 torial extent and numbers polygamy is still the prevailing 
 custom. 
 
 The various customs of subjection of woman, since 
 polygamy, have been a part of the common law, and have 
 had technical names whose sound is a rattling of the suc- 
 cessive chains from which she has been delivered; such as 
 the marquette, the mundium, the morgengabe, tlie oscu- 
 lum, the dowry, the jointure, all of which marked various 
 degrees of servitude and ownership. The marquette gave 
 to the lord of the soil the first possession of every bride, 
 unless the husband ransomed her. The mundium was the 
 price for which the father sold and transfered the daugh- 
 ter. The morgengabe or morning gift was a price which 
 the husband, next morning, on certain proofs, paid to the 
 new wife. The osculum was a gift of the man to the be- 
 trothed for the first kiss. All these are founded on the 
 idea of purchase and sale of the woman. The dowry came 
 after great progress in emancipation. It was an indemnitv 
 which the father of the bride paid the husband for taking 
 the burden of her support. The jointure was after still 
 further progress; it paid the wife a sum out of the hus- 
 band's estate. The same idea of purchase was continued, 
 but this greatly contributed to the wife's independence. 
 The theory of ownership is still continued in the marriage 
 ceremony, in the form of giving the bride away. No strong 
 minded woman would ever submit to pass under the yoke 
 in this form of being given away, if she knew the custom 
 it comes from. 
 
 These mile stones mark the measure of such vast ad-
 
 RISE AND PROGRESS OF WOMAN. 13 
 
 rancement in the state of women that tlic liunian mind 
 can not take it in. Yet there are impatient women who 
 think that nothing is to be done for them, and that notliing 
 will ever be done until they get the ballot, and that this 
 will do all things for them. While there is nothing in all 
 this history to discourage their aspirations for the elective 
 franchise, there is a lesson that other moral forces are a 
 power to lift them up, and that it is not wise to neglect them 
 and to trust all their salvation to the ballot. And if they 
 observe they may perceive a great mass of men Avho, with 
 the ballot in their hands, say that government has only 
 made the few rich and the mass poor. And by the meas- 
 ure of the past she may hope to do more for herself than 
 the ballot ever can do for man or woman. 
 
 She can hardly hope to equal man in physical strength; 
 therefore she must try to fetch up the balance by excelling 
 him in wit. (Darwin, in reasoning to prove the impossibil- 
 ity of the future intellectual equality of woman with man, 
 says: 
 
 "In order that woman should reach the same [intellect- 
 -ual] standard as man, she ought, when nearly adult, to be 
 trained to energy and perseverance, and to have her reason 
 and imagination exercised to the highest point; and then 
 she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her 
 adult daughters. The whole body of women, however, 
 could not be thus raised, unless, during many generations, 
 the women who excelled in the above robust virtues pro- 
 duced offspring in larger numbers than other women — 
 conditions manifestly incompatible with each other." 
 
 But woman may take him on his own premises, and 
 show that his conclusion does not follow; for it is not by 
 greater fecundity that intellectual men rule the mass. A 
 few minds rule the multitude. Therefore does his require- 
 ment offer every encouragement to women who desire to
 
 14 RISE AKD PROGRESS OF WOMAN. 
 
 lift up woman, to train themselves to energy and perseve- 
 rance, and to have their imagination and reason exercised 
 to the highest point, so as to transmit high intellectual 
 qualities to their daughters. This seems the most promis- 
 ing force that can now be brought into play. The fact of 
 the transmission of intellectual as well as physical qualities 
 is patent to all, and it may be said that she who brings 
 forth a daughter, and has not transmitted to her intellect- 
 ual powers to help elevate her sex, has done a serious fault. 
 Besides, intellect impresses the race in other ways than 
 through offspring. A strong-minded woman influences 
 other women, and causes them to transmit to their daugh- 
 ters stronger minds. The immense elevation to which 
 woman has attained can not have been without the work- 
 ing of adequate moral forces. To sujjpose that such forces 
 have ceased would be irrational. The progress of the mil- 
 lions of years of the past is proof that the rate of progress 
 will be continued in the millions of years to come. We 
 can not contemplate what has been achieved without re- 
 garding the voting franchise, when it shall come, as a mere 
 incident, not as a master force. Tnere is grand cause for 
 woman's hope of the future; there is also assurance for the 
 exercise of her grand patience.
 
 III. 
 
 THE TIME TO MABRT. 
 
 A SINCERE young woman has asked an oracular deliver- 
 ance from that ex-cathedra infallibility which comes 
 to the tips of the thumb and fore-fingers of the ready 
 writer, on the propriety of early marriage. The inquiry 
 does not define an early marriage, but We will assume that, 
 in the common notion in this country, marriage, when the 
 female is eighteen and the male twenty-one, is called early, 
 and that the inquirer's early quality means both male and 
 female. The question treats marriage from the material- 
 istic standpoint — that is, it discards all notion of fore- 
 ordination, such as is commonly expressed by the saying 
 that marriages are made in heaven, and that love is an un- 
 erring spiritual instinct, and it treats marriage as subject 
 to prudential considerations. 
 
 If this be the true view, it simplifies the question in 
 some degree. But upon this the views of the young un- 
 married and of the mature married are directly opposite; 
 the former holding to the notion that love is a spiritual 
 insight and must not be opposed, while the latter are con- 
 vinced that the spiritual insight or divine instinct of love 
 is moonshine, and that prudent and convenient marriages 
 are a far better assurance of happiness. This change 
 which comes over the married views of love is a phenome- 
 non which philosophy has not explained. 
 
 Taking the materialistic view, an important question 
 is, what is the object of the marriage? There is a com- 
 mon saying that early marriage is the best safeguard of 
 virtue. It seems to be the same as to say that satiety is 
 
 15
 
 16 THE TIME TO MARKY. 
 
 the best safeguard of the appetite. This is a reason to be 
 considered, altliough its direct personal application is not 
 often made. There is still a blind notion largely prevalent 
 that marriage is a duty in order to increase and multiply 
 and replenish the earth. Early marriage gives an early 
 start in this business, and enables the multiplying and 
 replenishing to be carried further. 
 
 But this notion is derived from the injunction laid on 
 Adam when the earth was fresh, and on Noah when the 
 earth's inhabitants had been drowned, and upon Abraham 
 when the purpose was to make of his offspring a peculiar 
 race, which should be an example of God's favor, glorify 
 Him, and drive out other races. The need to increase and 
 multiply numbers in the earth no longer exists. Nor 
 could any apply this duty to themselves unless they were 
 certain that they should bring forth peculiar children, 
 who would be a glory to God and a benefit to their species. 
 They cannot make a virtue of their appetites, and plead 
 a command to replenish the earth when they only think 
 of their own indulgence. 
 
 There are already too many people in the world. All 
 human ills multiply with increase of population. No 
 reformer in ancient or modern times has been able to devise 
 a way to mitigate the ills of humanity without restraining 
 the increase of population. Population, says the great 
 Malthus, is ever pressing on subsistence, because popula- 
 tion, if unimpeded, can go on multiplying always, while 
 the product of the land, from which the food must come, 
 can not go on multiplying forever. Therefore, all the 
 means of diminishing population which civilization sets 
 going are means to diminish the pressure of all on the food 
 supply, and thereby to better their state. 
 
 The peopling duty, therefore, may be set out of the 
 question whether marriages should be early. The earlier
 
 THE TIME TO MARRY. 17 
 
 they begin the more they add to the pressure of i^opulation 
 on the supply of food and tlie more they add to human ills. 
 There is a verbal workiugup of the godlike act of begetting 
 an immortal soul to an everlastng destiny, but this is much 
 let down by a view of the neglect to which the greater part 
 of these begotten souls are left and the generally estimated 
 chances that they may come to wish they had not been be- 
 gotten. With regard to this, all will agree that to beget 
 an immortal soul is to take the responsibility of seeing 
 that it is not left to perdition. 
 
 Besides the general pressure of population on subsis- 
 tence, there is a particular pressure on the parents' means, 
 and a very particular measure of the standing of the child- 
 ren by the number of portions into which the father's sub- 
 stance is to be cut up. With the poor who despair of lay- 
 ing up anything, this does not count, and therefore the 
 poor increase and multiply recklessly; but in the case of 
 those that have something to cut up, the number of shares 
 is a vital consideration, and the fore-handed pater is 
 measured and speculated upon long before he begins to 
 think of casting up his final accounts. 
 
 The human mind can hardly divest itself wholly of the 
 notion of a peremptory instinct of love, which disregards 
 all prudential considerations. The skillful mammas of 
 society know that there is a way of brewing this divine in- 
 stinct in two young persons of opposite sexes as methodically 
 as Mrs, Glass's directions how to cook a "hare. But they 
 still keep stored away in a corner of their womanly natures 
 the theory that love is an unerring predestination, right in 
 the face of their successful management for their daughters. 
 But all must have observed that the daughters of rich 
 men are exposed earlier and oftener to the demonstrations 
 of the divine instinct of love, and that their lovability de- 
 creases with the increase of number in the family. 
 2
 
 18 THE TiMi: TO MARRY. 
 
 This is so universal that it may be called nature's law, 
 and it is therefore to be given due weight. Each one that 
 the parent adds to the number of his offspring reduces the 
 social attractions of all, and diminishes to the daughters 
 the chances that the divinely ordained instinct of love will 
 hit the mark. Each additional daughter also multiplies 
 the anxieties and cares, the fears and hopes, of the manag- 
 ing mammas of society, making their burden too heavy to 
 be endured, and causing them even to look upon their own 
 species, the daughters of others, as enemies. This is a 
 thing to be fearfully thought on by him who marries early 
 and often. 
 
 That the girl who is caught at seventeen or eighteen is 
 more tractable, and will be more apt to adapt herself to 
 man's ways, is generally assumed. But this idea assumes 
 that the whole duty of woman is to adapt herself to a 
 man's ways. And this touches a thing which is at the 
 very bottom of the questions of woman's destiny and 
 sphere and equal rights, and these always run straight to 
 the question whether woman should be permitted to learn 
 the alphabet. The idea of catching a young girl is to 
 take her when she is green and unlearned, and can there- 
 fore be subdued to the mere reflection of the man's per- 
 sonality — to become one with him, and he that one. 
 
 If woman is to take a position of intellectual equality 
 and of equal rights, she is at eighteen too young to have 
 acquired the necessary education, or to have formed a char- 
 acter that shall not be sunk in his. If she is to take her 
 character from him, the earlier she is caught and the 
 less she has been taught the better. But all education 
 of women is contrary to the ancient idea of the true oiieness 
 of marriage. The alphabet to women has revolutionized 
 marriage, and brought in a new dispensation. In this the 
 marriage should be deferred until the girl has acquired an
 
 THE TIME TO MARRY. id 
 
 eqiial education aiul a fixed character, and thereby a ca- 
 pacity for knowing and maintaining lier rights. 
 
 The present cry for the eqnal education of the sexes 
 sets as'de the practicability of early marriage, as well as the 
 old-fashioned idea of the oneness of the married in the merg- 
 ing of herself in him ; for the men who get anything 
 that can be called an education have to pursue it mucli be- 
 yond the age whicli in women would be called young for 
 marrying. Therefore that which is called the elevation of 
 woman puts that which by the old standard would be called 
 early marriage out of the question. The requirement of 
 equal education and of a formed character, to stand up for 
 equal rights against the man, elevates the age for early 
 marriage of woman to at least thirty, and, perhaps more 
 properly, to thirty-five or forty. We observe that the latter 
 is about the age at which enlightened women come to know 
 their rights and wrongs. 
 
 At such a time the rightly trained woman may be armed 
 at all points for the militant state of marriage, to enter 
 therein without laying down any of her ideas or rights, or 
 merging her personality. This late beginning Avould di- 
 minish the j)ace of the ever-advancing pressure of popula- 
 tion upon the means of subsistence to a degree which the 
 great Malthus did not think possible. Therefore the al- 
 phabet, which seemed the fatal tree of knowledge to wo- 
 man, may turn out to be the redeemer of woman and of 
 the race. Thus we may safely say that woman should 
 marry as early as she is qualified to take her part in the 
 married state, but that the elevation of woman to a knowl- 
 edge of her rights has made it necessary to advance the 
 age which may be called early nearly a score of years be- 
 yond that of the ideas of the time when marriage was held 
 to be a state of oneness.
 
 IS SPEECH A BLESSING? 
 
 IF we Judge by the run of conversation, can we say 
 boidly that the faculty of speech makes the common lot 
 happier? Is not social converse more on sad topics than 
 cheerful? Let any family and society person observe for a 
 time the talk in the family, at meal times, in the evening 
 circle, in visiting, and in the confidences of the conjugal 
 curtain, and see if the unpleasant subjects do not turn the 
 scale. If not, then he or she will have cause for gratulation 
 on the exceptional brightness of her lot or of that day. 
 
 Our universal salutation solecism, "How do you do?" 
 is an inquiry into our bodily infirmities, and conveys the 
 idea that this is a subject of constant anxiety. Thus in 
 our very hails, do we plunge into an unpleasant subject, 
 and, as with the moral, so with the physical, a diseased 
 state is more interesting than health. If one has no ail- 
 ments to tell, the conversation is prematurely ended. 
 However very few can answer with a clean bill of health. 
 Most of us do not live strict physiological lives. Fortu- 
 nate is it that we do not try what the health journals pre- 
 scribe as correct living. We are beings of many ailments 
 in our talk. 
 
 The human digestive apparatus is a complex structure, 
 and seems a clumsy arrangement for living. The state of 
 our digestion and the digestibility of the victuals set before 
 us form the principal subject of conversation in polite 
 society in the free West, although in Boston it is bad 
 manners to mention digestion in company. The simple 
 fact that the universal greeting is a health inquiry has 
 
 20
 
 IS SPEECH A BLESSING ? 21 
 
 come from the trouble which digestion finds by waiting 
 on appetite. The Turkish sahitation, "How are your 
 bowels?" means the same, but goes more directly to the 
 seat of the matter. It shows a touch of nature which 
 makes Turk and Christian akin. 
 
 In general, the meeting salutation calls forth a report 
 of present and past ailments as detailed as if to a very pa- 
 tient practicing physician. In general, this confidence is 
 mutual, and each feels a spirit of generous emulation in 
 matching her neighbor's maladies. In the case of moth- 
 ers, the children's disorders have precedence, indeed almost 
 a monopoly. From their own troubles the conversation 
 enlarges to the incidents of disease and death among their 
 neighbors and relations to the ends of the earth. This so- 
 cial enjoyment seems as paradoxical as the old lady's obser- 
 vation that she enjoyed poor health. In public conveyances 
 and in all places the observing lover of his species listens 
 with wonder to these protracted narrations of dismal mal- 
 adies for mere enjoyment. 
 
 Conversation on the moral infirmities of our neighbors 
 is no less paradoxical in its pleasure than that on bodily 
 diseases. Moral health offei's no more for interesting con- 
 versation than physical health, but when it falls into moral 
 diseases it becomes interesting. A lapse to a single vice 
 gives more animation to social converse than the practice 
 of all the virtues. Thus does society conversation resem- 
 ble the displayed headings of a modern newspaper, in 
 which the eye sees all manner of crime and vice and ''sins 
 found out" and disasters, while virtue, good conduct, law, 
 order, and public welfare are not of interest enough to be 
 mentioned in any type. 
 
 Is not the family circle, when the suspension of labor 
 makes conversation free, more often a time for unloading 
 a budget of unpleasant things, or for fighting over the
 
 22 IS SPEECH A BLESSING ? 
 
 day's battle of care, than for enlivening talk? Is not the 
 meal time, which of all hours ought to be one for pleasant 
 subjects, more likely to be a time for overhauling some do- 
 mestic or business trouble, or for giving the children a 
 talking to, than a time for pleasant Avords and witty con- 
 ceits? Thus does conversation make continuous theenjoy- 
 ment of our own troubles, and extend it to those of our 
 neighbors. Thus is our conversational pleasure depressing, 
 and tending to fix in the American face that dismal ex- 
 pression which has become the national type. 
 
 Men have politics in addition to all the other lugubrious 
 influences. This is the absorbing topic in all their social 
 occasions, and there is reason enough. In a civil war, 
 when relations and neighbors are being pushed by clumsy 
 generalship into wasteful slaughter, this is the exclusive 
 topic of our conversation. If it were otherwise we should 
 be unnatural. An elective government, subject to revolu- 
 tion by vote of the people every one, two and fovir years, 
 is a chronic civil war. It has the same motive as all civil 
 wars — the contending for possession of power, and the 
 same fierce passions, although one fight is with bullets, the 
 other ballots. It keeps government in the same state of 
 uncertainty and partial anarchy. Men would be unnatural 
 if this chronic civil strife were not the all-absorbing sub- 
 ject of their talk. And this intense subject tends to give 
 them a dismal countenance. 
 
 But when we think of the propensity of those that 
 have not the weight of the nation on their heads to pre- 
 fer unpleasant topics for mere conversation, can we confi- 
 dently say that speech blesses them? 
 
 The species of animals who have not that which to us 
 is articulate speech appear to enjoy society. When to- 
 gether they seem contented, and even happy. They are 
 in sympathy by some occult way, and have simple sounds
 
 IS SPEECH A BLESSING ? 23 
 
 to convey what is necessary to tlie common wants. But 
 their complacent exprct sion shows that they have no reflex 
 thought to keep former troubles ever present in mind, and 
 they have not the speech to multiply these and present 
 troubles, and to make their fellows bear them. Also, they 
 are exempt from that dreadful sultering which is common 
 in our society, from the necessity to talk without having 
 anything to say. 
 
 If they had this peculiar reflection and this faculty for 
 enjoyment of conversation, a herd of cows or sheep re- 
 posing in a meadow Avould not have that contented and 
 jjeaceful aspect which they now bear. And with the bless- 
 ing of sjieech to multi^fly and diffuse their troubles, their 
 contenances, by a process of sympathetic evolution, would 
 develop those nerves and muscles which give a dismal ex- 
 pression to the human face — faculties which are now ut- 
 terly lacking in these hajipy species. The fatal gift of 
 conversational speech is upon us, and has commonly been 
 regarded as a blessing. But many errors which have the 
 dust of ages are now critically examined.
 
 Y. 
 
 WHY OUR WOMEN GROW PLUMP. 
 
 THE development of the American society female from 
 the national lean type to embotqjoint is apparent to 
 all mature observers of this interesting species. The cause 
 of this change, and its effect on Avoman, morally and intel- 
 lectually, are worthy of philosophical inquiry. Some of 
 those "organs of disjointed thinking" — as the good Dr. 
 Eush described the newspapers — lightly ascribe the cause 
 to growth of wealth and luxury; but this, stripped of 
 euphemism, conveys indolence and eating, and suggests by 
 association of ideas the fattening course of stall feeding and 
 correlative mental sluggishness. This would divest plump- 
 ness of poetry. And there is seeming contradiction to this 
 inference of mental inertness in the incident that our 
 women have entered new pursuits of culture, particularly 
 in high art, such as carving wood, decorating pottery, 
 decorative modeling, the Kensington stitch, painting on 
 dress fabrics, and so on. 
 
 This explanation is superficial; yet this superficial 
 development of the American female must have mental 
 and moral correlation. If to shift any part of the planet 
 on which we sojourn would vary the balance of the spheres, 
 this increase of substance in our women must affect the 
 social balance. The harmony of the processes of nature 
 would lead investigation along the theory that this develop- 
 ment is the working of a variety of concurrent elements, 
 rather than a variation by some exceptional cause. Female 
 fashion has changed. Even during the present generation 
 the fashion was to be delicate. Girls ate strange substances 
 
 34
 
 WHY OUR AVOMEN GROW PLUMP. 25 
 
 to make them pale and slender. A consumptive form 
 was thought interesting in girls, as it was in young preach- 
 ers. Restraining apparatus was used to prevent growth of 
 the waist. The model figure was as if the waist were 
 screwed into the lower body. 
 
 The fashion is now changed. Ministers bear the signs 
 of good living, and their wives are they that grow consump- 
 tive. This makes preachers still more interesting to the 
 unmarried females of the flock. Woman's readiness in 
 rushing into this fatal breach shames the notion that hers 
 is not the courageous sex. We suppose that Bluebeard was 
 a popular man in small tea parties. By a similar paradox 
 the Suttee is liked by Hindoo single women. Our girls 
 now wish to be plump, and they eat nourishing things in- 
 stead of slate pencils. The fashion of dress has conformed 
 to this growth of taste, and the waist, instead of seeming 
 to be screwed into the hips, curves gracefully out to them, 
 and is allowed to grow to its due proportion. Fashion is a 
 strong mental power, and subordinates the senses. Its in- -^ 
 fluence on the female mind is paramount. Mr. Joseph 
 Cook announces the existence of psychic force, or will pow- 
 er, over extraneous physical objects, which can move them 
 without contact. With psychic force why may not woman 
 swell herself to such form as she desires, if slio shall put 
 her whole mind to it, and not rest on foreign apjDliances? 
 This theory of a psychic developing power is further sup- 
 ported by the opinion of scientific men, that the force of 
 pure will, uncompromised by reason, is stronger in woman 
 than man. 
 
 There are other great causes. To suppose that the tre- 
 mendous progress in woman's condition, which has lifted 
 her from a slave, a chattel, one of a herd of wives of a bo- 
 vine lord, all of whom were slaves, to the place of head of 
 the household, and the sole possession of a man, has taken
 
 26 WHY OLR WOMEN GllOW PLUMP. 
 
 place without any correlative cluinge in lier jiliysical and 
 moral being, would be unscientific. Let us, lilie Joseph 
 Co(5k, be always scientific. Woman is better loved and 
 cherished by man; would she not be unnatural if she did 
 not fatten on this? Even in cattle breeding those that do 
 not respond to better keeping by improved condition are 
 set down as of a bad breed. With the growth of luxurious 
 civilization the labors of the household are transferred to 
 helpers of a hardier class. 
 
 While the battle of life has grown fiercer to tiie man 
 her part has grown easier. Good feeding, and the change 
 of fashion which allows society women to eat their fill in- 
 stead of disclaiming appetite before company, have borne 
 a part in this development. The fashionable woman is 
 now a good feeder, and makes eating the great feature of 
 society parties. Also, with higher civilization, child-bearing 
 is restricted. To increase and multiply and replenish the 
 earth is not now the chief end of the wife; she thinks more 
 of replenishing herself. Her substance, instead of being 
 divided, goes all to her own nourishment. The cares of 
 training children are also less, and so in many ways tlie 
 chang in woman's state tends to that which promotes 
 rotundity. But of all the fattening causes which have 
 come in with her elevation, jDcrhaps the greatest is the 
 high consequence to which she has risen in society, in the 
 conjugal state and in the household. 
 
 The lifting of the wife from the condition of a drudge 
 and slave, in which she is held in all the lower civilizations, 
 to a place of reverence, worship and command, could not 
 be without corresponding change in her habit. The in- 
 ferior stature of the women of barbarous tribes is marked. 
 The American Indian is of a lordly size and form; the 
 squaw is small. With the development of civilization 
 woman develops. In our high civilization she is queen
 
 WHY OUR WOMEN GROW PLUMP. 27 
 
 of the family circle and a queen in society. Man submits 
 to her sway. Inexperienced men have a fancy of what 
 they call beginning right with a wife; but in the first 
 stage of wedded life man is in the soft state, Avhile woman's 
 presence of mind never deserts her, and thus is her autho- 
 rity established. 
 
 The habit of rule is the full habit. Authority gives a 
 swelling port. Power has in all ages been associated in 
 idea with size. A well known little Congressman is 
 credited with saying that if he were six inches taller he 
 would be President. In all countries the lords are the 
 larger class, the peasants the lesser. The form swells 
 when giving orders. High rank has a high strut. The 
 sense of governing great nations and commanding great 
 armies swells the man. Who thinks of empress, queen, 
 or duchess as a lean person? When Israel, like Henry 
 Ward Beecher, wanted a king, and had no royal family, 
 Saul's fitness was recognized because he was a head and 
 shoulders taller than the multitude. To suppose that 
 woman has been lifted from the slave drudge to a place of 
 such influence and sway as she exercises in our civiliza- 
 tion, without responding to it by a higher bodily develoj)- 
 ment, is to set her down as an exception to all nature and 
 as absolutely unimprovable. 
 
 Thus has this elevation of woman's state raised her in 
 bodily condition, and her increasing consequence expanded 
 her in size. This e7nhonpoint is the natural Avorking of 
 her assumption of that rule which comes so naturally tliat 
 we have to conclude that for this was she formed by nature. 
 Nor are the fashionable female fine arts so great an intellec- 
 tual strain as to resist this plumping tendency; on the con- 
 trary, they are rather a substitution for intellectual labor. 
 There seems to be little on woman's side to set off against 
 the increasing strain of mental activity on the i)rofessional
 
 28 WHY OUR WOMEN GROW PLUMP. 
 
 man, the man of trade, and the man who has to keep his 
 head above water in political pursuits. Even the writer on 
 that organ of disjointed thinking, the daily paper, may have 
 more mental wear. 
 
 While woman has expanded in form by this rise in sta- 
 tion, has it made her more moral, contented and amiable? 
 Were this not the case, still her increase in flesh would be 
 no failure. Aspiration to a higher state is not content- 
 ment. Desire for authority grows with exercise. The 
 appetite for homage, is never satiated. We cease not to 
 pursue knowledge because the higher we go the more we 
 find life not worth living. Ease is associated with a lower 
 scale of being; activity with the higher. Discontent is the 
 engine of progress. If any stage of elevation brought 
 satisfaction, that would be the turning point todegeneracy. 
 Our first mother acquired a large stock of knowledge — not 
 by the hard way of the boarding-school, but by the short 
 method of eating an apple; yet it brought not contentment. 
 This world is a probation, and therefore a Avorld of trouble. 
 Far better than things comfortable and amiable here is it 
 that man shall be continually prodded to long for another 
 and a better world. 
 
 To suppose that expansion in flesh makes woman more 
 amiable is to suppose that it dulls intellect and sensibility- 
 A treatise upon woman hath always the limitation that it 
 must receive no theory that does not compliment her; 
 therefore it must reject this supposition. Scientific per- 
 sons are of the opinion that although this increased thick- 
 ness of the flesh part of her structure may be attended 
 Avith diminished activity of intellect, and with less of 
 deep and strong and lasting feeling, yet that the greater 
 superficies brings compensation by a corresponding in- 
 crease in the number and readiness of the superficial and 
 transitory sensations and emotions. This, if true, would
 
 WHY OUR WOMEN GROW PLUMP. 29 
 
 argue that fatness brings the opposite of a domestic atmos- 
 phere of repose. But all that calls itself science has to 
 change ground so often that not all its pronouncements 
 can be accepted as finalities. 
 
 Emhon2)oint (this word sounds better than corpulence) 
 diminishes activity of movement, but it has compensating 
 advantages in making the slender fly to anticipate the 
 wants of the stout. For the lean to serve the fat seems 
 the order of nature, although it reverses the order of the 
 lean and fat kine of Pharaoh's dream. Corpulence is better 
 than wages in bringing service. The fat one has the lean 
 at her beck, and grows greater by these advantages. 
 Weight of body is generally accepted as carrying moral 
 weight. The change of the American female from lean- 1 
 ness to a generousness in flesh has come with her rise from 
 a low estate, and her greater bodily development is a monu- 
 ment more durable than brass to the civilization which has | 
 given her this swelling elevation. J
 
 YI. 
 
 AN ADVANCED FEMALE THINKER. 
 
 WHEN an advanced female thinker on the elevation of 
 woman essays an essay on the question, "What Shall 
 We Do With Our Girls?" she invariably lays down that which 
 is equivalent to a condition that they shall be altered into 
 boys. She proceeds to prescribe a way of life for them as 
 if they were boys, and as if sex were a mere external varia- 
 tion, having no difference of nature or destiny. The same 
 condition may be seen in all those advanced female think- 
 ers who demand the abolishment of all distinctions of sex 
 in our political institutions; they proceed as if there were 
 no differences of sex save those made by law. Yet there 
 runs through all this the paradox of an assumption of a 
 superior sj)iritual and moral nature by reason of her being 
 female. 
 
 The ideal of the advanced thinkers of woman's eleva- 
 tion is a man; to vote and hold office as a man; to enter 
 man's professions and business; to be as free to come and 
 go as a man; to wear mans clothes, and be in all things 
 as a man, with a mental reservation that in all thq^e 
 things — in office seeking, in the professions, in trade, in 
 employment, and in all affairs — they are to be deferred to 
 and preferred because they are female. 
 
 The same fundamental demand for a creative recon- 
 struction governs a platform orator who hails from Chi- 
 cago, in her lecture on her question, ''What Shall AYe Do 
 With Our Daughters?" Her answer is a prescription that 
 every girl shall acquire one productive art or profession by 
 which she could earn her own living. How simple and 
 
 30
 
 AINT ADVANCED FEMALE THINKER. 3l 
 
 easy! IIow advanced thinking soars above real conditions! 
 Productive arts — arts and professions which will furnish 
 any one a livelihood grow on bushes as jjlenty as blackber- 
 ries. The girl has only to go out picnicking and take 
 her pick of them. And she can lay it away for future con- 
 venience or necessity as she does her accomplishment of 
 some ineffectual lessons in singino- or on the piano, or her 
 worsted work or her doll. 
 
 Althougli the advanced thinker's condition requires that 
 the girl shall be made a boy, and in politics that woman 
 shall be man, yet the girl is to do with ease what the boy 
 finds impossible, and M-oman is to do in politics what men 
 have failed to do. A boy that becomes an artisan has to 
 give from four to six years of his youth to learning the 
 trade by working at it. The boy that acquires a profession 
 has to devote all his youth to general education and special 
 study for it, and then he has to begin the battle of life to 
 gain a standing in the profession, with the prospect of 
 years of hard pursuit before he can be assured of a liveli- 
 hood. Everywhere the boy finds the professions and trades 
 apparently full. Indeed, the boy who wants to become an 
 artisan finds the door shut by the workmen against his 
 learning the trade. 
 
 The application requisite to acquire a trade or profes- 
 sion, and to get a start in it, is so great, that the greater 
 number of boys lack energy and courage enough to make 
 the attempt, and so they drop into some unskilled and 
 precarious emj)loyment, where they have little chance to 
 rise. To boys and men there is the incentive if they get 
 a trade or profession it is a thing which they are to pursue 
 through life; yet this woman elevator, who is rated one of 
 the most brilliant of her kind, prescribes that girls shall 
 all acquire trades or professions, which none of them expect 
 to practice for a livelihood for life. Boys and men find it
 
 32 AK ADVANCED FEMALE THINKEE. 
 
 hard to get into a trade or profession, and that in order to 
 keep in they must stick to them and work hard at them; 
 but this advanced female thinker prescribes that every girl 
 shfJl acquire a productive art or profession, as if arts and 
 professions whereby any one can be productive were lying 
 around loose, and each could pick up one or more, and lay 
 it away with her trinkets. 
 
 In the order of nature so many girls marry that it is 
 natural that all should look to this destiny. If qualified to 
 manage a household, and to administer it with intelligent 
 economy, according to the means, they have a noble pro- 
 fession, andareas much productive as men. Some do not 
 marry, but in an intelligent order of things the exception 
 does not rule. In the increasing pressure of population 
 upon the means of subsistence, the number of women who 
 have to get a living by other occupations than running a 
 household is increasing. Would the chances of these be 
 improved if all girls were put into the productive arts and 
 professions, to acquire them for the name of the thing, 
 while able to live without them? Would this be a mercy to 
 such girls as have to work or starve? Would it not be as 
 kind to real workwomen as the familiar prescription that 
 every woman should make her own clothes, and so make 
 the country rich ? 
 
 Boys and men find the trades and professions seem- 
 ingly full, and all kinds of trading apparently overdone, 
 and men mutually depressing their own condition by com- 
 peting with each other. Which is the better for man and 
 woman, that she should come in to double this degrading 
 competition, and double the crowding which breaks down 
 his wages, and so get for the two no more than he alone 
 would earn, or that he should make the best place he can 
 for himself, whether in unskilled work, in the artisan's 
 trade, in business, in a profession, and be the breadwinner,
 
 AN ADVANCED FEMALE THINKER. 33 
 
 while she makes the home, and is the economical adminis- 
 trator of his earnings? Is it not a fortunate thing for 
 woman that her destiny is governed by a natural law, 
 which makes man and woman each other's helj)meet, and 
 not by the notions of tlie advanced female thinkers, 
 which would put them into a mutual competition whick 
 would be mutual degradation.
 
 VII. 
 
 THE MOTHER-IN-LAW. 
 
 THE girl looks to marriage as the chief end. When 
 she marries and a daughter is born unto her, the 
 chief end of her existence is to get her daughter well mar- 
 ried. As soon as maternal assiduity and skill have achieved 
 this object she becomes the mother-in-law, who is a sub- 
 ject for the jibes of the circus clown; for the elaborate 
 jokes of the minstrel end-men; for the witty newspaper 
 paragraphers, and a never-failing witticism for that suc- 
 cessful class of humorists who keep in the safe line of the 
 old jokes. Tlius does woman achieve the sujn-eme object 
 of her existence in becoming an object of poj)ular oppro- 
 brium. 
 
 Not all the wrongs of woman are in her exclusion from 
 the voting power, and from equal rights in the property 
 made by the firm of man and wife; yet noone can tell how 
 far this disability reaches. All sorts of people that have 
 votes are treated with distinguished consideration. Per- 
 haps if mothers-in-law, actual and prosj)ective, had votes, 
 they would cease to be the jibes of newspapers and of 
 society wits. The only point of this stale witticism is the 
 assumed irrepressible conflict between the man and his 
 mother-in-law; yet his courting stage seemed to be so 
 large-hearted as to take in the mother in particular, and 
 the family in general. Did he play the hypocrite, and 
 stoop to conquer the mother only to betray? 
 
 Why should marriage cause this revulsion? When he 
 and the daughter become one flesh, why should he turn 
 against the same flesh in their mother? In general the 
 
 34
 
 THE MOTHER-IN-LAW. 35 
 
 daughter takes after the mother; can he love the one and 
 not love the other? Wlicn the parents arc rightly mated, 
 and the wife has tliat suiiremacy of spirit Avhicli Eve had 
 over Adam, and which is the natural order, and when the 
 stars are in favorable conjunction at her birth, and when 
 the daughter is brought up at home, in the excellent 
 French fashion, she becomes a copy of the mother. IIow 
 can man be the natural enemy of the mother, if he loves 
 her likeness in the daughter? Something more than 
 natural is in this, and philosophy ought to find it out. 
 
 Is it that experience has found the daughter not what 
 the heated fancy painted, and that her mother is an excess 
 of the same? Yet to visit upon the mother his excessive 
 satisfaction wj^h the daughter is not brave. A common 
 theory is that he is Jealous of the mother's influence; but 
 this is a revulsion from what he felt when he married, for 
 the object of his love had received all her loveliness under 
 the mother's influence. To suppose that he is Jealous of 
 the mother's love because he Avants to pervade the daugh- 
 ter's whole being, seems absurd, because the mother is so 
 devoted to the daughter's happiness that he can possess the 
 hearts of both by civil treatment. 
 
 That the mother is severely mindful of ill-treatment or 
 neglect of her daughter, is true and natural and lovely. 
 A true man would love her for this solicitude. Also, it is 
 true that her less partial mind judges with 'more severity 
 his unkindness to the daughter, and is more critical 
 toward his other reasons for being out of nights, and 
 toward his female friendships, than the credulous and 
 subdued wife; but should not a manly, though erring man, 
 have conscience enough to respect the mother for this 
 solicitude for the happiness of the wife of his bosom? 
 
 Thus the supposition of a natural enmity between man 
 and mother-in-law, and the theories to account for it.
 
 36 THE MOTHER-IN-LAW. 
 
 when critically examined, reflect on the man, and praise 
 the mother-in-law. On the other hand, her positive vir- 
 tues are without end. She is a slave to her daughter's 
 welfare. What can be so unselfish as a mother's devotion 
 to her daughter, whose whole being is given to another? 
 She makes all the family cares of her son-in-law her own. 
 His frequent babes become the chief object of her exist- 
 ence, and the ailments of tlieir insides and outs'des the 
 topic of her conversation. She carries their little bowels 
 in mind wherever she goes. Those small stomachs, 
 which are either crying for more, or are disjmting the 
 measure of what they have received, are to her an object 
 of constant solicitude. 
 
 The household which possesses a mothgr-in-law has a 
 well-spring of joy. Its offspring has a guardian angel. 
 She is severe only to the man's positive faults, and even to 
 these she is over kind. Yet, this most unselfish being is a 
 byword in our speech. Something is radically wrong in 
 our marriage relation, or this unnatural antagonism could 
 not be. It is unchristian; for a miracle was wrought, by 
 the very head of the Christian Church, to heal Simon 
 Peter's mother-in-law of ''a great fever." Yet, so hard- 
 hearted is our custom of jeering at the mother-in-law, that 
 it holds any riddance a thing for merriment. If such a 
 sentiment had then existed, how easy for Peter to have 
 concealed his mother-in-law's illness, and saved the chance 
 of riddance by the benign fever? 
 
 Nor was the mother-in-law such a term of contumely in 
 the old dispensation. Next to Eve — who must be esteemed 
 the loveliest of her sex, and immeasurably above any other 
 woman, because her desire for knowledge expanded a fenced 
 garden to a world, and the stagnant and useless existence 
 of a pair to the grand passions and humanities of mankind 
 —the most admirable woman in Scripture is Naomi, the
 
 THE MOTHER-IN-LAAV. 37 
 
 mother-in-law. This relation was witli her son's wife, 
 which is thought to have even more jealous elements. For 
 it is an amiable trait of women to be more severe to one 
 another than to man. How touching the pathos of this 
 bereaved Avoman's farewell, and how lovely the virtues 
 which made her daughter-in-law cleave unto her, and re- 
 solve to follow her to a strange country, to seek their for- 
 tunes together! 
 
 Was ever mother more tender than this mother-in- 
 law? Did ever mother, in behalf of her OAvn daughter, 
 exercise in a finer degree that which to her is the ait of 
 arts — the art of match-makiug — than this admirable moth- 
 er-in-law in advising Ruth how to ca2itivate the rich Boaz? 
 What chance had an advanced bachelor to escajie, when a 
 young widow, instructed by a veteran Avidow, Avas spreading 
 her wiles about him? Said this loA^ely mother-in-law, 
 when she discerned that the night of the harvest-home 
 merry-making, when his heart Avoultl be warmed by the 
 convivialities, was the ripe time to push this love affair to 
 the issue: '^My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, 
 that it maybe Avell with thee?" 
 
 The narroAv-minded, Avho measure the proprieties for 
 the times Avhen all was innocent, by the conventionalities 
 of our sophisticated society, may scent an impropriety in 
 this mother-in-laAv's counsel to Ruth to seek the midniglit 
 interview in the threshing floor; but to the innocent all 
 things are innocent. Success crowned the plan which she 
 counseled, and speedy marriage condoned the impropriety, 
 if any was. With what womanly intuition did this Avisc 
 mother-in-law say next morning: " Sit still, my daughtei-, 
 until thou know how the matter will fall; for the man Avill 
 not be in rest until he have finished the thing this day. " 
 And so it fell out. 
 
 And Boaz took Naomi to his house, Avhere she was in 
 
 f>^;'i /la/i
 
 38 THE MOTIIER-IN-LAW. 
 
 happy relation of mother-in-law to both man and wife. 
 And a blessing followed her. The neighbor women did 
 not fling up to Boaz that he had caught a mother-in-law, 
 but they all praised her for what she had done. Her days 
 as mother-in-law were happier than her days as wife and 
 mother, and she became nurse, doctor and guardian angel 
 to all the little Boazes. Thus are the virtues of a mother- 
 in-law the theme of one of the most entertaining books of 
 Scripture, and she is the heroine of the most charming 
 tale of domestic life in all literature.
 
 YIII. 
 SECOND LOVE IN THE MODERN NOVEL. 
 
 A NOTABLE difference in the modern novel from the 
 more romantic novel of the last century is in its 
 allowance of a second true love. The impression of love that 
 is left on the youthful mind by the former novels is that it 
 is taken once for all; is a thing to live for, do heroics for, 
 die for, to be blighted for, and which would be profaned 
 bv the thought of doing it again. 
 
 But the modern novel has made a concession to the 
 '^weakness of the flesh" — as Paul, the Apostle, and 
 Touchstone, the Shakspeare philosopher, alike charac- 
 terize marriage — it has come down to the realism of 
 society. The great Thackeray and Dickens, Trollope, How- 
 ells, not to further increase the list, have given to heroes and 
 heroines second loves having the transports of the first, 
 thus knocking out the romantic ideas of one divinely 
 directed love, which, when it falls, all the King's horses 
 and all the King's men can not set up again. 
 
 Still more shocking to the ancient romance, they have 
 made the second love a compensation for the mistakes of 
 the first; thus allowing that the first transporting love 
 may be a delusion, under which they marry blindly, to get 
 their eyes open in time like young pupjiies. 
 
 If the novel ought to portray society, this is progress in 
 the art of novel writing. For observation is that second 
 love seems possible and pleasant, and that in many cases it 
 appears more satisfying than the first, and that in many 
 others the chances are that it might be so, if the first 
 were off. 
 
 89
 
 40 SECOND LOVE IN THE MODERN NOVEL. 
 
 And altliougli the modern novel holds to the ancient 
 and regular idea that the loss of a lover leaves a blighted 
 being, yet neither the old nor the new novel makes such a 
 loss of a married lover a blight. Philosophers and scien- 
 tists have given much speculation to this curiosity of hu- 
 man nature without reaching a solution. Confucius, Bud- 
 dha, Socrates and Plato were alike unable to solve the grout 
 question: " Why is marriage preventive of the breaking 
 of the heart for love? " 
 
 But has not the novel a higher purpose than merely to 
 portray society ? Should it not mind the injunction of the 
 excellent Mr. Pecksniff: *' My friends, let us remember 
 our moral responsibilities." What is the moral influence 
 of this tale of a second love as a regeneration of the heart, 
 as the same grand sensation as the first, and as a compen- 
 sation for the mistakes of the first ? What is the influence 
 of this destruction of the simple faith that love is an infalli- 
 ble intuition, which lasts for life, and of allowing that it 
 is prone to err, and that it may be repeated, and even that 
 another may make amends for the mistake of the jire- 
 vious ? 
 
 What influence may this have on the happiness, or — to 
 use terms of broader allowance — on the resignation and 
 brave endurance of married life ? For it has been much 
 argued by high authority, against the divorce laws, that 
 the indissolubility of marriage is the best assurance of final 
 perseverance in love and the most solid foundation for con- 
 jugal contentment; and on the other hand, that available 
 divorce is a dissolver of wedded love/ and a fertile genera- 
 tor of incompatibility of temper and of all that dissatis- 
 faction which seeks for divorce. 
 
 If the society novel sets forth the mistakes of first love, 
 and the amends of second love, shall not its influence on 
 the fancies of the married be like that of the divorce
 
 SECOND LOVE IN THE MODEllN NOVEL. 41 
 
 facility ? So many of the married, in bursts of confidence, 
 have confessed that it is not what the lover's fancy painted, 
 that the saying has general acceptation that wedlock is in 
 some degree a disappointment. What may be the inllucnce 
 of glowing descriptions of escape from its mistakes, and of 
 compensating bliss in another, upon the mind which is 
 bravely combating this shade of disappointment ? 
 
 If the novel represents love as prone to mistake, shall 
 not each mind be more ready to admit the idea of mistake? 
 If it represents love as renewable, refreshed and regener- 
 ated as soon as it chances, and as finding comjiensation in 
 a better choice, shall not the fancies be tempted to rim on 
 the chances ? Many have confessed that they began to 
 repent as soon as their ardent pursuit had won. Many 
 that no sooner were they married than they began to con- 
 sider whether they might not have done better. Reckon- 
 ing that not more than one in a thousand would have this 
 candor, the statistical fiend would find the whole number 
 appalling. 
 
 The novels easily dispatch the off party to make place 
 for another inning. Unsatisfactory husbands, like other 
 men, have many vices and dangerous adventures conven- 
 ient for their taking off. Stupid wives are clever in dying 
 in the novel, although stupidity gives longevity in real 
 life. The novel writer, his remorseless eye in a fine frenzy 
 rolling, glaring from heaven to earth, can discover many 
 ways of shuffling off the mortal coil of man or wife in 
 order to rectify the mistakes of marriage. 
 
 But this mortal shuffle is not so easy in real life. 
 Herein is an instance of the fallacy of the novel as a 
 mirror of society. Herein is a glaring failure, which alone 
 is a condemnation. It raises fancies and wishes by ways 
 of fruition in the novel which can not be availed of in real 
 life without getting into trouble. Perhaps many wives are
 
 42 SECOND LOVE IN THE MODERN NOVEL. 
 
 dispatched by the slow process of persevering unkindness 
 and cruelty, and perhaps a man now and then becomes 
 matrimonially blighted and so withers away. But the dis- 
 posing of them by acute means may lead to unpleasantness. 
 
 Civilization creates an environment of impediments to 
 freedom. A doctor's certificate is required to get people 
 under ground. Coroners are pursuing their calling and 
 election. If the leaving seems desirable to the left, the 
 neighborly charity susj^ects it expedited. Indeed, the 
 moral difference between wishing the going and helping 
 it is narrow. Faith in the betterment in the other world 
 encourages the dispatcher and makes his work a benevo- 
 lence. If the second love comes early it confirms .the sus- 
 picion. Each married heart knows how it is, and reasons 
 that the wish to try again may have given the wings of 
 departure. 
 
 And so it comes about that the departed is resurrected 
 before the time of that hapj^y reunion of which the funeral 
 sermon told for the consolation of the bereaved. The viscera 
 are given to a chemist. And when the viscera, under such a 
 moral jaressure, are given to a chemist to analyze, to testify 
 in court as a scientific expert, he is pretty sure to find some- 
 thing in them. If a trial follows, each married heart's 
 knowledge of itself carries the conviction in the general mind. 
 
 That which is called progress of civilization runs its 
 head into so many difficulties that the mind is almost per- 
 suaded that no true progress is possible. That conserva- 
 tive gentlemen who, when the rumbling work of creation 
 began, exclaimed that the framework of things was going 
 to pieces, saw much to confirm his protest in what followed, 
 when the very first man, for whom all this work was 
 done, plunged into a life of trouble, and when, ever since 
 that time, the chief end of man seems to be to fulfill that 
 financial obligation which is called '' the devil to pay."
 
 SECOND LOVE IN THE MODERN NOVEL. 43 
 
 This progress of the novel is an instance of the falhicy 
 of all that is called progress. Adapting itself to the actual 
 conditions, it concedes a second love. More than that, it 
 impeaches the infallibility of the first love, and makes 
 second love an amends. But in working this out it has to 
 depart from human conditions by dispatching the unloved 
 party to clear the way. Tlie conventionalities of actual 
 society do not allow this facility. Therefore this progress 
 of the novel only excites fancies, hopes and longings which 
 are vain in real life, and which disturb the resignation of 
 the married. 
 
 Each step of progress makes necessary several other 
 steps. The novel can not stop in this disjointed state. It 
 must not disturb conjugal felicity with fancies of new loves, 
 and then leave no way of attainment save by killing off. 
 The novel can kill with impunity; but in real life the par- 
 ties who ought to go are most likely to stay. The progres- 
 sive novel must go a step further in adaptation to society, 
 and must bring in divorce as the way of amending the 
 mistakes of the first love by the wiser affinities of the second . 
 
 All will see the eternal fitness of these things. The 
 concession that the infallible intuition of first love may be 
 mistaken, and that second love may compensate for the 
 mistakes of the first, requires for its completeness an easy 
 way of unyoking. This is a field which has not been 
 worked by the novelist. A great deal may be made of it. 
 Some high American novelists have said that the stories 
 have all been told, and the business of the novel is now to 
 analyze his character; i. e., to pull out the straw stuffing 
 of his figures. But here is the. great field of divorce, 
 which is wholly unworked, and which has stories of early 
 and often love, compared to which the novelist's killing off 
 his mismates is clumsy brutality. 
 
 In working this fresh field the novelist will leave out
 
 44 SECOND LOVE IN THE MODEKN NOVEL. 
 
 the unwholesomeness of the limitation of divorce to the 
 one beastly cause, and will let his fancy career in the inner 
 history of the decline and fall of married love; in the 
 rising feeling of the irksomeness of the yoke and of the 
 bondage at which the heart has rebelled; in the pitiful 
 longing for a better affinity and for freedom to try again; 
 in the infinite field of the tragedies of the heart in wed- 
 lock, which, as Macbeth says, the poor heart would fain 
 confess, but dare not. 
 
 All this would be a new and greater field to the novelist. 
 The old-time novel ended with the fruition of love in mar- 
 rying the lovers, as if that were all. The new novel will 
 find a vastly greater world in the history of love after mar- 
 riage. It will lack no feature to make the novel tragic and 
 intense, and it will come nearer home to the heart of human 
 nature and to the realism of human experience. 
 
 But again the question recurs, What will be the moral 
 influence? Will this be progress? Is not all progress on 
 the down grade? There are old beliefs which are stuck 
 to, although delusions, because of a lack of a substitute. 
 Is it not wiser to stick to the theory of the old-time ro- 
 mance that love is a divinely-sent spiritual unction, which 
 is infallible in selection of the object, and which is taken 
 f but once; and that if second marriage is tolerable at all, 
 / it is a concession to young children, and is a marriage of 
 convenience in which love is not looked for? The youthful 
 mind still remains in the primitive innocence of this idea. 
 
 The only going to the root of the matter is to root out 
 f the idea of a second love under any circumstances. Even 
 the toleration of a second marriage to get a foster mother 
 for the young ones is a shake to the foundation of married 
 love, by its example of the possibilities. And as the facil- 
 ities for another chance are increased, will they not make 
 men more reckless in thrusting their necks into the con-
 
 SECOND LOVE IN THE MODERN NOVEL. 45 
 
 jugal yoke? Tlic looseness of divorce — as it is called — will 
 have to grow a hundred-fold looser before it catches up 
 with the looseness of marrying. Does not the whole busi- 
 ness of second love tend the same way? 
 
 The modern novel has gone so far in second love as a 
 compensation for the mistaken first, that it must go faither 
 and provide an easy way to the compensation. But is it 
 not better to stick to the old faith, and to the old forms of 
 sound words, by which first love was a capital thing, like 
 hanging, which can have no renewing, and by whicli there 
 shall be held before the minds of mankind the certainty 
 that when they thrust their heads into the matrimonial 
 noose they must stand up to the consequences?
 
 IX. 
 
 THE ANCIENT AND HONORABLE CAT. . 
 
 TWO beasts out- of all that took passage with Noah 
 have attached themselves to the human family so as 
 to have become household members, the dog and the cat. 
 One is of a sycophantic and transparent nature, fawning 
 for notice, and abject under whipping; ready to lick the 
 hand that smites, and to do grateful antics as soon as the 
 rod is laid down; but yet having an attachment and fidelity 
 which flatter the dominating nature of man, and gain the 
 affection of women and children. A notable fact is that 
 although dogs brought up in rich households are surly to 
 poor people, yet poverty does not alienate them in their 
 own households, while it makes their attachment better 
 appreciated. Thus dogs, like children, are the peculiar 
 blessings of the poor. 
 
 The other of these beasts is of a mysterious, dignified, 
 self-contained nature, courting no notice, revealing no 
 emotion, receiving all caressing as a just tribute to merit, 
 submissive to no chastisement, dignifiedly resenting all 
 abuse, having the courage of entire confidence in ability to 
 take care of itself, as impassive almost as any other of the 
 lares and penates, and yet with an air which has created 
 the belief that it is a being of mysterious knowledge; 
 attached to the household, and particularly to the house, 
 and yet with an air of a protecting divinity, to which all 
 caressing and service are only the proper tribute. 
 
 Thus this creature bears a double character, one as a 
 familar household animal, with a propensity for mice, 
 canary birds and "such small deer"; the other as a myste- 
 
 46
 
 THE ANCIENT AND HONORABLE CAT. 47 
 
 rions being, having strange relations to spirits of good and 
 evil, to witches, to fate, and to many things good and 
 wicked. The nature of the mind is to think more of the 
 wicked; but all that runs in popuhir tradition of the cat, 
 such as her stealing, to the cradle and sucking the sleeping 
 baby's breath, are ridiculously unfounded. As to the 
 popular belief that the cat has nine lives, it has some 
 color in the popular belief in all ages that the cat has rela- 
 tions with the beings which are called spirits, and that it 
 haunts the cat-slayer. 
 
 The fancy fills the unknown with wonders, and of the 
 cat it must be said that of all animals it is the most myste- 
 rious. A combination of the springiest muscles, it has 
 ever the air of repose. Instantly discerning everything 
 about, it has the manner of observing nothing. The 
 electricity in its fur is another mysterious property. It 
 has always the look of contemplation and contentment. 
 Yet this creature, that prefers the chimney corner by day, 
 and the warm side of everything, sallies out into the cold 
 night, and for aught we know, may be mounted on the 
 shoulder of a witch as she rides through the air on her 
 broomstick to some rendezvous of her kind. Or the cat 
 may be merely bent on social converse, her natural modesty 
 perferring the veil of night. 
 
 Many are wont to say they hate cats, and think they] 
 commend themselves, and that they add thereto by saying 
 they love dogs. This is because the cat is above their un- 
 derstanding, and because the dog fawns upon them. The 
 cat has a place in tradition, religion and literature which 
 lifts it into a sphere high above the dog, whose name, 
 from time immemorial, though very unjustly, has been 
 ignominious. The law of Moses forbids the price of a dog 
 and the hire of a pious woman for an act of impropriety, 
 to be brought to the sanctuary as gifts. Although unjust.
 
 48 THE ANCIENT AND HONORABLE CAT. 
 
 tliissliows that the dog has always been regarded as a com- 
 mon beast, whilst the cat is of high lineage. 
 
 The cat is the principal performer in many stories 
 of folk lore. It is associated with religious rites as 
 well as with those of witches. The learned Egyptians 
 worshiped the cat as the Goddess Pasht — the name evi- 
 dently taken from the feline speech. " Thrice the brindled 
 cat hath mewed/' say the Macbeth witches when working 
 np a catastrophe. Mahomet had a favorite cat named 
 Muezza — the name clearly derived from the cat language — 
 which he treated with high consideration. Probably this, 
 and not the dove that whispered in his ear, inspired the 
 Koran. The cat has more language than any other beast but 
 man. The Abbe Galiani studied this tongue, and detected 
 more than twenty different inflections, and was certain 
 that the cat always uses the same sound to express the 
 same thing. Cats surpass all animals in singing with 
 words, and their entrails are used for the principal musi- 
 cal instrument, which gives a sound sympathetically sug- 
 gestive of its source. 
 
 Cats have a high place in heraldry, and races and clans 
 have been named after them. The Gaelic name of the 
 Duchess of Sutherland means ''the great lady of the 
 cat." Speaking of its independence, Champfleury says : 
 "Man has sought the society of the cat; it is not the cat 
 that has sought the society of man." Said Chamfort : 
 " The cat does not caress us, it caresses itself on us." 
 Dupont Nemours thought that the more extensive view 
 which cats take of the world from housetops gives them a 
 higher character and more language than dogs have. 
 Among the other illustrious friends to cats are Victor 
 Hugo, TheophileGautier, Prosper Merimee, Chateaubriand 
 Cardinal Wolsey and Richelieu. The popular belief that 
 the devil often puts on the form of a black cat, no more
 
 THE A2TCIEXT AND HONORABLE CAT. 49 
 
 condemns cats than tlie fact that he often takes on the 
 form of a beautiful woman condemns all beautiful and 
 bewitching women. 
 
 One of the highest testimonies to the interesting char- 
 acter of cats is that lone single Avomen are attached to 
 them. Many of them have made testamentary acknowledg- 
 ments by bequests to found cat-retreats and by legacies to 
 favorite cats. Not only has the cat more language than 
 other beasts, but it enviously understands human speech. 
 An unjust feeling is entertained against it because of its 
 liking for canary birds; but this game propensity proves 
 its high rank, for the game propensity is thought the 
 noblest part of man. 
 
 The mystery of the cat's character is probably the 
 cause of a vulgar antipathy, but this is due to ignorance. 
 The cat is not bound to furnish understanding in order to 
 avoid prejudice. It is too high-minded to care. Many 
 benevolent persons, fearful of a multiplication of the 
 household cat, drown her kittens. So, from a limited 
 trust in Providence, many suppress populating. Some 
 elegant families take a bag of kittens and distribute them 
 in their drives. If they would let the mother cat alone 
 she would j)rovide for them w^ithout such cruelty. A cat 
 blessed with a large litter does not settle it on the family. 
 At a proper time she will place her kittens among the 
 neighbors, showing great discernment by her choice of 
 places; and they great intelligence by remaining as placed. 
 
 A society mother does not practice more consideration 
 in finding husbands for her nine daughters, than a mother 
 cat in finding situations for her nine kittens. SHie will 
 return to play with each, and then leave it without any 
 movement on its part to go back with her. The mystery 
 and supernatural part of the cat are very interesting, but 
 its visible domestic qualities are admirable. Its modesty 
 4
 
 50 THE AKCIEKT AND HONORABLE CAT. 
 
 is exceptional among animals. Its dignity, composure and 
 courage are wonderful. It will repose on the sidewalk 
 where at any moment its enemy, the dog, may come along, 
 serene in its confidence in its ability to take care of itself. 
 Even little kittens do this. 
 
 The assumption is that the dog and cat are natural ene- 
 mies. The cat is too high-minded to be a natural enemy 
 to any creature. Such animals as it hunts it hunts for 
 sport and food, in which it shares thewnobility of man; but 
 it is contented to have its food without this trouble. The 
 puppy and kitten brought up together will eat out of the 
 same dish, and will make a very jolly family party. Taking 
 thought of their prolific habit, not yet repressed by fashion, 
 the inquiry naturally arises, what becomes of the cats, that 
 they do not overrun. Judging by their character, it may 
 be presumed that they go to the place provided for cats, 
 where all is well With them.
 
 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 
 
 THE argument for woman's enfranchisement iS' com- 
 pleted when placed on the foundation of those self- 
 evident truths upon which man has built his political 
 structure. He can not meet this without kicking out his 
 own underpinning. Nothing more is required to embrace 
 woman, save to declare the like self-evident truths that 
 sex is not a radical difference of nature, but is only a slight 
 variation of form, of no significance as to different capa- 
 bilities or spheres of activity. From this it follows that 
 the existing differences have been made by man's usurpation 
 in himself of the rights of the whole. And, with en- 
 lightenment, the opinion is growing that most of that 
 which is thought a radical distinction is in the outward 
 apparel. 
 
 Any addition to the completed argument spoils the 
 symmetry, and is apt to topple over the structure. In 
 particular an argument which builds upon the solid foun- 
 dation of the equality of the sexes is shattered by addi- 
 tional reasons of her peculiar sexual qualities. This jumps 
 from the firm base of equality to the abyss of inequality 
 and of special claims. Those advanced women who are 
 bravely and logically claiming equal rights need to be 
 guarded against flattering ascriptions of superior virtues 
 as a superior claim to the suffrage. This deludes them 
 from their standing on the logic of equal rights, and puts 
 a weapon into the hands of the enemy, who reasons that if 
 they are morally or spiritually purer it is because secluded 
 from politics and man's business, and that this purity will 
 
 51
 
 52 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 
 
 be lost to the family if women shall mingle in public life. 
 Also when woman has put her cause on the foundations of 
 absolute reason, she needs to guard against invoking the 
 aid of the sympathies; for reason and the feelings are 
 mutually destructive. 
 
 The whole diapason of human nature is sounded in be- 
 half of woman suffrage by the argument, now familiar to 
 the platform, that by woman's disfranchisement the sav- 
 ing influences of "the mother element "have been ex- 
 eluded from the political constitution. He who has 
 known what it is to have a mother is at once convinced 
 that a political society from which the mother element is 
 excluded has shut out the larger half of the regenerative 
 elements; and that this is enough to account for all the 
 growing imperfections of the body politic. For that it is 
 growing worse is confessed by all true reformers. Indeed, 
 to discover that all is going to the bad is the first step of 
 philosophical intelligence, and is a degree of wisdom 
 which comes with those years that convert us all to sages. 
 From the premise that society is going to ruin, the argu- 
 ment is unavoidable that something is wrong. And.when 
 philosophers of woman's wrongs point out how man's usurpe 
 supremacy has cut natural society in two, and thrown out 
 the better half including the mother element, they seem to 
 give an adequate cause for tlie inverted progress, and to 
 have clearly shown the way to regenerate the body politic. 
 
 Yet, often is it seen that a reason which appears sound 
 by itself is unsound in the totality. iThe error is in apply- 
 ing human nature to our political institutions; whereas 
 they are founded upon modern discoveries of self-evident 
 truths which reverse the order of all nature. Human 
 nature, and in particular that part of all nature which be- 
 longs to the propagation of species, or the mother element, 
 dates back to an early period of living existence; whereas.
 
 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 53 
 
 the self-evident truths upon which our jiolitical system is 
 founded are a recent invention, first discovered by some 
 much advanced French philosophers, and subsequently 
 imported to this country and discovered again by Thomas 
 Ir'aine, Thomas Jellerson, and some others, and here, as in 
 France, applied to the destruction of existing institutions. 
 Up to that period political society had grown upon simple 
 natural laws and human nature; these self-evident truths 
 antagonized all this. 
 
 A philosophical definition of Democracy, which had a 
 long standing on the cover of The Democratic Revieiu, 
 published at Washington before the evil days came which 
 overthrew the long Democratic regime, was this: '* Democ- 
 racy — the supremacy of man over his accidents.'' Politi- 
 cal equality is man's supremacy over the environment. 
 Nature's order is inequality. Chaos was equality. Natural 
 evolution is from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous — 
 from the equal to the unequal — and the creature is the 
 creation of the environment. One need not be cleverer 
 than Captain Corcoran to go on stringing these profound 
 maxims, but this shall suffice to show that our political 
 system soars above human and all other nature. In tha 
 order of nature the strong govern, and naturally the weak 
 have a government superior to themselves. In the order 
 of political equality the weak govern. It fulfills that 
 Scripture which saith, ''God hath chosen the foolish things 
 of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to . 
 confound the mighty." 
 
 Nature's law of political constitutions is club law — the 
 rule of the strongs A political constitution, founded 
 upon equality, reverses nature's order; therefore, this 
 prescription of the mother element as a cure for joolitical 
 society, Avhose foundation truths overturn all nature, is 
 clearly inapplicable. Besides^ the mother element itself
 
 54 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 
 
 is of all the elements of nature the most adverse to equal- 
 ity. A principle essential to the perpetuation of animal 
 life makes her think her young of more consequence than 
 all other young — more than the very framework of society, 
 and renders her incapable of conceiving of equal capaci- 
 ties, equal merits, or equal rights in any other beings. 
 The babe is for the time a despot, and the mother its 
 willing slave, and the relation is as far as can be from all 
 ideas of equal rights and self-evident truths. 
 
 Maternity appears the most mind-absorbing of all oc- 
 cupations. This observation is not to oppose the enfran- 
 chisement of woman, but to examine the question whether, 
 when woman has been admitted to the occupation of pol- 
 itics, Avitli all which that imjilies, she is to continue to let 
 the maternal function dominate her own life, and whether 
 the greatest progress will not be in emancipating her from 
 the mother element and all its subjugating forces, instead 
 of bringing it into politics. This question will not alarm 
 the philosoj^hic mind. No consequences to the human race 
 can disturb the theories of the philosopher of the human- 
 ities. 
 
 The limitation of the human mind makes it unable to 
 comprehend the relations of a perfected state of society, 
 save by the conditions of the present. The unknown can 
 be conceived only by the known. While the mind can 
 think of hajjpiness only as the pursuit and gratification of 
 wants, and the possession of the means to command the 
 service of others to our ease and pleasure, it is unable to 
 think of a state of perfect happiness in which are no wants, 
 and therefore no pursuit and no gratification; where wealth 
 can give no distinction, and can command nothing, foras- 
 much as all are wealthy. Thus the laboring mind has to 
 find rest in a heaven of the same social distinctions as here, 
 and in the ides, of the ready supply of those things which
 
 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 55 
 
 are desired and are unattaincd here. And so the ntmost 
 stretch of the ideal perfect state comes down to the simple 
 heaven of the child, who thinks it a place where candy and 
 gingerbread are unstinted, and swinging on the gate un- 
 molested. Or if the fancy attemi)ts to construct a state of 
 perfect bliss in which all human nature is extinct, it is apt 
 to make one whose promise is not an encouragement to well 
 doing. 
 
 In like manner they who propose the revolution of so- 
 ciety by the enfranchisement of woman are unable to con- 
 ceive the new order of things save by the present, and so 
 they think that she is to continue in the same domestic 
 servitude. To say that woman has the same limitation of 
 mind is no reflection on her intellect. She demands that 
 which is to reconstruct society from the bottom; and yet 
 she reasons as if it would be only a continuation of her 
 present humble state, and thereby would bring the mother , 
 element into the State. But the office of propagating the : 
 species is the first instinct of the lowest order of living i^ 
 creatures.' The lowest species are most fecund; with rise 
 in the scale of being, fecundity decreases. The higher the ' 
 develojiment the lesser the multiplication of kind. The 
 lower orders of human society are most prolific. Culture 
 shortens the government census, and therefore it is plain 
 that the ultimate of progress is the extinction of the race. 
 
 The function of maternity is so absorbing to the miiul 
 that it appears to make woman incapable of statesmanship. 
 During the period of gestation her ideas, like the beings 
 of the German scientist, must be, in great degree, evolved 
 from her own consciousness rather than acquired from 
 outward things. As soon as tlie child is born a transform- 
 ation takes place in the mother to adapt herself to its 
 feeble understanding. Nature has provided a simple lan- 
 guage for all creatures, in which the mother and her young
 
 66 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 
 
 communicate their wants and emotions. This language is 
 partly vocal, partly by osculation, and perhaps it has some 
 mysterious interchanges which may be explained as elec- 
 trical — a word which now accounts intelligibly for the un- 
 intelligible. 
 
 The philologer can make nothing of this language but 
 gibberish. It may not have terms for intricate ratiocina- 
 tion, but it seems abundant for the expression of the 
 emotions of the mother and her young. This gift comes 
 only to the mother. Maidens and childless wives make 
 attempts, which only show that in them it is a latent 
 speech. To the mother it comes as an inspiration, and is 
 abundant for all her ideas. With this she puts herself on an 
 intellectual level with her babe, and begins with it to learn 
 the simplest facts of human existence and the most rudi- 
 mentary ideas. Thus does slie travel pari passu with its 
 forming mind, and thus at each birth the mother is born 
 again, and becomes in mind a little child. 
 
 She even becomes more infantile in intellect than her 
 infant; for its bizarre motions and notions seem to her 
 phenomenal in intellectual brightness. She asks the doc- 
 tor if its brain is not developing too fast for its body, and 
 she becomes apprehensive that he is too bright to live long. 
 She requires the whole household and all visitors to come 
 down to the same infancy of mind, and to admire the signs 
 of prodigious intellect in the baby. No other topic can be 
 introduced, or it is quickly routed by something that baby 
 does or says, which shows to the mother a brain which 
 shall turn all previous statesmanship to folly. Can it be 
 that a maternal office which returns the mother to the 
 mental state of the babe, at each successive birth, can be 
 made compatible with capacity for practical politics, Avith- 
 out which woman suffrage might be an instrument for her 
 further subjugation?
 
 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 57 
 
 How can tlie motlier's mind be interested in the pro- 
 found science of statesmansliip, which has made such 
 strides in our free system, by which public debt is converted 
 to a public blessing by being put into the form of money; 
 by which the people make themselves rich by issuing their 
 own notes of hand for circulation among themselves; by 
 which taxes on the consumer are made a propelling force 
 to the consumer's industry; by which the people are made 
 rich by buying eighty cents worth of silver and uttering it on 
 themselves as a dollar; and so on through all the miraculous 
 achievements of great American statesmanship? What are 
 all these great " issues" to a mother? In the most learned 
 discourse on them some motion of baby^s would reduce 
 her mind to its level again, and she would incontinently 
 break out in that wonderful speech which is called baby 
 talk, for the reason that it is mother talk. 
 
 There is much preaching of the great command to 
 increase and multiply and replenish the earth, which would 
 be relevant if the earth were deluged again for ninety days. 
 It holds up as the example the large families of the early 
 settlers of New England, whose austere principles left them 
 few other amusements. Or, as a concession to modern 
 degeneracy, it abates half, and names six or eight as the 
 number of duty. Can a woman be intellectually capable \ 
 of statesmanship, who, in the period of her womanhood is six 
 or eight times set back to a state of mental infancy? If 
 there be any reality in the most obvious and ruling facts 
 of human existence — if the mother element be the power 
 that is asserted — if logic be logic, then is not the conclu- 
 sion unavoidable that the office of maternity is irreconcil- 
 able with practical politics, and therefore that woman's 
 emancipation from maternal servitude is an indispensable 
 qualification for the suffrage? 
 
 The unphilosophical objection will quickiy be raised
 
 58 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 
 
 that this woman suffrage would be the extinction of the 
 human race. Woman need not concern herself for that. 
 She has reason enough to revolt at the order of creation 
 which has placed on her the whole burden of keeping up 
 the race. If she ever gets her eyes open, she will per- 
 ceive that this has been the means of her subjugation. 
 The parallel may be seen in the bovine societies of the 
 Western plains, where the males care nothing for posterity, 
 wear lordly airs, paw the earth, bellow, magnify them- 
 selves and grow great, while the females are meekly occu- 
 pied in rearing the young. Right may safely leave the 
 consequences to take care of themselves, and woman has 
 no cause to hug her fetters in this unfair distribution of 
 the burdens of perpetuating the species. 
 
 In this land of equality, where every man that is born 
 of poor but honest parents rises in the world, and when 
 setting out takes a wife to help him rise, there have been 
 pitiful descriptions of his intellectual progress, while the 
 wife's mind, occupied in household concerns, stands still. 
 And so it comes to pass that the two, who, when they 
 Avere married, were intellectually equal, have become in- 
 tellectually unequal, hence uncongenial, hence incom- 
 patible; hence the man has to go from home for mental 
 society, and so on till the growing intellectual disparity 
 leads to divorce. This sad outcome of man's rise in the 
 world makes it a calamity for a married man to get on. 
 He is much to be pitied whose wife's mind remains inert 
 under the daily and nightly teachings of his growing 
 culture. 
 
 This, however, is a groping after the truth without reach- 
 ing it. The business of the household is not more absorb- 
 ing to the mind, and is as much a developing exercise as 
 the most of man's business. Why is there not as much 
 culture in* it as in man's occupations — mechanical work.
 
 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. 59 
 
 trade, banking, railroad plucking and pooling, the strata- 
 gems wliicli are requisite to the successful profession of 
 the law, the quackery which the medical profession is 
 compelled to i)ractice on the ignorant wise, the minister's 
 necessity to court the weaker brethren and Aveaker sisters, 
 the editor's necessity to travel with the prejudices of sub- 
 scribers, and so on with all the manly avocations? 
 Can the difference in culture by these occupations ac- 
 count for a growth of a disparity which destroys the 
 once intellectual oneness of man and wife ? 
 
 There is, however, a sufficient cause; it is the baby oc- 
 cupation that dwarfs the wife's mind by its periodical 
 retrograde to a state of infancy; while the man, exempt 
 from all this, grows above her in intellect. Thus are 
 these, which are romantically called pledges of affection, 
 made causes of incompatibility. This is that which 
 makes man find his wife's mind growing downward, while 
 his is growing upward. This is that which has enabled 
 him to usurj) the place of lord of the creation, and to re- 
 duce woman to such inferiority that she thinks this the 
 divine order. She hugs her chain, and talks feebly of 
 bringing the mother element into politics, although the 
 very beginning of equal rights requires the elimination of 
 the mother element from her nature. 
 
 Woman may properly go forward in claiming her 
 equality in all things without heeding posterity. Absolute 
 justice need not look out for consequences. Great jilans 
 of reform would never begin if tiiey feared to disturb 
 present conditions. Population has always been found an 
 insuperable obstacle to plans for improving the condition 
 of the race. All philosophical plans for perfecting society 
 begin with the extinction of the race, or have in this their 
 perfect work. 
 
 Therefore, even if the requirements of woman's polit-
 
 60 THE BABY AND THE BALLOT. , 
 
 ical equality would bring the human race to an end, she is 
 following the high precedents of the philosophers of hu- 
 manity. But she may not be driven from her just claim 
 by sliaking posterity before her. This is no special con- 
 cern of hers. She should claim her own, and leave to pos- 
 terity the consequences, which is only a small part of the 
 saying that justice should be done though the heavens /^IL
 
 XI. 
 RULES TO REFORM GIRLS. 
 
 AN INDIANA youth of talents rare, who has been 
 raised on the pure milk of our writings, on which 
 his plastic soul has grown in virtue with that sturdincss of 
 constitution which the calf gets who is allowed to run long 
 with the cow, informs us that he is ''a youth of seventeen 
 years of age who has raised a keen edged sword on the 
 side of Right and Truth," and that he hopes it will stab 
 him if he ever falls into the ways of vice, and he sends us 
 three resolves which he has formed for the selection of the 
 female object of his affections — preambling tbat he was 
 led to them by terrible examples, having ''seen a girl faint 
 twice during the process of ear boring, and then in her 
 sleep pull the ill placed metal off and ruin her ears"; and 
 having ''seen a friend called to the tomb by the practice 
 of tight lacing." 
 
 Extricated from that gorgeous efflorescence of words 
 which comes from the ardor of youth, these rules inexor- 
 ably refuse to marry any of the girls who bore their ears, 
 wear ear-rings, are addicted to tight lacing, who break down 
 their delicate frames by overloads of voluminous skirts 
 and dragging trains, who have their heads turned to costly 
 bonnets, jewelry, and other things of personal adornment. 
 
 He who sets up an ideal for his own conduct should set 
 a higher for the wife, tbat tremendous power for weal and 
 woe; or, as the proverb says: "He that drives fat oxen 
 should himself be fat." To prescribe perfect rules to 
 reform girls is one of the finest traits of budding manhood. 
 A picture as interesting as the youth starting in Cole's 
 
 61 
 
 <!.
 
 62 RULES TO REFORM GIRLS. • 
 
 Voyage of Life, wafted by the wishes of the good angel, is 
 that of a youth iu the dawn of manhood, starting ont 
 with resolves for a noble career, drawing a keen edged 
 sword in the cause of truth, and to complete his outfit, 
 framing rules to guide his choice of his female partner. 
 Good resolutions pave the way of life broad and smooth, 
 and give it a gentle incline. In the memoirs of great and 
 good men are many records of high guiding resolves which 
 they had made in youth. These lives of great men remind 
 us that we, too, may make our lives sublime, and thus 
 leave on the sands of time footprints to guide following 
 generations. 
 
 Therefore should a young man be encouraged in setting 
 up ideals of the good, the beautiful and the true, for him- 
 self, and for the being whom he is to assimilate to himself. 
 Yet, in our office of Mentor, we may caution our ardent 
 young Indianian against rashness in assaulting venerable 
 customs, and particularly against beginning his war for 
 Truth and Right by taking upon himself the task to reform 
 that very complex creature, the girl, lest in this he find his 
 keen edged sword 'cutting his own fingers. The woman 
 was created after man, and, in the natural way of progress, 
 the more complex. To judge her as of the same nature 
 as the man, is to be liable to fall into great error. Faint- 
 ing in her may be merely an exercise. A single instance 
 of somnambulism need not revolutionize the world. We 
 should not announce the vernal equinox, and tear off our 
 undershirts, at the sight of a single swallow. The girl is 
 altogether too complex a structure, and subject to too 
 many nerves, and there are too many doctors in the world, 
 whose work must be covered up, to permit a positive con- 
 clusion that it was tight lacing that called our young 
 Indiana friend's friend to the tomb. 
 
 He who meddles with the adornments of the female
 
 RULES TO REFORM GIRLS. C3 
 
 person rushes in where angels might fear to hay tlieir hands. 
 And if he tries ornamental apparel by reason, he may find 
 no stopping place short of the coats (or the trousers; the 
 translators differ) or skins which were the first suits of our 
 erring first parents. The female ear has a delicate 
 lobe which seems formed for a hanging ornament, and 
 this directs the eye to the fair cheek. Sacred history shows 
 that the ear was thus applied in very ancient times. In 
 the most primitive times earrings precede clothes. This 
 proves them a primary necessity. This custom, which 
 seems to have begun with the human race, must have been 
 founded in reason. 
 
 When Abraham's servant, on a solemn mission to 
 choose from Abraham's kindred a Avife for Isaac, to gener- 
 ate the chosen race, met Ilebekah at the well, and decided 
 that she would do, he " took a golden earring of half a 
 shekel weight and gave her," together with still weightier 
 bracelets. When he told Laban his mission, and he referred 
 the question to the damsel, she promptly said she would 
 go. Can it be doubted that the earring was a powerful 
 agency in making her willing to go to a strange country, 
 to marry a strange man? Naturally she thought that the 
 young man who sent such an earring must be only too 
 sweet. Thus the earring affected the destiny of the chosen 
 people, and, through them, of the human race. 
 
 All through sacred history the earring is a cherished 
 ornament. When Job's friends heard that his ill fortune 
 had changed and he was again prosperous, they came and 
 each " gave him a piece of money, and every one an ear- 
 ring of gold.'' Thus the earring served to distinguish that 
 most noble quality of our common nature which gives 
 presents to those who have abundance. The Hebrews, 
 takir>g an outfit for a sojourn in the wiUlcrness, borrowed 
 earrings from the Egyptians so freely that they had enough
 
 64 RULES TO EEFORM GIRLS. 
 
 to sujjply Aaron with gold to make a calf for a god. This 
 was the means of bringing upon them a moral lesson that 
 forever extinguished in mankind the worship of the calf 
 of gold. 
 
 Saith Solomon — a very wise man, and of much experi- 
 ence in women — *'As an earring of gold, so is a wise reprover 
 iipon an obedient ear." Shall an Indiana youth exclude 
 from his affections all those girls that follow a custom of 
 adornment which is so ancient, and is so intimately con- 
 nected with sacred history? Young enthusiasm in the 
 cause of the good, the beautiful, the true, revives falling 
 hope in humanity; but the very ardor of youth tends to 
 rashness. He should be cautious in judging women for 
 tight lacing. The youth who invades with curious mind 
 the precincts of a girl's dress goes to the ragged edge of 
 propriety, and may fall into an evil habit while thinking 
 he is following the good, the beautiful, the true. The 
 fact of tight lacing is one which he can not properly verify; 
 therefore he may judge and proscribe unjustly. One woman 
 differs from another woman in size and shape, and they all 
 differ from man. The young man can not be certain of 
 such fact without involving himself in perilous circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Their closed and fitting garments, kept in form by the 
 stiffness of their structure, may look tight when they are 
 not. Their shape, and the weight of skirts which our 
 manners constrain them to carry, seem to make it neces- 
 sary to support them in a large degree on the waist. Per- 
 haps an anatomical difference makes the female waist 
 require more pressure than the male. A youjig Indianian 
 may not know what is the true proportion of a girl's waist. 
 Perhaps the tapering form which makes the waist seem 
 inadequate to the superstructure is formed by an expaasion 
 of the latter, which though artificial, is still a tribute to
 
 RULES TO REFORM GIRLS. 65 
 
 the earliest instinct of innocent chiklliood. We warn our 
 young friend against pronouncing such severe sentence on 
 girls, on that which must be to him mere conjecture, and 
 also from giving his mind to a line of investigation which 
 may divert his sharp sword from the cause of truth and 
 right. 
 
 Tlie remark may be made in general on the foregoing, 
 and on the somewliat extravagant dcscri2)tiou of the 
 female dress and mind which is given in the third resolve, 
 that men who have had experience have learned that it is 
 better to let woman's dress alone. Sex, condition, cus- 
 tom, fashion and various other powei's, have brought her 
 dress to what it is, and tliese are forces too strong for man. 
 
 The adorning of woman is a development of civiliza- 
 tion. The male is the gorgeous sex in the lower animals: 
 the female the plain. In the barbarous tribes the man 
 decorates himself with paint, feathers and fine colors, and 
 denies these privileges to the woman. Civilization changes 
 the order; the male becomes plain in attire, and the female 
 gorgeous. This is a part of that evolution which has 
 lifted woman out of her low estate. It is one of the ele- 
 ments in that deference which the ci\alized man pays to 
 woman. It becomes assimilated with that beauty which 
 draws man's devotion, and thus it is an important influ- 
 ence in perpetuating the race. 
 
 There are occult influences in woman's decorations 
 which the young man may not comprehend, even Avhen 
 under their spell. They combine with nature to give to 
 her presence that mysterious charm which in general 
 scatters to the winds those rules which men fondly form 
 to guide them in choosing a wife. Our Indiana young 
 friend will need to copy out his resolves in a large round 
 hand and to paste them in his hat when he exposes him- 
 self to these charms. Philosophers who have gone as far 
 5
 
 66 RULES TO REFORM GIRLS. 
 
 as philosophy can in experimenting on woman, "have at 
 last confesstd that they have made no advance, because at 
 the beginning they assumed that she was a being of the same 
 general nature as man, and therefore Avas comprehensible 
 to man. If she were so, the charm of life would not be, 
 and the race would not have gone beyond the first pair. 
 Tlie human mind would cease to worship that which it 
 had comprehended. That Avoman is incomprehensible to 
 man is the grand secret of his devotion to her. If he 
 could comprehend her, the social fabric would dissolve. 
 She is beyond the line which John Stuart Mill draws be- 
 tween the knowable and the unknowable; therefore shall 
 man ever admire and wonder.
 
 XII. 
 THE MARRIED MAN'S LIABILITIES. 
 
 THE police theory of the murder of Mrs. Hull was a 
 very good theory, and it is no fault of the theory that 
 the murderer turned up, and turned out to be not the 
 theoretic murderer. Aiul this untoward event should not 
 be permitted to shove aside the fine moral power of the 
 theory that a man always wants to get rid of his wife, and 
 that if she is made away with, he should be held guilty 
 until he can fetch up the person who did it. And while 
 this is sound on general principles, a retrospective investi- 
 gation of the conduct and conjugal state of most men, 
 under the pressure of police suspicion, will reveal much 
 more confirmation than in the case of the old and infirm 
 Dr. Hull, who seems to have been fortunate in a wife who 
 ran the household. 
 
 Firstly — to try the matter by general principles — the 
 universally accepted idea that marriage is in a degree a 
 disappointment — that the ardor of the lover cools with 
 possession; that the following moons of married life are 
 very different from the honeymoon, the expression of 
 which, in various forms, abounds in our literature and 
 speech, is, in a degree, an imputation to every married man 
 of an experience which needs only to be mentally dwelt 
 upon until it becomes an absorbing idea, to give him a de- 
 sire to be rid of his wife in order that he may try his luck 
 again. Therefore, on general principles, suspicion logically 
 falls on the husband when the wife is taken off. 
 
 That this is natural is instanced, not only by the case 
 
 of Dr. Hull, but by a case recently at Niagara Falls, 
 
 67
 
 68 THE MARRIED MAN's LIABILITIES. 
 
 where a foreigner who had been visiting the Falls several 
 days with his six months' wife, in making a last round, came 
 back from Goat Island giving out extravagant expressions 
 of grief, and relating that his adored, having taken a sud- 
 den fancy to drink out of the torrent, in dipping a cup 
 toppled over the bank, and in a moment was carried over 
 the falls. The husband's expression was of a terrible 
 shock, of poignant affliction, and all that a husband could 
 express if it had been real. But every married man knows 
 his own state, and each one receives this dreadful narrative 
 with a cold incredulity. Each one reflects that six months 
 of wedded bliss were just about enough to show to this 
 man that things are not as they seem. 
 
 And when the man's relations with his wife, and all 
 his conduct, come to be subjected to examination under 
 the powerful microscope of this natural suspicion, their 
 lives must have been wonderfully harmonious, and his 
 conduct both in and out of the domestic circle remarkably 
 correct, if there shall not be found tales of disputes, of 
 discords, of such brutality as denying to her things that 
 she wanted, of surliness at the domestic hearth, of com- 
 plaining of the victuals, of staying out late, of seeking 
 other society, of irregularities of conduct, which shall form 
 a chain of circumstances to make suspicion confirmation 
 strong as Holy Writ. 
 
 Even if this should sometimes err, and a man should 
 now and then be hanged for wife murder, who had not, in 
 fact, done it, should not this be afforded for the sake of 
 the moral influence which will be kept over the man's 
 treatment of the wife, by the ever-present sense that if she 
 shall be taken off in any manner that can not be comi^letely 
 accounted for, whether by medicine or by other methods 
 of dispatching, all his treatment of her, and all his conduct 
 outside the family circle, shall be subjected to a searching ex- 
 amination, in which the presumptions will be all against him?
 
 XIII. 
 ABOUT MARRYING RICH. 
 
 TO THE editor: 
 
 I HAVE a college education, and have gone through tlie 
 course of study for a profession, and am trying to get 
 Hnto practice. But it is uphill work. I find youth and 
 inexperience an obstacle, which may last me till I am old. 
 With hard scratching I can hardly make my profession 
 pay for only a moderate style of board and clothes. I 
 have the entrance into society, and in it I have made the 
 friendly acquaintance of the daughter of a rich man, who 
 lives in elegant style. I venture to think that if I wore in 
 make advances toward a proposal of marriage, they woiilil 
 be favorably received. I think highly of the young lady'.s 
 intelligence and disposition, and I think her father would 
 take pride in supporting her in a handsome establishmeiil. 
 But I hesitate because I have fears that this difference in 
 our fortunes may in future have an influence on our rela- 
 tions as man and wife. As newspapers have universal ob- 
 servation and wisdom, I have thought best to consult you 
 on this affair. A. 
 
 Our verdict is, better wait, T3ven if thereby you lose tho 
 girl. There comes a time when the blindness of love and 
 of the honeymoon is dissipated, and things come down to 
 the rules of common sense. A man should see that lie 
 has a sure basis for making his wife respect him. If it 
 were not that it would bring down on us the indignation 
 of our army of watchful woman readers, we Avould say 
 that the man should always keep the upper hand of the 
 wife in order to keep her respect. A man who, without a 
 profession which supports him, marries a rich wife, or the
 
 70 ABOUT MARRYING RICH. 
 
 daughter of a rich man, and has to draw on her father for 
 support, becomes a dependent on her, and he may depend 
 upon it that she will make him feel it. And woman can 
 do this in an infinite variety of lovely ways. 
 
 But this is not to oppose going for rich girls or the 
 aaughters of rich men to marry. Our space is too valuable 
 to waste in that vain work. And on general princij)les we 
 incline to think it well to have these prizes in society, to 
 incite the emulation of young men, and to be "scooped," 
 as the persimmons are knocked, by the tallest pole. And 
 a man with an education, and a profession which has 
 made him self-supporting, is independent, and his educa- 
 tion and profession and start in the world constitute a 
 capital which makes him an equal match for the daughter 
 of the richest man. In such conditions he need have no 
 hesitancy. Xor need he feel his independence lowered if 
 her father comes down with the means to helj) support an 
 establishnent and a style of living which her habits re- 
 quire, but which is more expensive than would accord 
 with his circumstances. It is the father's duty to do this. 
 Not to do it would be mean, because it would expose his 
 daughter as a burden because of his wealth. 
 
 But when the professional man has made this fortunate 
 and fit marriage, he should see to it that he relaxes not his 
 energies in the pursuit of his profession, and that he keeps 
 and increases his standing in that. This will preserve his 
 independence, preserve the respect of his fellow men and 
 fellow women, preserve the respect of his wife, and make her 
 so look upon him as a superior being that she will not think 
 of her rich father, or her own riches, as of any weight in the 
 conjugal scale. If, even when he enters such a marriage, 
 and has this start in a profession, and has all its future 
 prospect, he then relaxes his energies, makes no further 
 progress, or lets his practice die, while he goes into a life
 
 ABOUT MAKIiYIXG RICH. 71 
 
 of indolence, or of what is called elegant cnlture, or of 
 pleasure travel, of summering at Saratoga and Newport, 
 and wintering at Paris, and so on, enjoying his wife's 
 fortune, he may rely that with all this elegant leisure and 
 luxury he will lose his wife's respect, and that she will 
 look upon him as a dependent, and will make him feel it. 
 And his fellow men and women will also regard him as a 
 pensioner upon his wife. 
 
 And a man who is just starting in a profession, and has 
 not gained the self-supjiorting point, and who marries a 
 rich wife for a support, enters at once and with open eyes 
 upon this state of dependence. The chances are very 
 small that he will ever rise from it. The battle of life de- 
 mands great energy and perseverance, and its way is full 
 of discouragements. The assurance of support by a rich 
 wife, and the calculating upon a wife's father who. will 
 ''cut up fat," has a strong and almost irresistible tendency 
 to debilitate a man's energies, let down his ambition, and 
 weaken his character. Therefore, although it is a good 
 thing to marry a rich woman if the man has a basis of in- 
 dependence, and although we maintain that a man with 
 an education, and with a profession in which he has made 
 himself self-supporting, is an equal match for a rich 
 woman, yet the marrying of a rich woman is full of perils 
 to the man. But all these he can escape if he takes our 
 advice. 
 
 Now that we have been drawn into the always-interest- 
 ing subject of marriage, let us look briefly at the advan- 
 tages a man has who in his profession is self-supporting, 
 and who marries the daughter of a man in merely self- 
 supporting circumstances, from whom he can expect little 
 more then or after than a respectable outfit for the wife. 
 They start out in about equal circumstances, for it is now 
 the custom in respectable society to give daughters educa-
 
 72 ABOUT MAIiiniNG EICH. 
 
 tion, which in many cases is exiaensive, and may have some 
 accomplishment which adds greatly to the home enjoyment. 
 And we will suppose the young woman to be also competent 
 to manage the house, and to bring up her children. Thus, 
 at the start, their conditions seem to be about equal. 
 
 But although the wife may perform her part of tlie 
 duties of the two with as much zeal and capacity as he, 
 yet he is directly the bread winner of the family, and he 
 assumes the honors and supremacy of such a providence, 
 and she accords it to him. If they are prosperous and 
 gather property, he has the credit of it all, although she 
 gives equal energy and capacity to that part of the business 
 of the family which is in her province. And the niauage- 
 meut of the household is always an important factor, being 
 that by which men imjDrove their circumstances. But the 
 man assumes that he did all in the gaining of the property, 
 and that all is his by virtue of creation, and he assumes to 
 stand to her in the relation of a benefactor, and as con- 
 ferring upon her riches which she was not born to. 
 
 And such is the meekness of woman, bowed down by 
 ages of subjection to the despotism of man, that she readily 
 accords all this to him, and honors him as her benefactor, 
 and thinks herself a fortunate dependent. Therefore, in- 
 asmuch as man's nature requires that the wife shall be 
 subject to him, shall look up to him as the superior being, 
 shall think that all she has is given by his bounty, and 
 that the humble service of her life is too little for his good- 
 ness, he can have much more of this incense of worship 
 burned under his nose by marrying a girl of his own con- 
 dition as to property. 
 
 If any other young men, or men of any age, are want- 
 ing advice as to marriage, we can off hand serve out to 
 them as exhaustively as in the above, if they make due 
 application.
 
 XIY. 
 "WHAT TO DO. 
 
 "how shall a youno man cleanse his ways?" 
 TO THE editor: 
 
 BEING a reader of your paper I take the liberty of 
 asking you a question. What shall I do with my- 
 self? I am nearly thirty-three, without trade or profession, 
 have done some little honest work in the past twelve years, 
 but have been more of a C. d'l. than anything else. 
 Have drank a good deal of whisky, am an inveterate to- 
 bacco cliewer (seem to have these tastes inborn in me), and 
 have been and am now of no account in the world. I am 
 tired of this way of living. I have no home nor home 
 friends to go to; all are gone from me. Tell me, do you 
 think it is as Colonel Ingersoll says, "no hereafter"? If I 
 could bring myself to believe this I could solve that ques- 
 tion. What shall I do with myself? very quickly. I, how- 
 ever, can not. 
 
 This is an earnest inquiry on my part. I know noth- 
 ing, and can do nothing that I know of. Instead of giving 
 me a trade or profession my parents let me go into the 
 army in early youth, where I learned nothing good, much 
 evil, and was badly hurt twice. Will you kindly give me 
 your opinion? Tired. 
 
 You have a heavy case against your parents who let you 
 grow up without training you to earn a living, against a 
 system of schooling which only disqualifies for this, and, 
 we suspect, against your jiarents for begetting you with a 
 depraved appetite for spirits and tobacco. The abandoned 
 way in which people beget children with their own debased 
 natures, and propagate beings who can be only worthless, 
 
 73
 
 74 WHAT TO DO. 
 
 is a lack of principle wnicli is appalling. Yet tliey pretend 
 a doing of God service in this indulgence of their own 
 conscienceless passions. But, unhappily, you can't indict 
 your parents for bringing you into the world. And if you 
 could, while it would be a warning to others it would not 
 help your case. 
 
 Your case is bad; the only gleam of a chance is that you 
 feel it, and want a change. The "no hereafter'' has no 
 relief that is available to you; for it appears that, while 
 your parents gave you nothing to helj^ you to get a living, 
 they instilled into you a superstition that there is another 
 life, in which peoi^le are called to account. This will keep 
 you from seeking rest in that way, and will compel you to 
 play out the play. And, anyhow, to give in at thirty-three 
 as a failure seems pitifully weak. Of course life is a failure 
 at last. The fact is that no sooner does one get well agoing 
 than he has to up and die makes it a mocking failure; but 
 it is no disgrace to be carried off by the universal fate after 
 having bravely played the game. 
 
 You are too old to learn a trade, even if our enlightened 
 trades— like Saturn devouring his progeny, or a sow her 
 own litter — had not so perfected their system that no one 
 has a chance to learn a trade well. You might become a 
 quack lawyer or doctor, but you would have to be a knave to 
 succeed. Your superstition as to the hereafter is one quali- 
 fication for a preacher, but whisky drinking subjects a 
 preacher to uncharitable comment. The trade of editor is 
 one that any jack can take up, but for that reason there 
 are many who have tlie gift, and unfortunately the number 
 of papers does not increase'. The undertaker's trade seems 
 not laborious, and not likely to go out of fashion, but it 
 requires a solemn face for the occasions, and, what is not 
 so easy, capital. 
 
 Perhaps if you had an object you could drop either
 
 WHAT TO DO. ' 75 
 
 wliit-ky or tobacco. Tobacco is nasty. It makes a man a 
 spouting cesspool, but it is thought less liable than whisky 
 drinking to be carried to the destructive degree, and it is 
 not so expensive a habit. Suppose you drop whisky. One 
 would tliiuk that tobacco makes the mouth so nasty that 
 the.chewer would not care to drink whisky. 
 
 You are footloose — no home, no home friends who care 
 for you. You are free from all but yourself, and are but 
 thirty-three — time enough to make a career. You are 
 young enough to take Horace Greeley's standing advice, and 
 go West, but not to go where he sent men to waste their 
 lives in irrigating arid land. 
 
 Go Northwest! Go to the northern parallels if you 
 want to go where human energies are highest and enter- 
 prise most vigorous. On the line of the Northern Pacific 
 Railroad, in a good climate, you can preempt 160 acres of 
 land as productive as any in the world, in a region where 
 a tide of the best emigration is fast bringing all the insti- 
 tutions of civilization, and with your experience in rough- 
 ing it, and what you know of work, you can, by your own 
 muscle have within ten years a farm and a home, and be 
 one of the lords of creation, as independent as any man. 
 Go Northwest, young man, and regenerate yourself!
 
 XV. 
 
 THE CHICAGO MARRIAGE DISABILITY. 
 
 AGtAIK the iron of man's tyranny has been driven 
 home to woman's soul. Again has he shown that 
 even his tender mercies in enlarging her sphere are devices 
 to draw her into ambuscades, where her disabilities will be 
 sprung upon her with more crushing effect. Again is the 
 proof repeated that the rights of woman can not be safely 
 trusted to man's magnanimity, aud that if she would be 
 free she must have the ballot in her own hand to strike 
 the blow. In Chicago — that metropolis of sin — was the 
 sledgehammer swung which again drove to its ancient 
 home this sharp iron, by a resolution of the Board of 
 Education, that if a woman teacher shall marry, that act 
 shall be taken as resignation of her place. Fitly was it in 
 Chicago that a woman suffragist, whose name is lost in the 
 vagueness of tradition, said that she wailed when she 
 brought one more unfortunate female into the world. 
 
 This political decree that marriage is a disability to 
 woman, saps the very foundation of woman's rights; em- 
 braces principles that lie beneath the fountains of the 
 undercurrents of things; embraces the underpinning of 
 the framework of society; embraces the existence of the 
 relation of marriage; embraces all that is enibraceable in 
 woman. If marriage disqualifies her for a teacher of the 
 public school, then it disqualifies her for all other political 
 offices, most of which have duties which can less make 
 allowance for woman's occasions than the office of teacher 
 of children. Also it disqualifies her for the political 
 duties which are imposed with suffrage; for eternal vigil- 
 
 76
 
 THE CHICAGO MAllRIAGE DISABILITY. 77 
 
 ance in tiie voter is the price of liberty to the people and 
 occasional neglect of caucus, convention, canvass and 
 election might let the country slip. 
 
 Alike does this monstrous decree declare that marriage 
 disqualifies her to be a judge, or lawyer, or doctor, or 
 minister, or editor; for all these have functions which 
 can no more wait upon occasion than teaching the young. 
 And so it does for most kinds of business and of labor; 
 for these can no more allow periodical or uncertain vaca- 
 tions than the office of a teacher. Thus does it logically 
 shut up all avenues of self-support to woman unless she 
 consents to celibacy. We say all; for no adequate incen- 
 tive is left to woman to qualify herself for any place re- 
 quiring skill or education if she is to be cut off by marry- 
 ing. The reasons upon which this decree is justified 
 reach into the depths of woman's nature, and arraign the 
 holy state of marriage, besides pulling out the underpin- 
 ning of morals. 
 
 First is the pretense that the maternal function will 
 disable her for teaching. This is cruelty put in the guise 
 of tenderness. But even if this were true, would it not 
 be time enough when she had started the maternal func- 
 tion. The rule that the woman teacher who maternizes 
 shall be taken as having resigned would be more rational. 
 There is a saying about counting uuhatched chickens. 
 With the development of civilization the maternity busi- 
 ness diminishes. The lower animals propagate most. 
 Fecundity declines with elevation of species. Maternity 
 is kept within bounds, and does not inexorably follow mar- 
 riage. Sufficient is the evil for the day. Our school 
 boards need not form themselves into boards of mid wives. 
 
 But we deny that maternity disqualifies a teacher. The 
 theory runs counter to that upon wliich women are pre- 
 ferred for teachers of the young, because of their more
 
 78 THE CHICAGO MARRIAGE DISABILITY. 
 
 sympathetic and tender nature. This nature is apt to be 
 hitent until maternity rouses it, and even to grow to a sub- 
 acidity if left too long latent. This decree disqualifies 
 woman by that which is her special qualification for train- 
 ing the young. We have read in woman suffrage speeches 
 by men whose nature is as mild as if their veins were filled 
 with skim milk instead of animal blood, that the failure 
 of our political system is because exclusive male suffrage 
 has shut out the "mother element"; that the lack of this 
 mammary quality had left our politics without the lactation 
 of human kindness; had kept them farrow, as it were, and 
 so they had degenerated. But here is an unnatural school 
 board decreeing that the " mother element " shall be ex- 
 cluded even from the training of children. If such people 
 had their way they would have all mankind brought up by 
 hand. 
 
 The next reason is that the man absorbs the wife's mind, 
 and thereby disqualifies her for the office of a teacher. To 
 the married in general there is a touch of humor in this. 
 Where is the man who will say that he absorbs his wife's mind 
 and will say it to her face? All the married agree that 
 marriage brings in a sober view of life's realities, and makes 
 man and wife more capable of dealing with them. To the 
 superficial view some show of reason might be alleged of 
 the courtship stage; but even in this we may appeal 
 to universal observation and experience to state if the head 
 which is most thrown out of level by this delirious 
 stage be not the man's? The term coquette is feminine by 
 common acceptation, because woman only has the coolness _ 
 to practice this art. The girl receives in composure the 
 question whose popping puts the man into a ferment. She 
 parades the engagement, while he is shy of it. At the 
 marriage performance, he has to have the vows dictated to 
 him in stops of three words, and his repeating is inaudible.
 
 THE CHICAGO MARRIAGE DISABILITY. 'J'O 
 
 while she speaks tliem up witli a clear confident voice, and 
 evidently could recite the whole without prompting. 
 
 Thus do all the signs show that the man's head is the 
 one most turned, and his the life that is most divided by 
 marriage. The common error in this has arisen by not 
 drawing the line in human motives and qualities. To the 
 superficial view the wife appears to have most fidelity in 
 love; hence the common notion that love takes more com- 
 plete possession of her being. There are some pretty lines 
 about man's love being a thing apart from his life, while it 
 is woman's whole existence. This is very nice for woman 
 to say, but the real competitive trial can not be made, be- 
 cause they can not be put into the same conditions. Who 
 can tell how much love's completer possession of the 
 woman is owing to the circumstance that he can take the 
 liberty to choose? Who can tell how far limitation goes 
 for constancy? It is a line of investigation which it would 
 not be wise to pursue. But this has gone far enough to 
 prove that the notion that marriage disables woman more 
 than man for other functions is wildly contrary to the facts 
 of human existence. 
 
 Another reason is that the teacher who marries has a 
 man to support her, and therefore should give place to 
 another woman to support herself. This, like all of man's 
 views of woman, is the reverse of the rule that is applied 
 to men; for a wife and children are accepted as claims to 
 public place, and when there is an economical curtailment 
 of public employes, the single men have to go first. But 
 is not the very assumption that the man always supports 
 the wife, itself a part of man's everlasting injustice to 
 woman? There are many men supported by wives; 
 many more standing about the streets and living on their 
 parents who need wives to sujiport them. And if it is 
 thought that a man who has a public place ought to take
 
 80 THE CHICAGO MARRIAGE DISABILITY. 
 
 a wife to support and to add to the population, why not 
 the duty of a woman in similar place? If she supports a 
 man by it, and adds to the census, is it not the same as if 
 he had the office and supported her? 
 
 Could anything but ages of the practice of injustice to 
 woman make men incapable of perceiving that woman has 
 as good a right to take a man to support as man a woman? 
 And is not this injustice most blind when men apply it in 
 such a way as to cut off their own lordly sex from this 
 means of support? The subject is as inexhaustible as 
 woman, but we trust that we have said enough to show 
 that the Chicago School Board's rule, which ejects woman 
 from the school if she follows the order of nature, is 
 founded on false assumptions, which if admitted would 
 undermine the social fabric.
 
 XVI. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC-SPOTS IN DOMESTIC 
 ANIMALS. 
 
 AN interesting paper on color-marks in domestic animals, 
 by Professor William II. Brewer, of Yale College, Avas 
 read on Thursday in Section B. of the Congress of Scientists. 
 It related to white spots in animals. The author has 
 observed that horses have more white feet on the left side 
 than the right; that the foot most often white is the left 
 hind, and least often the right fore; that where but two 
 feet are white they are most often the two hind, and in 
 such cases the majority have the most white on the left; 
 that if but one foot is white, it is oftenest the left, whether 
 hind or fore; if three feet are white, two are oftenest on 
 the left side. 
 
 In spotted horses, if they have merely a white spot, it 
 is oftenest on the left side; Avhen they have many spots, the 
 amount of white is greatest on the left. Mules are rarely 
 spotted, and the author never saw one with white feet. 
 The white spots of horned cattle are not so regularly dis- 
 posed, and the author has not observed enough to say that 
 their left feet w^ere more often white than the right, but 
 thought it probable. Likewise in dogs; but the right and 
 left in dogs is strongly shown by their carrying the tail on 
 the left side. 
 
 The same is true of swine as regards. color, but the tail 
 is carried on either side, according to the fancy of the 
 of the wearer. From all this the author thought it 
 probable that there is more white on the left side of all 
 domestic animals. He had not had opportunity to observe 
 Avild animals, except about sixty skunks, of whom a 
 6 81
 
 82 SCIENTIFIC — SPOTS IN DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
 
 majority had most white on the left side. From all of this 
 the author, reasoning in a scientific manner, from effect 
 to cause, concluded that the greater quantity of white spots 
 on the left side is because of the inferior strength of the 
 left side, which can not so well put forth pronounced color. 
 
 The subject is interesting, and tlie conclusion far reach- 
 ing. If white is caused by inferior strength, then the 
 African theory may be true, that Adam and Eve were 
 black, and that the white skin is the product of degen- 
 eracy. Darwin, however, finds that the brilliant plumage 
 of the males of feathered animals is developed by love and 
 fashion; by the gallant desire of the males to attract the admi- 
 ration of the females; this being the opposite of the social 
 influences in the human race. May not fashion develop 
 white spots in animals, fostered by the same amiable 
 desire to make themselves mutually attractive. 
 
 How shall we explain the fact cited that the hind foot 
 of the horse is oftener white than the fore foot, when they 
 who have come into contact have conceived the impression 
 that the chief strength of the horse is in his hind feet? 
 This theory would satisfactorily explain the fact that the 
 mule never has white hind feet, but it leaves something 
 for science yet to clear up in the matter of the more fre- 
 quent white on the hind feet of horses. And if the Infe- 
 rior strength of the left side be the cause, and the effect be 
 the inability to put forth decided color, shall we have to 
 conclude that gray and white horses are of inferior vigor? 
 
 A very scientific breeder of cattle, named Jacob, found 
 by experiment that imagination in domestic animals had 
 great effect in producing spots. This in a sort corrobo- 
 rates Darwin's theory of the development of gorgeous 
 plumage in birds by their desire to please. Cold scientific 
 inquiry is prone to forget that animals have consciousness 
 or observation. If these be conceded, then it must be 
 allowed that they can not be unaware of objects so con-
 
 SCIE>rTIFIC — SPOTS IN DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 83 
 
 spicuons as white spots, nor unconscious of tlie effect. 
 This would lend to desire, and desire, as Darwin shows, to 
 development. And this observation, desire and develop- 
 ment would be in the line of fashion. And our race need 
 not bo told that fashion has right and left sides, such for 
 example as our parting the hair on the left side. 
 
 Can the habit of the dog to carry his tail on the left 
 side be received as evidence of the inferior strength on 
 that side? It seems to impose the greater weight on the 
 weaker member. Does he do it save on a trot, when he 
 throws his right side forward, and consequently puts the 
 tail over to the left as a sort of rudder to balance things? 
 As to swine, that breeding which increases adipose and 
 rounds out the marketable parts diminishes the growth of 
 the tail so that it seems to curl up from insufficiency, and 
 its relative weight becomes so small that its being carried 
 on either side would be of little scientific significance. 
 
 When the horse lies down, he lies on the right side, in 
 general. This exposes his left to the weather. Hair of 
 white color is held to be a better protection against cold 
 than of dark color. May not his greater quantity of 
 Avhite spots on the left side be nature's development for 
 his protection from cold? Or, if the cause of the pro- 
 duction of white spots be fancy and fashion, they would 
 naturally be on that side kept io the view, like as a 
 woman, when she sits down, does it in such a manner as 
 to fetch her train to the front view. 
 
 That view seems more pleasant and philosophical which 
 concedes most intelligence and development to the animals; 
 therefore is the theory that white spots are a development 
 from the taste, fashion, and love of the beautiful in the 
 animals themselves the more in accord with respect for the 
 general excellence of creation. Yet that which is most 
 agreeable to our minds should not stand in the way of the 
 absolute demonstrations of science.
 
 XVII. 
 A LIFT FOR THE DOWN-TRODDEN SEX. 
 
 SENATOR PENDLETON builded wiser than he knew 
 for the women, and the down-trodden have quickly 
 caught his civil service reform structure by. the horns, and 
 have turned them to their own lifting up. Or, if he saw 
 it all, the more glory is due to him. The strong-minded 
 should make him their candidate for President, instead of 
 the gay deceiver, Benjamin F. Butler, or the loose-minded 
 Senator Blair. Mr. Pendleton's reform bill is to select 
 persons for the Government clerkships upon their qualifi- 
 cations, as tried by competitive examination in book knowl- 
 edge. There is no sex in merit, and no merit in sex. 
 Breathes there a man so soulless as to plead to have women, 
 excluded from competitive examinations which are to select 
 persons for the public service solely on the ground of 
 merit? 
 
 Men who should ask this would subject themselves to 
 the jeers of the world for its confession of inferiority and 
 timidity. If man can not stand the test when put by the 
 side of woman on his mental muscle, he must stick to those 
 vocations in which mental furniture is not required. As 
 the race-course brings to the highest test the fitness of the 
 blood-horse to propagate his kind, so the competitive exam- 
 inations will bring to the highest test the qualifications of 
 persons to be appointed to office. A high pedigree is a 
 great thing to the horse. Man is the only animal in whom 
 the science of elevation by selection is abandoned. But if 
 the horse of high pedigree fails in the competitive test, he 
 is cast off as a chance atavism of a vulgar strain in a remote 
 
 84
 
 A LIFT FOR THE DOAVN-TRODDEN SEX. 85 
 
 ancestor. So man may think it a superior thing to be born 
 a male; but wlien lie comes to the test of competitive exam- 
 ination with woman, his male quality will not save him, 
 and he must stand or fall on liis merits. 
 
 The strong-minded women have quickly caught on to 
 this principle, and have put into the platform of their 
 recent annual Convention a demand that these examina- 
 tions shall be what is professed, a test of merit, and tluit 
 there shall be no exclusion of sex from the trial. In this 
 is no plea for man's chivalrous protection of the weaker 
 sex; no asking for any consideration because they are 
 women; no plea that man should give up to woman the 
 light and indoor employments, and take to himself the 
 rougher; but a square demand that they shall be admitted 
 to an equal test of qualifications by competitive examina- 
 tions, in which no favor shall be shown to sex. 
 
 Man can not deny this. He may complacently enjoy 
 for ages the condition which has excluded women, upon 
 the ground of their inability; but when the affair comes in 
 such shape that he has to take offensive action to rule that 
 woman shall be excluded from a comparative test of her 
 abilities, he can not do a thing which would confess his 
 own inability. Women must be admitted to these exam- 
 inations, and must be treated by Government on their 
 merits, as provided by its own method. The world would 
 scoff at man's weakness which feared to meet woman on 
 equal terms. 
 
 Need it be said that woman has never before had such 
 a chance as this? Never before has she had a fair trial with 
 man on her abilities. The introduction of women to Gov- 
 ernment clerkships during the war, upon the ground that 
 men were wanted for the army, Avas not a compliment to 
 woman; rather it was a reflection on her inability. And 
 the seeming tender mercies of this admission of women tp
 
 86 A LIFT FOR THE DOWN-TRODDEN SEX. 
 
 the offices have been very cruel in many things. The mode 
 of appointment by favor, while in the main it has given 
 places to the deserving, is charged with finding places for 
 many because of their improper relations with men of influ- 
 ence; and this, magnified bv renort, has had a cruel effect 
 on the general repute. 
 
 The strait gate of admission by merit will reform all 
 that, and will give to the women in the public service their 
 just standing. They who reflect on the cruelty of giving 
 a bad reputation to thousands of worthy women, as a class, 
 because of the improper relations which influence the ap- 
 pointment of a few, can appreciate the magnitude of the 
 relief which can be given by this act of simple justice. 
 Instead of a doubtful repute, will be an elevation of stand- 
 ing, upon the firm foundation of superior qualifications, 
 officially established. Is there not great significance in the 
 fact that men dislike this test of ability, and women de- 
 mand it? Women call for a fair field and no favor, and 
 men shun it. 
 
 Tliis reform will make the public service honorable to 
 women; whereas, it is not now honorable. The elevation 
 of this will elevate woman's cause in general. It will have 
 a powerful infiuence in making education appreciated; 
 whereas, the very abundance of free schooling makes it 
 little valued. It will make better education necessary to 
 men; whereas, now the girls are better educated tlian the 
 boys of the same social level. The boys drop out of school 
 early to find some business which will furnish money for 
 indulgence of extravagant habits, and this, in the most, is 
 the end of their education; whereas, the girls continue 
 through the course, and then keep up the pursuit through 
 literary associations of various sorts. 
 
 Yet, when they come together in society, these girls of 
 superior education have to come down to the twaddle of
 
 A LIFT FOR THE DOWN-TliODDEN SEX. 87 
 
 young men who know notliingliiglicrtlian the toAvn gossip, 
 all of which is about persons. This is the reason for the 
 modern fashion of what are called dove parties — dinner 
 parties, lunch parties, coffee parties, and tea parties for 
 girls alone. Only by this sc})aration can their superior 
 culture be of any account. In mixed parties, they have 
 to come down to the mental level of youths whose culture 
 ceased in early years. For this situation dancing is the 
 great social solvent — an elegant j)leasure in itself, when not 
 too familiar with the person, and asocial necessity to bridge 
 the educational chasm between the sexes. 
 
 When Government shall appreciate education by making 
 it a qualification for office, it will be better ajipreciated by 
 the people. When a just system of admission to the public 
 service shall give to woman's superior education its due 
 rank in the public service, the uneducated men will per- 
 ceive that they have dropped down to an inferior political 
 and social rank, and that education is requisite to catch up. 
 Thus the civil service reform -will be a great power for 
 justice to women. Through the chance which this will 
 give them, it will be a powerful influence for the better 
 education of men. And thus is Mr. Pendleton the best 
 political benefactor of woman that has yet arisen.
 
 XVIII. 
 
 BLIGHTED MEK 
 
 WHAT more blighting calamity can come upon a 
 sensible man than to find that he has married a 
 fool? Who has not seen instances of this in the married 
 that have reached the age in which the girlish manners and 
 prettiness, which concealed to the englamoured man her 
 lack of common sense, have gone, but have left no mental 
 growth to supply their place? The instances, unhappily, 
 are. not infrequent in society in which it is plain that the 
 realization has slowly come over the man that he has yoked 
 himself to a person of this description. He is a blighted 
 being, plainly revealing by his manner that to him the 
 question whether life is worth living has been solved, yet 
 forced to live by the responsibilities he has assumed — forced 
 to live by the clog he has fastened ujaon himself, and by 
 the consequences he has entailed upon other beings; drag- 
 ging his weary way through life; ever forced to wear a mask 
 and play a part; following his profession or trade without 
 ambition; without energy; a sad faced man, as if all hope 
 in life had fled, and yet, perhaps, with a chirping wife; a 
 man without the consolation of hope in the future state, 
 because it must be clouded by the promise which preachers 
 make of the reunion of those who were one here below. 
 
 The blight is saddest in its aspect when the married 
 have reached middle age and beyond; by which time it has 
 dried uj) manhood's courage and energy, also his bodily 
 vigor, and his face and manner liave settled into that hope- 
 less expression which, alas! is too familiar in society. But 
 to have married a fool is not in our law a cause for divorce 
 
 88
 
 BLIGHTED MEN. 89 
 
 to the man. It maybe to the woman through his inability 
 to support her. But to the man there is no way save to 
 endure. The law assumes that he was a responsible being 
 when he took the marriage infection — a violent assumption 
 — and it holds him body and soul to the bond. There is 
 no honorable way of relief. To seek it in society away 
 from his own fireside, in clubs, politics, card parties, and 
 soon, is to carry with him everywhere the consciousness 
 that to this he is driven by a lack at home, and to bring 
 him home feeling more deeply that lack. 
 
 To seek consolation in the friendship of other women 
 is to enter the path of unsanctified love, which is the broad 
 way to destruction, and which makes his home only the 
 more unendurable, besides making the wife miserable for 
 that which is not her fault. That which is finely called 
 the flowing bowl is sometimes resorted to. No one can 
 have the heart to pronounce harsh judgment on the man 
 whose despair drives him to this, but it swiftly destroys 
 him, and it visits his despair for that which was his own 
 act upon his innocent wife and children by reducing them 
 to want. For the wife is not to blame because she has no 
 sense, and unhappily nature's law does not muke fools 
 impotent -to propagate their species. Therefore, there is 
 no way for the manly man but to bear the consequences of 
 his own undoing; to travel his weaiy journey of life i)luckily 
 to the end; to become saintly with his sadness, and to do 
 what he can to develop the minds of his children above the 
 dAvarfed heritage which he has helped to impose upon them. 
 Happily he can find encouraging examples for this effort. 
 
 Knowing the nature of man, and how imbecile he be- 
 comes in taking on love and marriage, we may see in these 
 sad examples remains which give an idea of the charms 
 which caught his fancy, and blinded him to her mental 
 vacuity. She was very young, and her silliness seemed
 
 90 BLIGHTED MEN". 
 
 sprightly girlislmess. The talk of the young men of 
 society is so largely silly that he may not have sounded her 
 in anything beyond. Perhaps her pudgy figure and flabby 
 face show that in girlhood she had a plumpness and fair- 
 ness which to many ardent young men seem to contain all 
 that is desirable in woman. Perhaps she had a develop- 
 ment such as is called voluptuous, whatever that may be. 
 The Satan of sexual passion helped to blind him. She 
 giggled, and was chirrupy with small talk and vivacioua 
 exclamations; she danced and rode; and perhaps he talked 
 as silly as she, and never gave her a chance to show 
 whether she had any sense. Her nonsense then pleased 
 him. He was very green and not overstocked with brains, 
 and what he had were not called for, and so the silly he 
 took for life this lump of she silliness. 
 
 But his time for mental growth had just begun. Ap- 
 plication to a profession, to trade, contact with men in 
 affairs, politics, and all would force his mind to expand in 
 spite of himself: but there was no growth in her. He 
 began,to eat of the tree of knowledge and to find what he 
 had done. He became a grave man, a desponding, gloomy 
 man, a man whose dejected aspect advertised that he had 
 found life a failure. No mind can stand up against this 
 incessant domestic drain, and so his was dwarfed. In it 
 all he had the objurgating consciousness that it was tlie 
 consequence of his own folly. We see these blighted men 
 going about; we all have them among our acquaintances; 
 Ijut their fate gives no wisdom to the noble army of youth 
 who are rushing to stick their heads into the noose, and so 
 there will be a per|)etual succession of these blighted 
 men.
 
 XIX. 
 
 DEGENERACY OF KNIGHT TEMPLAR 
 HOOD 
 
 THE Knight Templars of the land are making much 
 ado with complaints of poor entertainment and ex- 
 tortionate charges by the Chicago inns, restaurants, bars, 
 beer halls, and so on, down even to the blacking shiners, 
 all of which branches of subsistence, they say, raised their 
 prices on the recent assembling of the Knights Templar 
 at that city of the lake and the sea serpent. By way of 
 aggravation they specify that many of the Knights Tem- 
 plar took wives with them, and had bespoke rooms; but 
 that when they came they found many beds in a room, 
 and Knight and Lady Templar had to be separated in order 
 that many individuals might be tumbled into a room; for 
 it appears that a promiscuous tumbling is forbidden by the 
 rules of the Knight Templar order. 
 
 The degeneracy of modern Knight Templarhood could 
 hardly be set forth more luridly than by this complaint of 
 innkeepers' charges. Was the real Knight Templar ever 
 known to pay a tavern reckoning? The inn keeper who 
 stuck a bill at him would stand a good chance to have the 
 score crossed out by the Knight Templar's mark across liis 
 pate. To pay was left to the common and popular. Don 
 Quixote was not exactly a Kniglit Templar, but a Knight 
 Errant, a still higher order; for, whereas the Knight Tem- 
 plar was under a vow to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from 
 the followers of Mahomet, when convenient, tlie Kniglit 
 Errant was devoted to the righting of all wrongs whatso- 
 ever, but especially to the succoring of distressed damsels. 
 
 91
 
 92 DEGENERACY OF KNIGHT TEMPLARHOOD. 
 
 It is true, the Knight Templar also did odd jobs of 
 rescuing distressed damsels, when not on the way to Jeru- 
 salem to oust the Paynims; and in this last, like the great- 
 est General of our civil war, he was always getting ready 
 to move but never moving. There was always a lot of 
 succorable damsels for the adventurous Knights, and if 
 business was slack they now and then carried off damsels 
 themselves, riding a pillion, for other succorers, to keep 
 trade going. But the Knights Templar and Knights Er- 
 rant had no Ladies Templar and Ladies Errant. Had they 
 these behind, they could not follow the trade of rescuing 
 distressed damsels, without liability to domestic infelicity, 
 and to what General Scott called a fire in the rear. For 
 there is an infirmity in a wife's nature — her heritage prob- 
 ably from Adam's fall — that will not stand her Knight's 
 going about rescuing distressed damsels, and coming nightly 
 home with a night key. 
 
 This leads to a further digression on the beautiful term 
 "damsel" for young maidens, used in the Scriptures and 
 in all books of the age of chivalry, but now gone out of 
 use by the evil association of ideas. If the rescuing Knight 
 were marriageable, the rescued damsel naturally gave her- 
 self to him as the highest reward for saving her honor. 
 This beautiful custom has come down to modern times, 
 and modest marriageable men have hesitated on the bank 
 where a damsel had fallen in, because diffidence led them 
 to think such a generous reward too great for so trifling a 
 service. Thus the term damsel became associated with all 
 its consequences, so that by a mental process it came to ex- 
 press the 'totality. This will be seen further along by 
 those who can follow an intricate mental process. 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer has said, in amplification of the 
 principle that " correlatives imply one another,'* such as 
 that '' a father can not be thought of without thinking of
 
 DEGEKERACY OF KISTIGHT TEMPLARHOOD. 03 
 
 a child," nor the child be thought of without thinking of 
 a father: "If the part is conceived without any reference 
 to tlie whole, it becomes itself a whole — an indejiendent 
 entity — and its relations to existence in general are misap- 
 prehended. Further, the size of the part, as compared 
 with the size of the whole, must be misapprehended unless 
 the whole is not only recognized as including it, but is 
 figured in its total extent. And again, the position which 
 ihe part occupies in relation to other jjarts, can not be 
 rightly conceived unless there is some conception of the 
 Avhole in its distribution as well as in its amount." 
 
 Applying this metaphysical process, and bearing in 
 mind the reward which the Knight could not honorably 
 refuse for rescuing the damsel, we perceive how the Avord 
 damsel, by the necessary correlation of parts to the whole, 
 came to be associated with the Avhole transaction, and 
 thus brought about an emphasis on each syllable of the 
 word, to express the Knight's appreciation of the reward 
 that had crowned his chivalrous adventure. And so, by 
 the force of correlation of ideas, this beautiful word, 
 which used to describe the sweetest thing in creation, 
 came to have an evil sound, and went out of use. 
 
 The necessary totality of correlative parts brings this 
 paper round to Don Quixote, the model of knightly 
 breeding, and to the incident when an inn keeper — a Pot- 
 ter Palmer of the locality — called upon him to discharge 
 the reckoning, as he had mounted Rozinante to depart. 
 Don Quixote had a high standard of chivalry, but withal 
 he was an exceedingly rational Knight Errant, and instead 
 of whacking the innkeeper over the head, he condescended 
 to reason with him, and to lay down the rights of Knights 
 Errant. He pronounced himself excused from jiayment 
 for these conclusive reasons: 
 
 *'For I can not act contrary to the law of Knights
 
 94 DEGENERACY OF KNIGHT TEXIPLARHOOD. 
 
 Errant, of whom I certainly know, liaving hitherto read 
 nothing to the contrary, that they never paid for lodging, 
 or anything else, in an inn where they have lain; and 
 that, because of right and good reason, all possible accom- 
 dation is due to them, in recompense for the insufferable 
 hardships they endure in quest of adventures, by night 
 and by day, in winter and in summer, on foot and on horse- 
 back, with thirst and with hunger, with heat and with 
 cold, subject to all the inclemencies of heaven, and to all 
 the inconveniences of earth." 
 
 If the true Knight Templar ever condescended to pay 
 an inn-keeper, he stopped not for reckoning, nor did the 
 keeper dare to face him with a score. True Knights con- 
 temned figures and reading and writing. Every thing in 
 the inn was at his call, and when he mounted his horse to 
 sally forth, and the obsequious inn-keeper stood uncovered, 
 thankful for his deliverance, the Knight Templar, per- 
 haps, tossed him a purse, a part of the spoil of a Saracen 
 town, or of a loan from a Jew, ingratitude for leaving him 
 with part of his teeth or with one of his eyes or ears, or 
 for delivering him from hot pincers, or some of those com- 
 plaints which were aj)t to break out in a rich Jew when 
 Knights Templar were short of ready money. 
 
 The true Knight Templar never stooped to any closer 
 money transaction than to toss a purse. But the modern 
 degenerate Knight Templar complains of imposition from 
 Chicago innkeepers — of poor entertainment, many in a 
 bed or room, poor victuals, and extortionate charges. 
 Where was the chivalry which belongs to their name? Gone 
 where twineth the woodbine. Report gives 20,000 of them 
 at Chicago; but as the most potent weapon of the Knights 
 Templar, as of some most promoted generals, was the 
 long bow, an JiUowance of one-half can be made, and still 
 leave enough to have cleaned out Chicago, brought every
 
 LEGENEEACY OF KNIGnT TEMPLAEHOOD. 95 
 
 innkeeper to his knees, and made every beer jcrker and 
 bartender glad to serve them free as the ransom of their 
 lives. 
 
 But the Knight Templar is not what he was. He has 
 a Avife, than which nothing is more debilitatijig to the 
 knightly spirit. A nfotto of the time of knighthood was, 
 " Base is the slave who pays.'^ The modern Knight Tem- 
 plar pays ; worse, he pays extortionate prices for things he 
 don't get. He lets innkeepers, bartenders, beer jerkers, 
 " Wienerwurst " boys, and even shiners, impose upon him. 
 He is packed by the dozen in a sleeping apartment like 
 prisoners in a barracks. No knightly dignity can survive 
 a dozen in a bedroom or three in a bed. The real Knight 
 Templar would not dishonor his sword by using it on the 
 ignobly born, but he would have called on his 'Squire to 
 take a staff and beat these hinds. Not so the Knight 
 Templar of our time; he submits to the imjDosition, and 
 then takes redress by comjDlaining to the newspapers. 
 
 The Knight Templar of these piping times wears a 
 sword, but it was never meant to be used. A true Kniglit' 
 Templar would call it a toad-sticker. Instead of being 
 incased in armor, as the Knight Templar was for an expe- 
 dition or a tournament, or in a long white mantle for the 
 festive occasions, they are tricked out in stripes and bands 
 and finery. Instead of a helmet before whose visage even 
 the crows of a cornfield would fly in terror, he has a cocked 
 hat and a cocked plume. He wears cavalry boots and 
 gauntlets, who is never to mount a horse. His boots arc a 
 sham of seeming bootlegs of glazed cloth, strapped down 
 over shoes. Instead of a tournament, where the horse and 
 armor of the beaten is the spoil of the victor, who then is 
 crowned by whatever damsel he shall select as Queen of 
 Beauty and Love, he now marches through the streets and 
 goes through evolutions, to the admiration of small boys.
 
 96 DEGENERACY OF KKIGHT TEMPLARHOOD. 
 
 And their evolutions are not martial, but emblemati- 
 cal — and of what? Of base mechanical tools and figures. 
 They meet upon the level, and part upon the sqiiare, and 
 wheel upon the compass. Their minstrelsy and speech rae 
 of mechanical implements, and they make the workman's 
 apron their highest symbol, instead Of the lance. But the 
 real Knight Templar desjused workmen, and most of all 
 mechanics. Here we come to the root of the matter. 
 The foi'ming of an Order of Knights Templar upon 
 symbols, and emblems, and types, and shadows of 
 mechanical work which the real Knight Templar despised 
 as belonging to the base born, has come out at this humility 
 of spirit which submits meekly to the impositions and ex- 
 tortions of the sutlers of a city which lives by sutlerage, 
 and instead of righting themselves with good swords, goes 
 complaining to the newspapers, which the real Knight 
 Templar could not read.
 
 XX. 
 
 IS WOMAN SUPERFICIAL. 
 
 MAN'S tender mercies to woman are instruments of 
 cruelty. What he calls chivalrous protection tends 
 to environ her with sexual disabilities. His flatteries are 
 all addressed to her inferiority. One of the most effective 
 of these strategems is the common ascription to woman of 
 quicker intuitions or instincts than man, and likewise of 
 more susceptible emotions; for to this has been added, as if it 
 were a rational sequence, that she is deficient in reasoning 
 power, and that her feelings have no perseverance. Indeed, 
 the mannish concession of quicker intuitions has classed 
 her with the lower animals, who are allowed instinct with- 
 out reason. This is what comes from the practice which 
 has lasted till a recent time, of allowing man to define 
 woman, and to fix her place in the scale of being. Thus 
 do all things prove that woman's first step toward her 
 emancipation is to recognize that man is her natural 
 enemy, and that, in the words of Jefferson, she must 
 henceforth hold him as an enemy in war and in peace a 
 suspected friend. 
 
 The mannish habit is to say that woman is superficial; 
 that she only scratches the surface of subjects; that she lias 
 some quick intuitions, but no mind for deep problems, and 
 no reasoning powers. The saying is only an example of 
 the wrong which man has piled on woman ever since she 
 was invented. Are quick surface indications a sign of lack 
 of depth? Is not the deep ocean superficially agitated by 
 a squall? And we have to ask who can draw the line 
 between instinct and reason? Would not the procreation 
 7 97
 
 98 IS WOMAN SUPEKFICIAL? 
 
 of mankind be a still greater miracle, if reason were male, 
 and instinct female, and yet she the breeder of the reason- 
 ing sex? 
 
 Whatever may have been the limitation of woman's 
 reasoning faculties while ground down by superstition in 
 the dark ages, when her mind is liberated by taking up the 
 cause of her own political enfranchisement, it takes hold 
 on the bottom principles which underlie the springs of the 
 undercurrents of things. 
 
 Venerable saws are in general venerable lies. How 
 often do we see these cited as maxims in the face of uni- 
 versal experience ! So, in the face of woman's perform- 
 ance, showing a special propensity to go to the bottom of 
 things, and a special lack of that reverence for accepted 
 principles which keeps man from rushing in to explore for 
 himself, the saying is kept up, that woman is incapable of 
 deep investigation. In the very beginning she cast off con- 
 sequences to acquire knowledge of good and evil, while 
 man seems to have been content with simple existence. 
 In the cause of her own enfranchisement she sounds the 
 very keynote of human nature and the deep processes of 
 inflexible logic. The declaration that all men are created 
 equal, she has found to embrace woman, with the improve- 
 ment that she is created morally superior. She has shown 
 that there is no rightful authority to govern any man, 
 woman, or child without his or her consent. 
 
 Putting together the Dred Scott decision, which de- 
 clared that citizenship means the possession of the elective 
 franchise, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares 
 that all persons born on the soil or naturalized are citizens, 
 she proves that women are now electors under the Constitu- 
 tion. Suppose that this does make infants voters also; 
 logic is inexorable, it does not stop for consequences. On 
 the question of reconstruction of the Confederate States
 
 IS WOMAN SUPERFICIAL? 99 
 
 by enfranchising the freedmen, did not our great states- 
 man say the bhicks woukl know enough to vote for their 
 friends. 
 
 If this was intelligence enough for them, does not the 
 infant know enough lo vote as its mother shall direct? 
 Is not the nursing mother of a future statesman the safest 
 guide to its little hand in depositing its infantile ballot? 
 In the working of the best government the sun shines on, 
 are not multitudes of the electors directed as helplessly as 
 this in casting their ballots, and much less wisely? Thus 
 there is really nothing in the consequence of infant elec- 
 tors to overthrow the logic which in enfranchising woman 
 enfranchises her babe. She grapples the foundation prin- 
 ciples of our national independence — namely, first, that 
 no one can be subject to government without his consent, 
 and second, that representation and taxation are insepara- 
 ble, or in other words, that the right to vote rests on the 
 payment of taxes. • 
 
 She applies these to her own rights. How can we dis- 
 pute them — we whose fathers made the British lion drop 
 his tail and howl with anguish by vehement utterance of 
 these self-evident truths? Thus does woman, at the first 
 dive into political affairs, sound the hardpan under the 
 mud of the bottom. In this she only applies to her 
 rights the foundation political principles which we have 
 built a nation upon. But she has gone beyond this to up- 
 root the foundation of religion, to show that this has been 
 perverted into a power for her enslavement. 
 
 A series of resolutions adopted by a female suffrage 
 convention at Rochester, N. Y., declared that man had 
 from the beginning usurped the function of receiving, 
 transmitting, translating, and expounding the Scriptures, 
 and had used this office to make the Bible an instrument 
 to subject woman to him by a fabulous narrative of her
 
 100 IS WOMAN SUPERFICIAL? 
 
 origin and fall, and by foisting upon it injunctions of 
 submissive servitude. In this the acute female mind can 
 see the design of the common manly saying that religion 
 is a necessity to woman, although man can get along with- 
 out it till the time comes to pack his carpet bag for 
 the judgment seat. 
 
 By this usurped priesthood did man make woman's cre- 
 ation out of a fragment of himself, thereby divesting her 
 of personal identity. By this did he make both one, and 
 that one the male. By this did he put in all those decla- 
 rations that woman shall cleave unto man, and those injunc- 
 tions upon her to obey him. For so many thousand years 
 has man played this fraud uj)on woman; but now she has 
 discovered it. She has found that the very beginning of 
 her suffrage cause demands a female Bible, or at least an 
 unsexed Bible. As she has demanded the abolition of sex 
 in politics, so she must demand its abolition in the Scrip- 
 tures. • 
 
 Likewise did woman strike to the bottom principle of 
 the genesis, development, and perpetuity of the human 
 race, when the suffragists in their last national convention 
 resolved that whereas the mental state of the moth* has a 
 governing influence on the mind of her child, therefore the 
 practice of politics by the mother is essential to the polit- 
 ical capacity of the child. 
 
 Likewise one of the resolutions of the recent National 
 Woman Suffrage Convention at Indianapolis has a decla- 
 ration which plants the principle of woman suffrage in the 
 very process of human generation, and proves it indispen- 
 sable to man's elevation, as well as to woman. It declares: 
 
 " That since the child is influenced by the condition of 
 the mother and its first training comes from her, therefore 
 woman's absolute freedom from all restraint upon her pow- 
 ers, as well as her endowment with all the rights of citizen-
 
 IS WOMAN SUPERFICIAL? 101 
 
 ship, is not only imperatively necessary for the perpetua- 
 tion of onr free institutions, but for the securing of a 
 higher type of humanity." 
 
 In this, as in all her suffrage reasoning, she plants her 
 claim upon principles and facts which no man can deny. 
 The influence of the mind of the mother upon her olT- 
 spring during the period of gestation is a fact recognized 
 • in all ages. A common maxim recognizes that if the son 
 ;,-has genius or strong character, he gets it from the mother. 
 I Also the common belief is that any mental disturbance of 
 the mother, any special affliction or apprehension, any 
 unsatisfied desires, are apt to give an idiosyncrasy or a spe- 
 cial mark to the offspring. 
 
 The Spartan mothers [this is new] while in this iutor- 
 esting condition were plied with poetical narrations of 
 heroic deeds, chanted in the manner of the time, in order 
 that they might bring forth heroes. It is related that this 
 treatment bred such a heroic strain of men that a Spartan 
 youth, who had hidden within his toga a fox, Avhich in 
 point of fact he had come by surrejDtitiously, let it tear his 
 bowels open, while his teacher confronted him, rather than 
 confess the theft. To such a pitch of heroism can sons bo 
 bred by operating on the fancies of the mothers. On tlic 
 other hand, must not the sons degenerate if the motlicis 
 are politically enslaved? Can slave mothers bring forlli 
 sons that can perpetuate their freedom? Not if all these 
 universal maxims and beliefs are true. 
 
 Who can doubt that political activity in the mother in 
 these interesting seasons will bring forth statesmen? Tail- 
 less all these maxims are false, it must be true that if thi; 
 mother is a politician, and is active at the primaries, the 
 city, county, district, and State conventions, and in the 
 election canvass, and if she votes early and often, this 
 political agitation will give a political bent to her offs2)ring
 
 102 IS WOMAN SUPEKFICIAL? 
 
 in the twig, which will be a governing inclination in the 
 tree? Does not this point the way to make all our women 
 breeders of statesmen, all our citizens Governors, Senators, 
 and Presidents? And is not this way i^lainly through 
 woman suffrage? Could man go deeper into the things of 
 reason than is here done by woman, who in the cause of 
 political equality attacks the corner-stone of religious faith? 
 
 These are some of the profound intellectual achieve- 
 ments of woman in her own cause. Is it not time to ex- 
 tinguish the old saying that woman is superficial? The 
 same admirable woman-suffrage journal, the National Cit- 
 izen, that brings us this highest attainment yet made by 
 woman in fundamental principles, contains also remarkable 
 testimony by a man to woman's unknowable depth. It is 
 contained in a letter by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton to 
 the convention, containing the following : 
 
 "Wise men assure us that woman is and must ever be an 
 enigma to man, and therein lies her chief attraction ! 
 How then can they legislate for a being the law of 
 whose existence they can not understand ? A distinguished 
 General said to me a few months since, in speaking of his 
 wife : ' The most complex problem I ever tried to solve 
 is a woman. I have lived with my wife thirty years, and 
 yet every day she startles me with some new declaration 
 or proposed line of conduct. I supposed in starting life 
 that if I studied the character of one woman I should un- 
 derstand the whole sex ; but in my old age I frankly con- 
 fess that what I have learned of one makes that one more 
 incomprehensible, and throws no light on the rest. Every 
 woman I meet is like a new volume of some abstruse science 
 I have never studied before. Hence I am in favor of 
 woman-suffrage, as I do not want the responsibility of gov- 
 erning beings always outside the line within which a man 
 expects to find them, using tactics not laid down in books, 
 but which outgeneral us every time."'
 
 IS W0MA5r SUPERFICIAL? 103 
 
 The argument is uiiiinswenible. IIow can man '' repre- 
 sent" in State aflairs a being he can not comprehend ? 
 How govern intelligently a being who is ever a mystery to 
 him? Who can govern or represent an enigma? If the 
 wisest men find woman unknowable, shall tlie average 
 voting class dare to represent her? Even if man by search- 
 ing and long experience could find out .the mystery of one 
 woman, still she is no criterion for any other woman. Here 
 is a General, a man appointed to command men, and who 
 has probably earned his rank by the most lavish and blun- 
 dering consumption of common soldiers, but who confesses 
 that although he has lived with his wife thirty years, he 
 has not yet begun to find her out; that every day she sur- 
 prises him with some new phase. Therefore this General, 
 like a wise man, does not want the responsibility of the 
 political government of women. 
 
 Yet this will make it necessary to set off women as a sep- 
 arate state; for, to be governed by an enigma, a " most 
 complex problem/' a being who startles every day with a 
 new phase of character, or line of conduct, may be to man 
 as bad as to govern an enigma. But what a testimony is this 
 to woman's inscrutable depth! What woman ever said the 
 like of any man? Did any woman ever say of any man, 
 as was said of a woman: 
 
 " Age can not wither nor custom stale 
 Her infinite variety? " 
 
 Did woman ever find man a complex problem, an enig- 
 ma, an incomprehensible mystery? No woman has lived 
 with a man a month without taking his full measure, intel- 
 lectual and moral — without finding out all his weak spots, 
 and sounding the shallowness of his deep ones; without 
 finding how easily he is lead by the nose through his mere 
 animal appetites, and that his pretenses of learning were 
 all set up on a few stock pieces, and his v.dt as old and fin- 
 ished as the jest book?
 
 104 IS WOMAN St;Pi:RFICIAL? 
 
 In view of such a tremendous difference, what assur- 
 ance is it in man to pretend that he is woman's political 
 representative? How unnatural that woman should sub- 
 mit to it! How impracticable that the same govermnent 
 can be truly representative to beings so diverse by nature! 
 These intellectual achievements in the profoundest prob- 
 lems and reaches . of creation, theology, physiology and 
 political sociology, should forever set at rest the talk that 
 woman is superficial.
 
 XXI. 
 
 THE SCANDAL MONGERS. 
 
 A TERRIBLE calamity falls upon a family, — the ruin 
 of a daughter; the crushing of a girl's whole life; the 
 bringing of another being into the world to carry through 
 life a stigma upon its birth; the affliction and mortification 
 of the whole family — a calamity which might soften the 
 most cruel hearts to pity, and might be expected to touch 
 the sympathies of all the good neighbors. All possible 
 means are taken to hide the disgrace from the world. 
 What could be gained by spreading the shame? Months 
 pass by; the unobserved removal of the ruined girl to a 
 distant home, and the merciful disposal of the child, seem 
 to have taken away the danger of exposure; the lapse of 
 time without this exposure has in some degree mitigated 
 the mortification. 
 
 A discharged servant-girl takes revenge by telling the 
 tale. Months after the event a newspaper gets a vague 
 hold of it, serves it up as fresh, and spreads it before the 
 public with fanciful embellishments calculated to feed pru- 
 riency, and making a pitiful affectation of decency by 
 withholding names, while designating the neighborhood 
 and otherwise pointing curiosity. A rival newspaper, to 
 make up for being a day behind, gives initials of the 
 names, and adds other fanciful em'bellishments. The 
 shame of a ruined young girl, and the distress of her fam 
 ily, are made a prurient sensation to sell a newspaper. 
 What a trade for able-bodied men to follow for a living 
 And this in a country where so much land lies untilled, 
 and where common labor fetches $1.50 a day! 
 
 105
 
 106 THE SCANDAL MONGERS. 
 
 Women, mothers, pious women, women that call them- 
 selves society, women that are busy-bodies in the church; 
 that think themselves pious; that would be insulted at an 
 intimation that they are not pure-minded, or that they are 
 lacking in sympathy for their kind, read the papers that 
 make merchandise of the terrible afflictions of their neigh- 
 bors; gloat over these gloating narrations; have a sensation 
 of exhilaration at this crushing calamity to their own kind; 
 patronize these panders to their own cruel and corrupt 
 natures; make themselves accessory to this invasion of the 
 sacred privacy of the family to make its calamity a profit 
 of the trade of scandal-mongering, and are not a whit bet- 
 ter than the pandering trader who supplies the wares which 
 their natures demand,
 
 XXII. 
 THE FINAL CHILL, 
 
 AT length the final chill sets in. There had been 
 premonitions years before in dark spots on the sun> 
 showing that it was burning out; but its revolution 
 turned these away, and fitfully it seemed to burn with its 
 old energy, and the scientific persons prognosticated noth- 
 ing from these most significant signs. But at length the 
 appearance of several groups of spots, which astronomers 
 said were from 80,000 to 100,000 miles across, and a 
 rapid succession of storms on the ocean, and of earth- 
 quakes, whirlwinds, cyclones, and floods on land, together 
 with comets with very long tails, the aurora borealis 
 spreading over the whole firmament. Mother Shipton, 
 Prof. Wiggins and many other things, told of a mighty 
 disturbance in nature's order. 
 
 The sun had always given evidence that its heat and 
 light-giving power, was made by combustion, and that, 
 too, the combustion, of its own matter. Science could 
 have foretold that it would burn out in time. But science 
 seems to tell only of the past. The face and bowels of 
 the earth, from the equator to the poles, proved that ex- 
 treme changes of climate had taken place in past ages, 
 but science prognosticated from these nothing as to the 
 future. And if it had, no good would have come of it. 
 Although we may have gone through life without seeing 
 any purpose in our creation, yet it is not pleasant to con- 
 template the final freezing or burning of posterity. 
 
 To human experience the processes of nature were so 
 slow that the present order appeared to be fixed everlast- 
 
 107
 
 lOS THE FINAL CHILL. 
 
 ingly. Even when great gaps opened in the face of the 
 sun, showing that it was consuming its substance, we as- 
 sumed that it must be a process of millions of years, and, 
 therefore, of no concern to us; whereas reason should 
 have told that when combustion had gone so far as to ex- 
 haust the fuel in part, the end of all the fuel was near. 
 All do know how quickly the remnant of coal in the bin 
 disappears when the floor shows in spots. It is well that 
 inevitable calamities are not revealed to us until they 
 come, for if they were the expectation would be a con- 
 stant concern. 
 
 A popular belief that the end of our earth would come 
 by fire helped to make mankind careless of the sun's con- 
 sumption of fuel and unmindful of the obvious fact that 
 all the heat which it gave to earth was at the cost of its 
 own body. The spring at last failed to bring the usual 
 awakening of nature from the sleep of winter. It was a 
 season of storms, floods, tornadoes, and of cold, with but 
 fitful gleams of the sun, and these revealing an alarming 
 increase of the darkened spots. 
 
 The season of planting passed by, and such planting as 
 was forced in spite of the cold came to naught. The fruit 
 blossoms, which had been seduced out by a fitful week of 
 heat, were cut off, and winter seemed to have set in again. 
 Clothing men found their great stocks for summer wear as 
 dead as nature. The cereals and fruits of the temperate zone 
 disappeared and only the grasses and vegetables of the Arc- 
 tic circle remained for a time. Gradually the animals of the 
 temperate zone ceased to exist. Indeed, there was neither 
 food nor use for the beasts of burden, and the former 
 food animals could no longer find sustenance. 
 
 The sun appeared still to rise and set as before; but it 
 had lost the power to dispel the clouds, and when its mottled 
 face did appear, it gave only a pale twilight. At the first
 
 THE FINAL CHILL. 109 
 
 period there was a greatly increased consumption of fuel, 
 and the cost of this rose enormously so that only the rich 
 could afford it; but this could not last. The earth's store 
 of coal could not stand the demands of a universal polar 
 climate, and with the coming of the polar cold the industries 
 of the temperate climate died out, and the poverty and 
 primitive condition of the inhabitants of the frozen zone 
 supervened. 
 
 The inhabitants sought in underground habitations and 
 in ice caverns shelter from the chill which they had not 
 fuel to combat. The whole of life became a struggle for 
 life against the cold. In the twilight days, they hunted 
 for the animal food which had become their sole suste- 
 nance, and escaped as quickly as they could to their huts, 
 where their condition was scarcely more social and intel- 
 lectual than the hybernating animals. The elegances and 
 sociabilities of life disappeared. Literature, and even the 
 written language, were lost. Love, marriage, and parental 
 feeling, became as low as among the beasts. In the dull 
 struggle of existence, gross, beastly selfishness became su- 
 preme. 
 
 With the cessation of general intercourse nationality 
 ceased, and political relations expired, and each little com- 
 munity was isolated in its own village of huts, and had no 
 law. The practice of self-government was carried to the 
 perfection of the democratic ideal. 
 
 The coming dissolution of nature had extinguished the 
 food products. While this was uncertain, there was much 
 speculation in the cereals and in other food articles in the 
 great marts of produce, and the nominal sales footed up 
 enough to carry the world tlirough Joseph's Egyptian 
 famine. Great fortunes seemed to be made by the 
 *'longs"; but nothing can be got from a dead cat but her 
 skin, and not even this could be realized from the " shorts.'*
 
 110 THE FIKAL CHILL. 
 
 They were ruined, but the longs were not made rich, and 
 soon there was no pretext of a base for these phantom op- 
 erations. Money ceased to have any purchasing power, 
 and all were sunk into the general struggle for food enough 
 to hold life together against the rigors of the Arctic cold. 
 
 Yet the likening of this to the Arctic clime is not ac- 
 curate, for in that clime the sun shines with great power 
 during a brief summer, and then disappears for a long 
 winter. The sun was dying to all climes, alike at the 
 equator and the poles. The summer day was only a 
 ghostly twilight, with but little warmth; the winter a 
 deeper twilight and an unmitigated cold. As that which 
 had been the temperate and torrid zones became a region 
 of perpetual ice, and its mountain gaps filled up with 
 glaciers, the animal life of the Arctics migrated south- 
 ward, and polar bears, seals, walruses, sea lions, reindeer, 
 whales, feathered fowl, and all the abounding animal king- 
 dom of the Arctics spread over land and sea, and furnished 
 food to the diminished inhabitants. The ice-bound sea 
 reclaimed much of the land. 
 
 A change took place in the physical parts of the inhab- 
 itants. They dwindled in size ; their skins grew dark, their 
 hair black and lank ; they became stupid in mind and in- 
 dolent in habit, having no aptitude save in catching the 
 animals which supplied their greasy food. They lived on 
 animal fat, and this furnished the little light and heat in 
 their huts. But their eyes adapted themselves to the twi- 
 light, so that their vision remained ; otherwise they could 
 hardly have caught their food animals. The women — 
 clothed in a sort of liosenhemd of sealskin trousers, boots 
 and jacket in one, flat- faced, greasy, mere drudges, having 
 nothing to gossip about, consequently their minds dead — 
 were so ugly that even a group of street-corner loafers 
 would not be tempted to look at them.
 
 THE FINAL CHILL. Ill 
 
 But all these effects of the final chill did not come 
 smoothly. All nature seemed in the agony of dissolution. 
 The earth behaved in a most eccentric manner, as if wab- 
 bling on its axis, like a spent top. Dreadful storms swept 
 over it, making life impossible except under ground, and 
 in caverns digged in the masses of ice. Comets darted 
 into the sun, spreading a momentary flash over its dark- 
 ened face, the wind of their tails making terrible cyclones. 
 The planets of the solar system were straying from their 
 orbits as the sun's power dwindled. The throes of expir- 
 ing nature made existence a horror to the inhabitants. 
 The sun's center had all turned dark, and only a Jagged 
 border of flickering fire recorded its rapid extinction. 
 
 The final dissolution could not be far off, and could not 
 be checked when the sun, the source of all power and the 
 regulator of the universe, was expiring. At last it went 
 out, like a flickering tallow candle ; the planets fell into 
 each other and exploded into chaos. All was darkness, 
 and again the earth was without form and void. Nothing 
 was left of the globe which only a little while ago was the 
 seat of so much human power ; of mechanical appliances 
 which seemed to defy nature ; of so much wealth, learning, 
 and art ; of so grand and so small passions ; of human 
 pride which towered far above the Tower of Babel ; of 
 music festivals, opera festivals, and dramatic festivals ; of 
 beer and daily newspapers ; of the American spread eagle, 
 the privilege of voting early and often, and the best gov- 
 ernment the sun ever shone on. 
 
 Of all this no trace was left, and now chaotic matter 
 awaited the time when some accident, perhaps of that uni- 
 versal scientific solvent, electricity, should again tumble 
 it together ; when the atomic friction of its embrace should 
 fill all space with gaseous matter at white heat ; when its 
 rushing together should set all to wMrling, and to reeling
 
 112 THE FINAL CHILL. 
 
 off fiery worlds to take np their orbits around the central 
 fire, to repeat the same cycles, and to cool down to the 
 final chill, and expire as before. But all this subsequent 
 proceeding had ceased to interest the inhabitants of the 
 world of the nineteenth century.
 
 XXIII. 
 
 EARLY HISTORY OF THE WOMEN MOVE- 
 MENT. 
 
 TO those who behold the woman's rights movement in 
 its present majesty and power, the story of its small 
 beginning seems a fairy tale. For this squally sea was 
 once a little babbling brooklet. This great tree, in whose 
 branches now roost cackling fowls, was once a mustard 
 seed. Yet in so short a period has it risen to this might 
 that women who had reached the age of female maturity 
 at its birth still possess personal charms, such as Susan B. 
 Anthony and Mrs, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Pleasing 
 reminiscences of its beginning, which was at Seneca Falls, 
 N. Y., are narrated in the Woman's Journal, of August 
 14, by Mary S. Bull, who describes herself as then a young 
 heifer, but with that acute observation of childhood which 
 the grown-up always ignore, and which each one thinks 
 Avas in her own case an abnormal brightness. 
 
 Sages have written that the development of culture in 
 human society can not begin until individuals or classes 
 have got beyond the necessity of incessant labor for mere 
 subsistence. In this is the paradox that although all agree 
 that labor is noble, yet labor is not ennobling. A class 
 with means to allow leisure is pre-requisite to culture, and 
 so it comes that the natural order is that they who live by 
 the labor of the mass shall think for them. Also a pious 
 hymnist told in flowing rhymes the facility for new under- 
 takings which is providentially given to idle hands. This 
 natural element of progress was the means of inventing the 
 8 113
 
 114 EAELY HISTORY OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT. 
 
 movement of woman's rights. It was done at a tea-drink- 
 ing. Mary S. Bull thus tells: 
 
 "Four ladies, Lucretia Mott, Martha "Wright, Mary- 
 Anne McOlintoc and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, sitting 
 around the tea-table of Kichard Hunt, a prominent Quaker 
 living near Waterloo, on Saturday evening, July 15, 1848, 
 resolved to call a convention to consider the 'Rights of 
 Woman,* and before twilight had deepened into night the 
 call was written and sent to the Seneca County Courier.''' 
 
 A fateful tea party! In that idle hour was set on foot a 
 movement which is turning up the bottom of society. But 
 it came near being strangled at birth. The convention 
 had been called, and next day the callers met to find out 
 what it was about. Having called a meeting to declare 
 woman's rights, it was necessary to state what were her 
 wrongs, so as to prepare resolutions and speeches. No one 
 could think of any. They consulted the reports of peace 
 and anti-slavery societies and other radical literature, but 
 found no relief. There was danger that the woman's 
 rights meeting would fall Ihrough for want of a wrong. 
 At length, by a lucky thought, they struck upon that 
 great reservoir of American rhetoric, the Declaration of 
 Independence. They resolved to parody this by substitut- 
 ing "all men" for King George. Thus did they have to 
 fall back upon a man's production to get a start. In this 
 part of the history Mary S. Bull cites from Mrs. Stanton's 
 recent narrative. They counted up, and found that the 
 fathers declared eighteen wrongs; they resolved to find the 
 same number, and no more. 
 
 They looked into statute books, but these were sealed 
 books to them. They looked into church usages, customs 
 of society, and so on. The want of a wrong became a dis- 
 tress. And then came another humiliation: they had to 
 ask men to assist them to make up a list of wrongs of
 
 EARLY HISTORY OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT 115 
 
 women. One of tliese remarked: ''Your grievanees 
 must be grievons indeed when you luive to go to books 
 to find them out." 
 
 The day so big with the fate of the social framework 
 came. But the attempt of Walter Shandy, Esq.. to ])eget 
 a sou upon a perfect theory did not meet more misluips at 
 the very outset than the Woman's rights movement. The 
 multitude came to the Wesleyan chapel and found the 
 doors locked. The female apostles came upon the ground 
 and surveyed the premises. Tlie doors were bolted on the 
 inside, and by climbing through a window the bolts could 
 be drawn. 
 
 Here was a crisis. No female would scale the breach. 
 It was an occasion for a she Bonaparte, and an act of such 
 daring as when he seized a flag and led his hesitating 
 troops upon the bridge of Lodi against the concentrated 
 Austrian fire. But no female hero came to the rescue. 
 No reason is given for this reluctance ; it is left to conject- 
 ure. At length this movement of woman against man 
 was again compelled to fall back for help upon the sex 
 against which they were proclaiming war. They suborned 
 a boy — an innocent boy, who knew not that he was be- 
 traying the supremacy of the male sex — and boosted him 
 into the window. He unbolted the doors, and then all en- 
 tered. And now they fancied they would find smooth 
 sailing. But this is not the order of the genesis of great 
 social reforms ; always do they encounter discouragements 
 in the beginning, and always suffer from the weakness of 
 their own teachers. 
 
 They attempted to organize the meeting l)y appointing 
 a Chairwoman, whereat some of the women flatly declared 
 they would not work under a female presiding officer. So 
 a compromise was made by appointing a man, and thus 
 there was another surrender to man. In time they got
 
 116 EARLY HISTORY OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT. 
 
 going, and speech was let loose. Lucretia Mott stated the 
 object ; Elizabeth and Mary McClintoc and Mrs. Stanton 
 read speeches ; the declaration of wrongs and rights was 
 read and reread and debated, and all the resolves were 
 adopted unanimously save that on suffrage. They were 
 not yet up to that. The movement is not disparaged by 
 its feeble beginning. That these women did not know 
 their wrongs was the very reason why their eyes should be 
 opened. The born bondsman knows not that slavery is an 
 evil. He is proud of his owner's livery and name. Bond- 
 age so crushes the soul that the negro slave is a traditional 
 jolly character. As represented in minstrelsy he is a crea- 
 ture of careless mirth, always ready to dance in the exu- 
 berance of his own nature, and thrown into extravagant 
 physical manifestations by the notes of the banjo. 
 
 Thus is contentment itself a sign of a down-trodden 
 state. That these women could find no wrongs to com- 
 plain of proves the infinity of their wrongs. But agitation 
 soon opened their eyes. They bit an apple of the tree of 
 knowledge, and thenceforth had an abundant stock of 
 wrongs without asking man to help find them. So did 
 this realization increase, that an eloquent orator of wom- 
 an's wrongs, who has made a very good thing by promul- 
 gating them, while her husband enjoys the precarious sal- 
 ary of a country minister, has told on the platform that so 
 much had she felt woman's oppressions that when she be- 
 came a mother, and the attending priestesses told her it 
 was a girl, she turned her face to the wall, and wept that 
 she had not added another to the number of the oppres- 
 sors.
 
 xxiy. 
 
 HOW AND WHEN TO DIE. 
 
 THE invention of death made life possible. If all that 
 had been born Avere now living, they would stand on 
 each other's heads, five or six deep all over the earth's 
 crust. Thus, death is a blessing to the whole, but it is a 
 blessing which each individual desires to put off as long as 
 possible. People have ideas of the proper time and 'man- 
 ner of dying. There are medical theorists who affirm 
 that mankind, started with fair constitutions, and living 
 correct physiological lives, would live a hundred years. 
 Fortunately they do not get this fair start, nor live physi- 
 ologically; for if they did, the battle of life to the rising 
 generation would be still harder. The act of bringing 
 children into the world, without their consent, is an implied 
 contract to get out of their way in due time, and give 
 them a chance. Thus, unusual longevity is a breach of 
 faith with posterity. 
 
 The fancy pictures the beauty of dying from old age; 
 of the gradual and imperceptible and simultaneous wearing 
 out of the bodily part, like the Deacon's one horse shay, 
 whose parts were so accurat'ely balanced that one could 
 wear no faster than another, and which at the end collajosed 
 all together. It pictures a departure free from bodily dis- 
 ease, as when a lamp goes out for want of oil. And as all 
 this had been apparent, it has a picture of children aiid 
 children's children standing round the deathbed, receiving 
 counsels and farewells, like the twelve round Jacob's couch. 
 But death by old age does not come in that way. AVe are 
 fearfully and wonderfully made. Sustenance and the sev- 
 
 117
 
 118 HOW AND WHEN TO DIE. 
 
 eral brandies of digestion occupy the chief part of our 
 being. Our bodily organs do not run down imperceptibly 
 like a clocks and stop without a jar. 
 
 Even if our construction had been so nearly balanced 
 in all its parts as the Deacon's one horse shay, our lives 
 are such that the wear is unequal. One organ or another 
 fails to perform its function. This is disease, and this 
 lieljjs to derange other organs. To use words with which 
 doctors astonish their patients, there is a non-elimination 
 of the morbilic matter which is generated in the process 
 of retrograde metamorphosis. The man becomes a burden 
 to himself and his friends. With the ceasing of his organs 
 to do their functions his mind becomes disordered, and he 
 is a pitiful wreck, bodily and mentally. He may have 
 strange desires which belie his true character, or strange 
 notions of his children and other relations, which leave 
 impressions perhaps more lasting than the lessons of his 
 healthy life. At heart his relations think his death would 
 be a relief to all, but they are forced to think that the 
 thought is unnatural. 
 
 Thus death from old age is a fearful thing to contem- 
 plate. Death from acute disease, before any serious decay 
 of the bodily organs, is better. Nor is the scene of a 
 gathering of relations around the dying bed to be desired. 
 It harrows the dying and the living without benefit. Desire 
 for life and horror of death are planted in all natures. 
 That the dying should go off unconsciously, and the living 
 be spared the dying scene, would be wiser. There are 
 doctors who let patients die a slow death, tormented by 
 pain, when they might benumb the sense of pain. It is a 
 crime, but they do this cruelty in order that the person 
 may be conscious that he is dying. Sudden and unlooked- 
 for death, before any material decay of the faculties, would 
 be best, if it were not for the common belief in the need
 
 HOW AND WHEN TO DIE 119 
 
 of preparation for another life and the common practice 
 of putting it off to the hist. 
 
 Man is generous in allowing a need of religion for the 
 future life, but economical in practicing it in this. He 
 drives a sharp trade with religion. Should he profess reli- 
 gious belief for saving purposes now, he would be expected 
 to practice accordingly; but if he puts off profession till 
 the dying time he will not have to practice it. The longer 
 he lives without this profession, provided he has notice in 
 time to make it at last, the sharper the trade. The ave- 
 erage man is in nothing so economical and so sharp in 
 trade as in religion. This is that w^hich makes sudden 
 death a calamity, and that makes doctors let their patients 
 linger in tormenting pain. No one has come back to tell 
 the efficacy of a profession of faith calculatingly deferred to 
 the last. True^ we are taught that faith is all sufficient, 
 but who can know that a profession forced by imminent 
 death is faith? 
 
 Much is made of the instance of the dying thief on the 
 cross, to whom, because he rebuked the other for railing at 
 Jesus, He said, " This day shalt thou be with Me in Par- 
 adise. '' But men, in the hardness of their hearts, have 
 appropriated this as a license to continue in sin to the last 
 squeak without examining the instance itself. We know 
 not if the rebuking thief was especially a sinner. He 
 showed a tender heart. He may have been taken for no 
 greater sin than stealing bread to stay his hunger. But, 
 anyhow, he had never before heard of Jesus. His con- 
 version at his first sight of Jesus and Jesus* assurance to 
 him of salvation can give no assurance to those sinners 
 who have known of Jesus'"all their lives and have sharply 
 reckoned on putting off their submission to the last min- 
 ute. There is reason to doubt the success of a plan delib- 
 erately made to cheat God out of service all of one's life, 
 and to sneak into heaven by a dying profession.
 
 120 HOW AND WHEN TO DIE. 
 
 That is a wonderful exhibition of the dignity of man 
 when grave and reverend seigniors^ scholars, statesmen, 
 as they come to the point of death, call in a minister or a 
 priest, and say that his religion has in all their lives had the 
 assent of their reason, and now they desire to make a pro- 
 fession of faith in order to seize on saving grace. What a 
 confession of sharp practice ! If it were not for the chances 
 of this chiseling trade on the Divine mercies, sudden and 
 unlooked-for death would be best for the dying and the 
 surviving. There is this consolation to all : the world 
 goes on as well without them. No matter how great a 
 place they think they fill, their dropping out leaves no 
 void. Persons who thought much of themselves have been 
 dying ever since the world began, yet it has gone on with- 
 out any jar in its diurnal revolutions. 
 
 Of all modes of dying, that of the murderer on the 
 gallows is most blessed to himself, and most edifying to the 
 living. Having due notice of the time of departure, he 
 packs his spiritual gripsack with as timely calculation as 
 he who takes a railroad train. Economical to the last, he 
 does not begin to pack till all the law's delays and all 
 chances for reprieve are exhausted. Then, when he hears 
 the sound of the setting up of the gallows, he turns to the 
 spiritual business. Spiritual mediators ply him with their 
 labors to fix him for swift passage to the heavenly man- 
 sions. Women come and sing spiritual hymns at him. He 
 becomes such an edifying Christian that they think he 
 ought to live as an example. Soft-headed women of both 
 sexes intercede with the Governor to pardon him, or to 
 commute the sentence, which would quickly put an end 
 to this edifying piety. 
 
 He goes upon the gallows as one of the sanctified, as a 
 pious hero, as one whom God has pardoned and accepted, 
 and therefore as a reproach to human justice. Murder is
 
 HOW AND WHEN TO DIE. 131 
 
 made lovely when it brings such a good ending. But this 
 most beautiful death is after all only an incident. He does 
 not do the murder for the purpose of dying in this blessed 
 "way. He intends to escape by secresy or flight . If he 
 were to do it for the sake of the happy death, he would 
 put it off, as other men do repentance, as long as he could. 
 Therefore are mankind left to envy the blissful translation 
 of murderers without the practicability of enjoying its 
 advantages. They must get along as well as they can in 
 the modes of natural dying — i. e., at the hands of the 
 doctors. H rightly viewed, there is much to make living 
 till death from old age undesirable; much to reconcile us 
 and our friends to our death before decay; much to make 
 sudden and unlooked-for death preferable, provided we do 
 not drive a sharp trade with salvation; and much to com- 
 mend in the facilities which the modern conveniences have 
 made for our sudden taking-off.
 
 XXY. 
 
 EISE AKD FALL OF "WOMAN'S DRESS RE- 
 FORM. 
 
 TRADITION delights in great discoveries by trains of 
 thought fired by some seeming accident, which to 
 the common mind has no relation to the consequence. 
 Newton, lying under a sour apjile tree, hit on the organ 
 of gravity by a falling apple, instantly discovered that 
 the tendency of things to tumble together is the great 
 principle that keeps the all things in place. Likewise a 
 small and seemingly accidental event fired the train of 
 thought in the mind of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which 
 brought forth the grand idea of woman's dress reform as 
 fundamental to woman's equal rights. 
 
 When the chosen band of the first apostlesses of wo- 
 man's rights came to the outer walls of the Wesleyan 
 Chapel in Seneca Falls, N. Y., in the revolutionary year 
 1848, to organize the first meeting ever called in this 
 movement, and when they found the door bolted on the 
 inside, in the face of a curious multitude, and when no 
 female volunteered to scale a window and draw the bolts, 
 and they had to solicit a male person to rescue from defeat 
 this war on men, the logical mind of that reraarka1)]c 
 woman perceived that there was a defect at the very seat 
 of the cause, and that woman, thus disabled before man in 
 great emergencies, and still compelled to fall back to him 
 for relief, could never logically claim equality with him. 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer, in "The Data of Ethics," dis- 
 cussing upon the profound doctrine that "correlatives im- 
 ply one another," remarks: "Beyond the primary truth 
 
 133
 
 RISE AND FALL OF WOMAN'S DRESS REFORM. 133 
 
 that no idea of a whole can be framed without a nascent 
 idea of parts constituting it, and that no idea of a part 
 can be framed without a nascent idea of some whole to 
 which it belongs, there is the secondary truth that tliere 
 can be no correct idea of a part without a correct idea of 
 the correlative whole." 
 
 The moral of this lies in the application. When the 
 great movement of woman's rights was almost strangled 
 atbirtR, because no woman could be induced to scale the 
 breach to draw the bolts which barred its delivery, the 
 process of correlative ideas led that great woman's mind 
 instantaneously from breach to breeches. Thus did she 
 discover that dress reform and woman's rights are correl- 
 ative. 
 
 That dress reform and woman's equal rights are one 
 and inseparable, is apparent to every logical mind. As 
 well might a man in shackles claim equal ability with 
 freemen, as women, fettered by a form of dress which im- 
 poses a disability in every line of action, assert equal 
 rights with men, founded on equal capacity. Woman, 
 humbled before man in all human activities liy the con- 
 finement of dress; incessantly obliged to call on him for 
 relief; made inferior to him in all competition — will assert 
 her equality in vain. She can not, like the enslaved negro, 
 assert the equal rights which belong to equal capacity to 
 do; she has to plead for them \vhile confessing her inability 
 to compete with man, because of a dress which both fetters 
 and enervates her. The seat of this difference of clothes 
 is in the trousers; therefore, trousers and woman's equal 
 rights are one and inseparable. 
 
 In all promulgations of advanced doctrines there are 
 some who perceive the truth, and yet who can not receive 
 it all, nor stand up to its logical sequences. So in the 
 woman's rights movement there are some who, while join-
 
 124 RISE AND FALL OF WOMAN'S DKESS REFORM. 
 
 ing in the general declaration of war on man, are held 
 back by feminine weakness. This has caused a, lamentable 
 division in the leaderesses, and a drawing apart of some who 
 try to shove by the question of dress reform by saying they 
 will take up one thing at a time, and will first achieve the 
 ballot, and after that will take up the other parts of the 
 cause. These h^ve formed a society which shuns those 
 that have taken up the whole cause by putting on the gar- 
 ments of equality. 
 
 As well may they say they will learn to swim before 
 going near the water as that they will achieve equal polit- 
 ical rights with man upon the ground of equal capacity 
 while confining themselves to a disability. As well might 
 they say they will not take up the question of the reform 
 of marriage until they have gained equal rights under the 
 marriage which subjects them to man. As well say they 
 will suppress their demand for a female Bible until they 
 have obtained equal political rights, whereas they have 
 resolved in their platform that man's usurpation of the 
 office of transmitting, translating and expounding the 
 Scriptures has enabled him to make the Bible an instru- 
 ment to enslave woman. All these correlative parts of 
 woman's rights must go together, or all will fall. To- 
 gether, they make a solid power; divided, each is a force to 
 break down the other. The apple, hitting Newton in a 
 soft spot, did not start a greater train of thought than did 
 woman's failure at the breach in Mrs. Cady Stanton, when 
 it led her straight to the breeches as the base of woman's 
 emancipation. 
 
 That she did look behind her after she had put her 
 hand to the plough, and did shuck off the reformed gar- 
 ments after she had made them famous, shall not forfeit 
 the praise she earned by setting this cause in motion. 
 Movements that are founded in truth have this property
 
 RISE AND FALL OF WOMAN's DRESS REFORM. 125 
 
 of final perseverance, that they are fertilized by the blood 
 of martyrs, and advanced by the teachings of the faithful, 
 while on the other hand they are never extinguished by 
 defection or betrayal. The good which Mrs. Elizabeth 
 Cady Stanton did by displaying her broad person in the 
 costume called the Bloomer, lived after she had cast it off. 
 Even if this was because of the weakness of female vanity, 
 yet it shall not bring harsh judgment upon her. Some of 
 the greatest men and women have been affected by small 
 vanity of personal appearance. Csesar was a dandy; 
 Queen Elizabeth a cormorant of flattery of her beauty; 
 Napoleon postured. 
 
 The greatness of a woman's mind in putting on this 
 mannish costume is relative, according to her form and the 
 appearance she makes in it. Philosophers of those ancient 
 times, when manners did not bar such investigation, have 
 written that the form of the male man is such that gar- 
 ments conforming thereto have that symmetry which is 
 pleasing to the eye, while, on the contrary, woman is 
 relieved by a draped costume which changes her form. 
 Besides the prejudice of custom, there is a difference of 
 form which makes the putting on of such clothes an act of 
 heroism. And notwithstanding the draped seclusion an 
 idea has got about that women differ largely in form. 
 Therefore, the costume act is more heroic in some than in 
 others. 
 
 The woman who narrates to the Woman's Journal the 
 beginning of this great movement, represents that Mrs. 
 Bloomer, whose name it took, although she followed Mrs. 
 Stanton, did not look hideously in it ; but her description 
 of the appearance of Mrs. Stanton gives an idea that in 
 her it was an act of the highest heroism. Thus; 
 
 "Never shall I forget that first appearance! Mrs. Stan- 
 ton is not slight or sylph-like in her proportions; she is,
 
 126 RISE AND PALL OP WOMAN's DRESS REFORM. 
 
 not to put too fine a point on it, the reverse. Imagine her 
 then in a full black satin frock cut off at the knee, with 
 Turkish trousers of the same material, her wrap a double 
 broche shawl, and on her head the hideous great bonnet 
 then in fashion. She was accompanied by Mrs. Miller in 
 the same dress, and followed by a crowd of boys, yelling, 
 singing and laughing, while every door and window was 
 lined with staring faces." 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton announced that she had 
 assumed this dress for life; but after a time she became 
 satisfied with these popular ovations, and put it off with a 
 great sigh of relief. But the cause of dress reform which 
 she set on foot will not die, for the logic of woman's mind 
 will ever fetch her back to the realization that the woman's 
 movement must be equipped with trousers before it can 
 move on.
 
 XXVI. 
 
 WIDOWERS. 
 
 TO THE editor: 
 
 *' •" I ""HE complete answer which the Gazette gave to the 
 
 1 young professional man without practice, who 
 asked if he had better marry a rich girl, encourages me 
 to ask. Is it good for a widower to marry? X." 
 
 The generality of the form of this question shows con- 
 fidence that our exposition will he so comprehensive as to 
 embrace the inquirer's special case, without requiring him 
 to expose his secret by a particular statement. The con- 
 fidence is not misplaced. We look for the time when each 
 subscriber shall seek the editor as guide, philosopher, and 
 friend. 
 
 Young persons who get their idea of love from romances 
 start out with the notion that the heart is capable of but 
 one love, and, of course, that this never dies. They gen- 
 erally outgrow this spring verdure, and find that this capa- 
 city of the heart, as of the other viscera, brain and mus- 
 cles, develops with exercise. And since the life of man 
 has-been shortened from nine or ten hundred years to three- 
 score and ten, the longevity seems to be insufficient to 
 enable scientists to find the age at which susceptibility to 
 love ceases. But if a person who has loved and lost finds 
 that he loves again, or feels the premonitory symptoms 
 thereof, that is enough for him, and he need not stop to 
 inquire into general principles. 
 
 The doubt whether it is good for a widower to marry is 
 wholly modern, and is caused by tlirec things which are 
 the fruits of modern civilization. First, the invention of 
 
 127
 
 128 WIDOWERS. 
 
 a soul for woman. This is a modern discovery, and has 
 yet spread but to the minor part of the earth's population. 
 Second, the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the 
 bodies of such as have souls. Third, monogamy, which in 
 Christian lands limits the man to one wife at a time. The 
 first two make that which is called death merely a migra- 
 tion, with a promise of rejoining. It is merely a tem- 
 porary separation from bed and board, with certainty of 
 reunion. Thus it is customary to put on our tombstones 
 this declaration of our faith : " Not lost, but gone be- 
 fore." 
 
 This views the departea one as watching and waiting 
 over the border for the bereaved relict to travel out the 
 days of his pilgrimage, and come where partings shall be 
 no more; and it makes a new love and another marriage a 
 crushing of the heart of the waiting one, and the essential 
 act of bigamy. The difficulty of this has not been sur- 
 mounted in reason, however much it is shuffled off in 
 practice. The Sadducees asked. Whose wife shall she be 
 in the resurrection, who has had seven husbands? The 
 answer was: When they shall rise from the dead they 
 neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the 
 angels which are in heaven. This leaves the question, 
 how are the angels, and what are the relations there of 
 those who were married here? 
 
 The preacher consoles the bereaved mother by saying 
 she shall rejoin her babe, and one of the great joys of 
 heaven is pictured in the loved ones there awaiting us. 
 These are described as so many chords reaching back to 
 our hearts, drawing us thither. The mother's love for her 
 babe is personal. It is for that babe, not for babies in 
 general. That little helpless creature possesses her whole 
 being. The rejoining which she looks to is of the same 
 affection. If it were to be merely spiritual in the sense of
 
 WIDOWERS. 129 
 
 being abstracted from the affections that existed in the 
 body here, then their several identities would be lost, and 
 the resurrection would be a disappointment to that longing 
 affection which is here consoled by the promise of reunion. 
 A resurrection in which they were no more to each other 
 than to others, and in which they were divested of earthly 
 affections and relations, would not be a resurrection of 
 personal identity, but of another person. 
 
 The preacher does not so freely console the bereaved 
 husband with the ])romise of rejoining the departed, nor 
 does he paint to him the picture of her waiting and watch- 
 ing and longing over the border. He does not venture on 
 this method of consoling unless the bereaved is so far ad- 
 vanced in life as to make sure that he will keep his eye on 
 this hope. And, as was before remarked, the^ present short 
 span of life has not enabled men of science to tix the age 
 at which the heart is not susceptible to a new flame. Yet 
 the love of man and wife is believed to be a positive thing, 
 and to enter very largely into their being and identity. 
 The marriage service pronounces them one flesh. If the 
 wife is resurrected in her personal identity, she must retain 
 the affections which made so large a part of her being. 
 And if in the resurrection they are to be no more to each 
 other than to others, then the change is the same as if 
 somebody else, and not they, had been resurrected. That 
 would take away the hope of the joys of rejoining as our 
 human minds understand it. 
 
 Before the invention of a soul for woman, there was no 
 difficulty of this kind as to widowers marrying; for al- 
 though not even Mohammedans or pagans could conceive 
 of heaven without Avoman, yet they had a new lot specially 
 created. And on the part of the man this question could 
 not exist, even with a soul for woman, and a resurrection, 
 if it we not for the limitation of monogamy, although it 
 9
 
 130 AVIDOWERS. 
 
 would be the same in case of the widow. We state to our 
 inquiring friend the perj^lexities of his case, without at- 
 tempting to solve them. But we observe that devout be- 
 lievers in these doctrines marry again, and we suppose that 
 an all-confiding trust in Providence leads them to believe 
 that in some way or otlier these difficulties will be straight- 
 ened out so as to give the highest happiness in the future 
 state. 
 
 In this we may grant that our finite minds can not 
 comprehend all things, and that that which now seems 
 past finding out may become very easy when our minds 
 shall havQ, been emancipated from the coarser parts of 
 their earthly tabernacle. Our inquiring friend may be 
 assured that he is in the safe way when he follows the ex- 
 ample of so many devout men. 
 
 With regard to the simple bearing of each one's experi- 
 ence on the question of marrying again, it is always affirm- 
 ative. If ihfi widower has had a good experience in mar- 
 riage, he naturally desires to repeat ; if a bad experience 
 he feels that he has not had the happiness which every 
 man believes to be attainable in the married state, and 
 therefore that he should try again. 
 
 The genius of the French people leads them to reduce 
 all human movements to scientific method. A Dr. Bertil- 
 lon has given much pains to the gathering of statistics to 
 show the influence of marriage on men's longevity. He 
 has found that the mortality of widowers between the ages 
 of twenty-five and thirty is alarmingly greater than of men 
 of the same years who have not been married. Thus of 
 one thousand single men only six die yearly, while of a 
 thousand widowers of the same years twenty-two die 
 yearly. We would not advise a widower to marry to pro- 
 long his life, unless assured that his particular life is worth 
 prolonging. The generality of men live much too long.
 
 WIDOWERS. 131 
 
 And the extent of this valuable article will not permit us 
 at this time to examine the question whether this greater 
 rate of mortality of widowers than of single men is be- 
 cause of the breakage of the heart, or the loss of domestic 
 comfort and care, or from the taking away of the tonic of 
 constant conjugal discipline. 
 
 Whether a widower would better marry a widow or a 
 single woman is a question whose adequate examination 
 would alone require a paper of considerable length ; there- 
 fore we shall defer that until a case among our subscribers 
 sends us the inquiry. Our widower inquirer will perceive 
 that while this exhaustive answer gives him much to think 
 of, and perhaps leads him into regions of thought which he 
 had not before penetrated, yet the general result of our 
 exposition is to let him follow the bent of his own inclina- 
 tions. Much observation of the ways of this peculiar 
 genius leads us to the conclusion that they will land him 
 in the haven of matrimony.
 
 XXYII. 
 
 THE TROUSERS MOVEMENT. 
 
 LONDON society journals have remarked two recent 
 ^ innovations in that part of woman's dress which is 
 below the belt. These are remotely an approach toward 
 trousers — a garment which seems to all advanced think- 
 ing women the ultimate of dress reform, and the sine qua non 
 of eqaul rights. One of these is called the divided skirt, and 
 is described as a skirt stitched together up and down the 
 middle, so as to make, in effect, a skirt for each leg. The 
 fashion which has made the skirt like one large trouser 
 leg may have made transition easy to a skirt fastened 
 together in this way in two large trouser legs. Perhaps it 
 is idle to reason on taste in this affair, but it appears to be 
 the reverse of progress toward that freedom of movement 
 which is allowed by trousers. Indeed, it is an increase of 
 the incumbrance of the skirt, making it a fetter. 
 
 Nor does it seem to propose any reduction of the weight 
 of the skirt, for, besides the size requisite to each part of 
 the skirt to permit movement, and of the upper part to 
 correspond and to permit sitting, the convolutions re- 
 quisite to drape the division would probably increase the 
 weight of the garment. The divided skirt may have 
 remotely the sentiment of trousers, but it is sentiment 
 without any approach to the reality. It seems to have the 
 trousers aspiration at the bottom, but has made it a delu- 
 sion and a snare. So egregious a failure tends to discourage 
 earnest effort. 
 
 The other is described as real trousers, of the usual 
 cut, save the variation of the female form, worn under the 
 
 133
 
 THE TROUSERS MOVEMENT. 133 
 
 skirts. As a preparatory step to dispensing with tlie skirt, 
 this may be rational; or as an experiment to find how this 
 garment feels, before going further; or as a private indulg- 
 ence of the idea, the sentiment of trousers; but if skii-ts 
 are to continue, the trousers will double the burden. As- 
 piration for the unattainable has a pregnant fancy wliirli 
 paints it with delights; but in reality trousers are not tin- 
 i supreme good to those who wear them. They have weight , 
 and must be held up by suspenders, and these are a per- 
 ' ceptible pull on the shoulders. They have some strain in 
 sitting down. The female conformation would increase in 
 the sitting-down strain, unless they were much enlarged in 
 that part, and this would increase the weight, if, indeed, 
 such expansion did not greatly impair the sentiment of 
 trousers. 
 
 Obviously women can not mitigate the burden of skirts 
 by adding thereunto trousers. To make trousers a rclii'f 
 will require a reduction of the skirts to one, and that 
 without fullness, and shortened. Something like this wps 
 tried in the beginning of the dress reform, but women were 
 not able to receive it because it was such a cutting down of 
 their appearance. Is there not a fundamental error in this 
 aspiration, in the idea that man and woman are so nearly 
 the same that a form of garment which is best for one is 
 best for the other? lias not the imjjortance of this trouscr 
 movement been exaggerated by a notion that it is mixed up 
 with woman's equal rights? 
 
 Scientists have observed that woman is not formed lii.:e 
 man. Her different conformation below the belt is admir- 
 ably adapted to voluminous drapery, which man's is not. 
 On the other hand her form is not adapted to trousois, 
 either for beauty of proportion or ease of wearing. This 
 may be disputed by particularizing some of the female 
 statues and some young and some lank women; but it is
 
 134 THE TROUSERS MOVEMENT. 
 
 necessary that the female form of dress should fit all women. 
 Many are seen who appear grand in proportion, and even 
 graceful in movement, in full and draped skirts," who 
 would not be elegant in trousers. For the effect of pos- 
 terior expansiveness in trousers is different from that of 
 expansiveness in flowing draperies. There is an elegance 
 in this which causes passing women to look back on one 
 another, to admire the hang of the draped skirt; but such 
 retrospect of trousers, expanded to fit the female form, 
 would excite different emotions. 
 
 To discourage any female aspiration is an ungracious 
 task, yet it must be said that there is a fundamental error 
 in the trousers movement. Mankind are the clothes-wear- 
 ing animals. Natiire meant them to wear clothes, and gave 
 them hands to make, and taste to design them. . Nature 
 evidently designed women to be draped below the belt; 
 gave her a form on which drapery hangs beautifully, and 
 around which it disposes itself gracefully; a form which 
 supports skirts, and probably bears them more easily than 
 it would trousers. It did not give her a form for trousers. 
 She would find them a burden, and in several ways objec- 
 tionable in the matters of comfort and health, to say noth- 
 ing of grace and beauty. These observations may discour- 
 age a fond aspiration, but they are kindly meant to abate 
 female discontent.
 
 XXYIII. 
 LABOR-SAYING MxVCIIINERY AN EYIL. 
 
 THE displacement of human labor by machinery is 
 attracting the attention of 'prentice hands in polit- 
 ical economy, and has led them to think that all which we 
 call ijrogress is on the wrong tack. The process of reason- 
 ing in this is so exact and arithmetical that it may be called 
 scientific. Take for example the reaper. With a span of 
 horses the farmer sits and reaps as much grain in a day as 
 seven men would "cradle." Is it not figuratively demon- 
 strated that that reaper throws six cradles out of work, and 
 reduces them to tramps? So a threshing machine, with a 
 little steam engine and six hands, will thresh as much in a 
 day as forty flailers ; thus thirty-four men with flails are 
 thrown out of emi^loy. 
 
 . These scientific statistics are equally fearful in every 
 branch of labor. In all these man's invention is destroy- 
 ing man's livelihood, and the new political economy makes 
 human genius a process of social suicide. The factory 
 spinning and weaving machines will each spin and weave 
 as much cloth as maybe a hundred good wives would make 
 with spinning wheel and hand loom. Thus each machine 
 takes away the occasion of a hundred good wives. The 
 sawmill, with water or steam power, and a couple of men, 
 cuts as many boards in a day as a hundred men could cut 
 with a handsaw, or a two-man pit-saw. Thus eighty-eight 
 men are thrown out of sawing work. The farmer of our 
 time is not the he of the osculatory plays of our childhood, 
 who sows his seed " broadcast " with the hand, from a bag 
 strung upon his shoulder, and then turns round and views 
 
 135
 
 136 LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY AN" EVIL. 
 
 his land, and waits for a partner; but now he sits on a seed 
 drill with wheels, and drives a span of horses, and sows as 
 much land in a day as half a dozen men would sow by hand 
 and cover with a harrow. This makes the harrowing tale 
 of five men with large families turned out of work by one 
 machine drill. 
 
 The sewing machine is a still more harrowing invention, 
 by reason of its enhancing the hard fate of women. The 
 invention of clothes, which came in through woman's fault, 
 has been a blessing to women by continuing a need for 
 them after the earth had become populated and the orig- 
 inal need had greatly diminished. But in an evil hour the 
 devil instigated man to invent the sewing machine, one of 
 which, as we learn by their seductive circulars, will sew as 
 much in a day as a dozen women can do with the hand 
 needle. But we will allow half for the exuberance of lan- 
 guage, and say half a dozen. This leaves five sewing women 
 reduced to the state of surplus by each machine. It affects 
 not only the employment and wages of single women, 
 but the demand on them for general family uses. And 
 sewing is peculiarly the recourse of widows whom men 
 unconscionably load with children, and then leave unpro- 
 vided. Averaging widows of five children each, one sew- 
 ing machine deprives twenty-five children and five widows 
 of bread. 
 
 We might go through the whole list of machines in this 
 way, and show how each is robbing mankind of employ- 
 ment. And the anticipation of the future is a multiplica- 
 tion of the realities of the past. That which invention 
 has achieved in labor-saving machines gives unbounded 
 anticipation of future achievements; and our sucking ijoli- 
 tical economists reckon that in the course of this and the 
 first quarter of the twentieth century machinery will auto- 
 matically do all the work, and there will be little or no call
 
 LABOR-SAYING MACHINERY AN EVIL. 137 
 
 for human labor. Thus the progress of the age, of wliich we 
 are wont to boast, is in reality to destruction. There will 
 be no use for mankind as producers; and as without pro- 
 ducing they will have no means to buy for consumption, 
 the working classes will all be surplus poj^ulation, and an 
 evil to be got rid of. As the rainbow is a standing sign 
 that the deluge sball not come again, the only available 
 remedy is a general burning. Thus by human invention 
 are we fetching on the world's conflagration. 
 
 But the scientists do not go near to the bottom. The 
 grain cradle with which they comijare the horse-power 
 reaper is itself a labor-saving machine, and has thrown its 
 quota of w^orkmen out of emjiloy. One man with a cradle 
 can reap as much as six men with a sickle. Thus each 
 cradle took away the subsistence of five reapers, who, with 
 their wives and children might make forty souls, and as 
 many mouths. But the sickle is a mighty labor-saving 
 machine. It threw a larger proportion of men out of em- 
 ploy than any subsequent improvement in reaping. One 
 man with a sickle would reap as much grain as a dozen 
 men could pull up by the roots, or twist off by hand. The 
 destruction began with the invention of the sickle or other 
 knife, and no reform can reach the evil which does not 
 abolish that, and let them pluck up the grain by hand. 
 
 Likewise the flail is a great labor-saving machine over 
 the plain stick, torn from a tree. Several men went out of 
 employ on each flail. And the stick Avas a labor-sav- 
 ing machine over rubbing out the grain between the hands. 
 By restoring these natural methods, each workman would 
 have full employment in raising, pulling up, and rubbing 
 out the grain for his own eating. This would remove the 
 the evils of surplus laborers in all that line, and also the 
 evil of surplus food, and of the producers having any to 
 spare. The hand loom and hand-spinning wheel of the
 
 138 LABOK-SAVING MACHINERY AN EVIL. 
 
 household were great labor-saving machines over hand 
 twisting and plaiting, and must have thrown out of work a 
 fearful number of wives. 
 
 Terribly as the sewing machine has deprived women of 
 work, it has not been so bad as the invention of the liand 
 steel needle. Before that, with bone needles — which them- 
 selves are labor-saving machines — or with no piercing tool 
 but their teeth, three or four wives might be sufficiently 
 employed in making up. one man's rude garments, whereas 
 such facility was given to this by the invention of the steel 
 needle that he hardly had a need of one wife. This gives us 
 a frightful realization of the number of wives that might 
 have been but for the invention of the needle. 
 
 The invention of a wheeled vehicle has thrown out of 
 employ an army of men who might earn a living for them- 
 selves and large families by carrying things on their backs. 
 The hand or pit-saw was a labor-saving invention of larger 
 proportions than the saw-mill. Before that there were no 
 boards, save such as were hewn, and none at all before the 
 invention of that tremendous labor-saving machine, the axe. 
 
 Thus if we look through every branch of industry from 
 the simplest agricultural to the most complex skilled labor, 
 we shall find that the very beginning of work has been, to 
 throw workmen out of employment; and that as it has pro- 
 gressed it has the more and more taken away emjDloyment 
 from men and women. By the rights and logic of this pol- 
 itical economy the greater part of the workmen, should be 
 without work — the ''working class "should be the idle 
 class. Somehow it has not worked that way. Somehow 
 with the invention of labor-saving machinery employment 
 of workmen has increased, and with all our progress in this 
 line there was never a time when all who will work had fuller 
 employment than now. 
 
 But a system of political economy which founds itself
 
 LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY AN EVIL. 130 
 
 on a scientific basis of statistics is not to he cast off because 
 the facts are contrary. Scientifically these men and women 
 are out of employ, and if not so in fact it is because they 
 are not in harmony witli science. And these pessimist scien- 
 tists can give good reasons for these vagariesof mankind from 
 logical results. They can show that as their system, which 
 would take from the hand of man every tool, would give to 
 each one sufficient emplo3mient in scratching for his own 
 living, aud would make each one the consumer of all he 
 produced, so with the invention of machinery the consump- 
 tion of the laborer has extended into all the products of 
 machine labor,so that the laborers themselves have increased 
 the consumption with the increase of production by ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 They might also point out elements not included in their 
 scientific system, such as the vast employment given to 
 workmen by making the machinery which saves labor, and 
 the immensity of the carrying industry and of other multi- 
 plied industries which have been created by this immense 
 increase of production by machinery. Thus they can dis- 
 cover excuses for the non-working of a theory which seems 
 so complete and so scientific. And j^erhaps this will put 
 into the noddles of these beginners in the science of public 
 wealth a notion, that their complete theory, founded on the 
 scientific basis of statistics and arithmetical proof S; took in 
 only a little part of the situation.
 
 XXIX. 
 
 THE DOG'S DAT. 
 
 " Hear you, sir; 
 What is the reason that you use me thus? 
 I loved you ever — But it is no matter: 
 Let Hercules himself do what he may. 
 The cat will mew, and dog will have his day." 
 
 THE English actor, Irving, whose Hamlet has astonished 
 the natives of two hemisplieres, and who is thriving 
 upon them as lustily as the famous calf that sucked two cows, 
 and grew to be a great calf, reads the last line in the above 
 thus: "And dog will have his bay." This has made 
 homely and clear to many minds that which before was 
 beautifully obscure. We could give reasons as plenty as 
 blackberries against this change, but three or four shall 
 suffice to make this presumptuoiis play actor wish he had 
 expired before he laid his impious hands on the sacred text 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 For, fourthly — taking up the case in the consecutive 
 order followed by the sage magistrate of Messina, — a 
 poet, having all the mines of fancy to draw from, should 
 be bounteous; but this version makes to the dog the stingy 
 allowance of one bay. In the realms of the imagination 
 every dog should have unlimited bay. Lord Dundreary, 
 has forcibly illustrated this idea in his criticism of the 
 adage, '' Birds of a feather flock together," in which he 
 remarks the stinted allowance of one feather to a whole lot 
 of birds. Shakespeare, like other vagabonds, liked dogs, 
 and he would never have portioned off a dog with but one 
 bay. And sixthly, this version assumes that Shakespeare 
 
 140
 
 THE DOO'S DAY. 141 
 
 wrote words of simple and plain meaning, wliicli can be 
 seen on the surface, whereas they who have devoted their 
 minds to searching Shakespeare have found that this play- 
 wright, who wrote or cut, padded and fitted plays for the 
 stage of his time, planted deep down below the simple 
 meanings of the surface, occult philosophies and impene- 
 trable mysteries, to forever addle the wits of future ages in 
 vain effort to discover their meaning. Therefore could he 
 never have written anything whose ultimate meaning is so 
 trite as that dog may have his bay. 
 
 Secondly, the search for an incomprehensible mystery 
 in some simple phrase of Shakespeare, or a dispute over 
 different readings of unmeaning passages — of which one is 
 as good as another — or an effort to put sense into passages 
 which were purposely made nonsense, or to put a hidden 
 meaning in a trite line, is regarded by those that have 
 applied their minds to this business as a literary work 
 worthy of a life's devotion; therefore we can not afford 
 that this line shall be taken out of this great literary field 
 and laid on the shelf as settled, and settled, too, by such a 
 plain meaning, which is as if a spangled circus rider should 
 ride the arena sitting astride, just like a common rid or, 
 instead of pirouetting on his feet, or standing on his head. 
 
 Lastly, and to conclude, if we are to content our minds 
 with simple sense, we can do better than to give dog a 
 bay; for the saying, "Every dog has his day," was com- 
 mon before Shakespeare. The Princess, afterward Queen 
 Elizabeth, in a letter to Queen Mary, wrote, '*As a doge 
 hathe a day, so may I." In the '^ Interlude," printed in 
 1573, is this: *' Well if It chaunce that a dogge hathe a 
 day," etc. There are other instances which we could cite 
 out of our abundant learning, but we forbear. These show 
 that it was then an old adage, whose origin was probably 
 then lost, as the antiquaries say, in the mists of antiquity.
 
 143 THE dog's DAT. 
 
 And a day to a dog is a generous allowance; for day is 
 much used to express an indefinite period of time, a chance 
 of a lifetime, an age, an epoch, an era, or countless millions 
 of years, such as Moses' day of creation. 
 
 But in the third place, the German critics, who can dive 
 deeper and come up muddier than any other, and who find 
 in Shakespeare abundant material for their turn of mind, 
 do not accept any common sense reading, nor any mean- 
 ing that appears on the surface. They go to the bottom and 
 stir it up till all becomes a muddy obscurity, into which 
 each one may project from his internal consciousness. 
 Thus Tschischwitz — whose name is pronounced with a 
 sneeze — sees in this passage a reference to Laertes, to the 
 King, and to Hamlet himself, the meaning of which is 
 this: "Let the herculean power of Laertes do what it 
 may, and the cat. (the King), which creeps stealthily in the 
 dark, mew, the faithful dog ( Hamlet himself ) will have 
 his turn at last." 
 
 A few specimens of German analytical criticism would 
 show to Mr. Irving that he is like a hen scratching the 
 surface for little things. Yet we could give reasons as 
 numerous as the sands on the shore why the reading of 
 Tschischwitz is not the true one, and could show that while 
 he thinks he is stirring up the bottom mud, he is merely 
 spreading a film on top; but such precious material for 
 literary labor must not be prodigally consumed. Yet we 
 presume not to say what is the hidden meaning of this line, 
 for through much examination of the critical commen- 
 taries of Shakespeare, we are persuaded that he *'builded 
 wiser than he knew," and that he buried, beneath his most 
 trite or most unmeaning words, profound mysteries which 
 he was wholly unconscious of. And if his miraculous 
 mind could not perceive them, how presumptuous is it for 
 any mortal to even try to reveal them!
 
 THE dog's day. 143 
 
 All the preceding words of Hamlet at the hnrial of 
 Ophelia were so sensible, so proper at a funeral, so properly 
 expressive of the feeling natural to the occasion, so tenderly 
 sympathetic toward her brother and the other mourners, 
 so reasonable in every way, that we have sure ground for 
 confidence that these words of our text must have an ap- 
 propriate meaning. To those that can discern these qual- 
 ities in his preceding remarks there can can be no version 
 or meaning of this that will not seem rational. But we 
 accept the more exalting idea of the general commentators 
 that this playwright, while adapting plays to suit the 
 theatre goers of the time, with frugal mind intent on put- 
 ting money in his purse buried deep down in them, and 
 covered over with shallow lines, the richest pearls of 
 unutterable thought, of enigmatical allegory, of far-fetched 
 allusion, of complex metaphor, of profound philosophy, of 
 abstruse learning, of arts and sciences far ahead of his 
 time,_not knowing them himself, and not intending them 
 ever to be discovered; and, therefore, that all these pre- 
 tended discoveries are presumptuous ignorance and im- 
 pious handed sacrilege.
 
 XXX. 
 
 WAIL FOB A HAT 
 
 WE WANTED that hat because it was our hat. The 
 one left in its place in the Burnet dining room did 
 not fill its place in our feelings. To like our own better 
 than anybody else's is the law of nature. This law will 
 always make socialist communities, all co-operative busi- 
 ness undertakings, and all democratic governments failures; 
 for they are founded on the theory that every one will 
 care for the commune first, and secondly for himself as 
 only a sharer in the universal good; that each will subor- 
 dinate his own interest and ambition to the interest of the 
 whole. This reverses nature. We love best that which 
 is our own: our own brothers, sisters, cousins and aunts. 
 We love our wife Jerusha and the nine pledges of her love, 
 and one pledge at the breast — a pledge "up the spout," 
 to use a banking phrase — better than anybody else's wife 
 and nine pledges of love and one at the breast. 
 
 This is intuition in children. When each new pledge 
 of Jerusha's love arrives, the previous pledges rejoice more 
 over that, than over ninety and nine pledges in other 
 households. So do we. Each fresh one is welcome, 
 although the sensation has now lost its novelty. We pre- 
 ferred that hat to anybody else's. A conf ormateur had shaped 
 it to our head — a head which a phrenologist had recently 
 examined and pronounced to have all the organs of great- 
 ness in any line of life, but too much restrained by modesty. 
 We trusted to the hat's size and shape, and disdained to re- 
 duce it to the common herd by putting a card in it. The 
 one left is big enough, but it has no more character than 
 
 144
 
 WAIL FOR A HAT. 145 
 
 if it had been shaped on a bag of meah He that wore 
 it had no bumps to speak of; only an expressionless mass. 
 Besides, it has the cottony look of a five-dollar hat, while 
 ours was a glossy seven-dollar. And this is a general 
 utility compromise, while ours was strictly up to the style. 
 We have in our vision the form of the man that wore 
 this left hat — a fat headed, thick necked, big jowlcd, 
 beefy, corpulent, baldhcaded man; a big eater, his voice 
 wheezy fi'om fullness of the stomach*; whose highest ener- 
 gies are put forth at the table; who eats through the bill 
 of fare. We are having it out with him for that hat. 
 And he is a man who thinks that to take the best hat or 
 overcoat at public places is a huge joke. Tliis is his finest 
 sense of humor. He would think the joke still finer if he 
 could pick up any other property of others without detec- 
 tion. We have not only a prejudice in favor of our own 
 hat, but against wearing another man's, particularly the 
 hat of a man of such character. We shall buy an early 
 spring hat, and reduce to that extent our subscription to 
 the missionary fund for sending ruffled shirts to the bare- 
 footed natives of Congo, 
 
 10
 
 XXXI. 
 
 MARRIAGE AND HIGHER EDUCATION 
 OF WOMEN. 
 
 DOES THE higher education of women make them 
 averse to marriage ? If it does, ought higher edu- 
 cation be encouraged? A journal near the intellectual hub 
 of the universe where the higher education of women has 
 long been the fashion, affirms, that it causes this unnatural 
 aversion. If so, it is a subject for scientific inquiry and 
 moral reflection. The first and superficial suggestion will 
 be of incredulity that anything but experience can make 
 women averse to marriage; but this is not the scientific 
 method, and it can not answer the fact stated by a careful 
 journal, that it works so. If the conjecture be offered that 
 the higher education gives women mental resources, and 
 then they cease to desire marriage, it has the reflection 
 that it is mental vacancy that leads the mass of women to 
 marry — a conclusion so unpleasant that it can not be ac- 
 cepted without positive proof. 
 
 To suppose that it is because higher education expands 
 the female mind, and forms reason and judgment in the 
 place of nature and instinct, and thus makes them capable 
 of drawing deliberate judgment on men, whereby they fail 
 to discover sufficient merit in them to induce such a con- 
 nection, is only an elaboration of the previous conjecture, 
 and is alike unflattering to the mass of women and to men. 
 For the number of men who have gone through the higher 
 education is sufficient to mate the college-bred women. 
 Besides, this assumes so much as to make it a travesty on 
 the scientific method; it assumes that the higher education 
 
 146
 
 MARRIAGE AND EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 147 
 
 expands the mind, forms reason and jndgment, and makes 
 a liiglier general caj^acity — tilings which are far from being 
 scientifically established. In a large part of the young men 
 it is observed that the time when they come from college is 
 the green age, and that their most conspicuous acquirement 
 is the idea that they are finished ; while the anxious inquiry 
 of their friends is, what are they good for? 
 
 During the present year a woman sufl'rage convention 
 adopted a resolution that the breeding of statesmen can not 
 be carried to a high point unless they who are to be moth- 
 ers of statesmen are taught and practiced in statesmanship. 
 The resolution seems to have a good foundation, both in 
 the rules applied by scientific breeders of domestic animals, v. 
 
 and in the common tradition that sons get their intellect- 
 ual brightness from the mother. But if it be true that 
 higher education makes women averse to marriage, then this 
 fitting of women for statesmanship, like all other plans for 
 perfecting, society, would culminate in the extinction of the 
 human race. 
 
 This, however, is no hindrance to the true philosopher. 
 The distinguished Anacharsis Cloots, surnamed the. Friend 
 to Humanity, said that the principles of the Constitution, 
 adopted by the National Assembly of France, would be 
 cheaply purchased at the sacrifice of the whole human race. 
 
 One of the most puzzling things to the philosopher is 
 the multiplication of the species — that peo^jlewho affirm 
 that all is going to the bad, and that life is not worth liv- 
 ing, should make the chief business of their lives to prop- 
 agate their kind to the same fate, with the large chance 
 of going to the worse. Is this alleged aversion because this 
 college education for women, this eating of the tree of 
 knowledge, opens their eyes to the vanity of all things, and 
 makes them reluctant to bring others into the world to the 
 same experience, and thus makes them averse to marriage?
 
 148 MARRIAGE AND EDUCATION" OF WOMEN. 
 
 This idea may find some support in the common observation 
 that the expansion of tlie female mind by the suffrage move- 
 ment makes them more discontented with their sex. One 
 of the most eloquent and fortunate of the suffrage apostles 
 said that when she became a mother, and the attending 
 priestesses told her it was a girl, she turned her face to the 
 wall and wept. 
 
 If the expansion of the female mind effectuates aversion 
 to maternity and marriage, the theory of propagating a more 
 intellectual race by higher education of the mothers seems 
 to fail. Some may see in it a compensation in the increased 
 chances of marriage which will be given to the mass by 
 taking the college-bred girls out of the field. But may not 
 this lead to the classification of the married women as the 
 uneducated part of the female race, and thus result in de- 
 grading marriage of women by associating it with ignorance? 
 Then female society would be divided by a class of spinsters 
 of higher education and superior minds, devoted to their 
 own intellectual elevation, and to the ]3ursuit of the good, 
 the beautiful, and the true, and a much larger class of 
 married women, good enough for domestic uses. 
 
 They who hold that creation iinderstood itself when it 
 made the human race male and female, and that it made no 
 mistake and did not mean them to be alike, or to have the 
 same sphere, have argued that the office of maternity is a 
 very high one, and that it is very absorbing to woman's 
 powers, and that creation meant that her vital forces should 
 be reserved for this great function, and that the diverting 
 of her energies to hard mental application during those 
 years in which her bodily powers are maturing diminishes 
 her ability for healthy maternity. If this be true, then the 
 inability to properly discharge her great function to ma- 
 ternity may bring disinclination to marriage. But, as was 
 before remarked, no consequences to the human race should
 
 MARRIAGE AKD EDUCATION OF WOMEIT. 149 
 
 be allowed to stand in the way of plans for perfecting human 
 society; and there are signs that the advanced women will 
 revolt against the office of maternity, as imposing on them 
 a disability which is incompatible with equal civil and 
 political rights.
 
 XXXII. 
 
 THE DELUGE OF 1883. 
 
 THE flood in the rivers is a serious reminder of the 
 flood of some thousands or millions of years ago. As 
 that was sent because the world had become wicked, people 
 should reflect on their sins, and should think whether the 
 water-cure is not now alike called for. They should also 
 select the truly good man to be saved to re-people the earth 
 and rehabilitate the vine. If the newspapers may be taken 
 as evidence, men are as bad now as when there was no way 
 to cure their wickedness save to drown them as boys do 
 blind kittens. The deluge is the only adequate moral 
 reform. What more fit extinguisher for the manufacture 
 and sale of intoxicating drinks than to drown it out? By 
 actual figures, which can not lie, it is found that ninety- 
 five per cent, of all the offenses against morals, persons, 
 property, the public peace and decency, are caused by this 
 trade. Drown it out, and but five per cent, would re- 
 main — a proportion so minute that society could easily 
 crush the remnant, and be perfectly good. 
 
 As the occupation of courts and police would then be 
 gone, no harm could come from drowning these also. The 
 deluge is the Creator's cure for a wicked world, and may 
 always be expected wheo the world is very wicked, as 
 obviously it is now. Thomas Jefferson, who was a true 
 reformer, said in a letter to Minister Short, justifying the 
 free blood-letting in the massacres and guillotine executions 
 of the French Revolution, that if every nation were killed 
 off to a single pair, so as to start anew, the earth would be 
 the better for it. He would have a deluge in hand; to be 
 
 J50
 
 THE DELUGE OF 1883. 151 
 
 launched often, and a very little ark for the human pas- 
 sengers. Any truly good man who devotes mind and 
 occujiation to censorshiji of the wickedness of society, can 
 describe a great many whose drowning would be the best 
 use they could be put to. If each were enabled to number 
 and designate, perhaps as few would be left as in Jefferson's 
 jierfected philanthropy. 
 
 Next to the makers and sellers of intoxicating drinks, 
 in point of wickedness, as classified by the good, come the 
 gamblers — strictly drawing the line between those respect- 
 able gamblers, who wager on ideal stocks and ideal produce, 
 and those who deal in disreputable cards and dice. With 
 a dam to keep the flood from the respectable, all will con- 
 sent that the waters shall drown the remainder. Next to 
 these in the order of iniquity come the houses of the Corin- 
 th ian nymphs. Let these be given up to the flood, while 
 well-pitched arks save the men who frequent them. Thus 
 shall society be purified. Then come the Sunday shows, 
 and indeed the theatres in general; for the idea of the 
 wickedness of the theatre all through is the chief of the 
 Sunday wickedness. 
 
 A reading of the organs of intelligence carries the con- 
 viction that the City Council and Board of Education are 
 corrupt; that the Board of Health is unhealthy; the city 
 executive and administrative offices given up to peculation; 
 the Court-house filled with rings; the county administration 
 a thing of private profit; the city and county administrative 
 boards and officers generally incomjjetent. "What a benefi- 
 cence would a deluge be in all this ! As to the news- 
 papers those great moral reformers — each will testify that 
 drowning would be a good thing for the others. Thus 
 their vote for a deluge would be unanimous. The general 
 acclaim is that society in general, and fashionable society 
 in particular, is morally corrupt. As to the political par-
 
 152 THE DELUGE OF 1883. 
 
 ties, each would agree that the world would be better for 
 the drowning of the other. 
 
 A collocation of the testimony of each would make the 
 voices nearly unanimous for a deluge. Suppose that by 
 a liberal arrangement, the churches Avere kept dry; still, 
 the great majority would be reformed. Thus the more we 
 reflect on the flood as a moral reformer, the more do we 
 perceive that it is needed periodically, and needed noAv, 
 and that it is the only adequate means that history tells of 
 for curing the world of wickedness. 
 
 In thinking of the deluge the mind conceives boundless 
 waters, with the ark, little speck, drifting on the wild 
 waste. It does not think of it as the gradual rise of the 
 rivers, making just such scenes as the dwellers in this city 
 are passing through. What if they were not passing 
 through! What if the waters were to keep on rising as 
 before! How sincerely penitent would men be, with one 
 eye aloft and the other on the river reports. 
 
 The future scientist from Timbuctoo, tracing the his- 
 tory of the extinct inhabitants of Cincinnati in the ruins 
 buried under the growth of centuries, would write out the 
 story of the deluge of 1883. At first the inhabitants wel- 
 comed the rise of the Ohio as a promise of coal and naviga- 
 tion. As it kejit on they thought it a sensation, and 
 began to plume themselves on the prospect of as high 
 water as the flood of 1847, and even of 1832. They Joked 
 on the calamity of the poor people who were driven from 
 habitations near the river, and on the hurry of merchants 
 in lifting heavy goods out of their cellars in ''the bottom. '' 
 It kept on, and merchants had to move again, and were 
 driven out of the first story, and a multitude of poor peo- 
 ple were homeless, leaving their all in the rising waters. 
 
 Then the gas-works were submerged, and the city left 
 in darkness; then the water-works, leaving the great city
 
 THE DELUGE OF 1883. l53 
 
 without water in a flood. The coal-yards were in the 
 midst of a sea. The raih'oad stations and tracks were 
 drowned. The whole people began to realize that a great 
 calamity was upon them. Yet they thought that when the 
 flood had reached the height of 1832 it would be'satisfied, 
 and recede; but it kept on. Communication with the 
 country was cut off, and the flood was the same in the 
 country. A famine for food came on top of a light famine, 
 a fuel famine, a water famine, and with inhabitants 
 driven from their houses by the continually advancing 
 waters. Churches and all public buildings were crowded, 
 and every house that was still above the water was invaded 
 by all it could hold, until these in turn had to fly to higher 
 ground. 
 
 The mind can not conceive the anguish and terror of 
 this, when the population of a great city was all in the 
 same terror and suffering. It was a pandemonium of hun- 
 ger, cold and desperation. Many in their despair refused 
 to leave their dwellings, and these were found, centuries 
 after, by the excavations of discoverers, man and wife, par- 
 ents and children, lover and maiden, mother and the babe 
 at her breast, in mutual embrace, buried in the yellow 
 earth brought down by the river flood. The semi-circle of 
 hills was crowded with hundreds of thousands of shelter- 
 less, starving people, fast dying of want, exposure, terror 
 and despair. Since the flood must be, it was merciful that 
 its rise was at an accelerating rate. It surrounded the 
 hills, and climbed on over the highest parts, until at last 
 only one spot, a narrow knoll, stood above the dreadful 
 wilderness of waters. 
 
 Here, upon a pile of stones which he had heaped, sat 
 the last survivor of the inhabitants of Cincinnati. Even 
 his portrait, in a painting of the scene, Avas found, 
 strangely preserved. The name of the artist inscribed
 
 154 THE DELUGE OF 1883. 
 
 thereon is Beard, who must have been a great master, for 
 the picture is very expressive. The last man's wife has died 
 of want and terror in his arms, and now lies floating on the 
 rising waters by the rock. He sits on the rock, almost desti- 
 tute of apparel, contemplating the dreadful waters willi 
 countenance of suffering, hopeless despair, plucky deter- 
 mination and defiance, which tell the story of the dreadful 
 tragedy, and express an heroic soul that feels as a man, and, 
 as a man that has suffered the worst, defies all that can yet 
 come to him. 
 
 A 23icture of all the calamities of the deluge is concen- 
 trated in this single figure. An idea is entertained by 
 many that creation is ever repeating itself in great cycles; 
 that what now is has been thousands of years before, and 
 will be again. If this brief narrative is not the history of 
 the deluge of 1883, it is of the former deluge, and of that 
 which will be. And as the deluge is a moral suasion, to be 
 sent at times when the wickedness of the world has over- 
 come all the ordinary instrumentalities, an extraordinary 
 rise in the rivers is to every one a loud call for moral intro- 
 spection.
 
 XXXIII. 
 IS WOMAN A LIVING LIE? 
 
 EVERY inexperienced woman who takes getting married 
 in the natural way, marries a being created by her 
 own fancy from all sorts of kaleidoscopic materials — from 
 the romances she has read, and the idolization of her own 
 rapturous conceptions. In due time she finds him a 
 commonplace being, made up chiefly of petty animal wants; 
 narrow-minded, occupied in small pursuits, much given to 
 the little things of his own comfort, and easily losing his 
 temper at any privation of them, and altogether a common 
 clod compared to the spiritual being which her enchanted 
 fancy created. Wh^t does a good woman do? She accepts 
 the situation, makes a duty of that which she expected to 
 be a delight, and keeps up the same manner of love and 
 worship, as if he were still the sovereign of her bosom, and 
 all her fancy had painted him. 
 
 Some one of those useless literary men who practice 
 the setting of logical traps for women, has alleged that 
 this makes her life a living lie. The paradox is here pre- 
 sented that her life of fidelity and self-sacrifice makes her 
 a living lie. The assertion is boldly made as the conclusion 
 of inflexible logic that ''she owes to this very fact of being 
 a persistent liar that she is a faithful and devoted wife." 
 The logic goes on to argue that this practice of untruth 
 ''re-acts upon her moral character," and that "gradually 
 she becomes absolutely incapable of rigid adherence to truth 
 in matters in which truth is really of some importance." 
 
 Logic can not stop for consequences. Yet a conclusion 
 60 startling as that the fidelity of the wife makes her life a" 
 
 155
 
 156 IS WOMAN A LIVING LIE? 
 
 falsehood, should cause a critical examination of the logical 
 process. The alternative end of this logic, which would 
 have it that the truthful wife must be false to wedlocR, and 
 must break the lock because the man is not the him that 
 her fancy painted, is enough to raise a doubt of its exact- 
 ness. The critical doubt seizes at once upon the peg that 
 he lies at the base of the whole structure of deception; that 
 he is not what he seemed; that he came in by deceit, and 
 thereby made his own life a lie, and imposed upon her 
 whatever of falsehood is in her life. Even if this does let 
 her out entirely, it gives her the satisfactory argument of 
 " You're another." 
 
 But woman has not to rest her vindication on recrim- 
 ination, however handy that may be to have in the house. 
 She can prove that a finer drawing of logic would make 
 this fidelity of wifely conduct under such disillusion the 
 highest truthfulness, and that instead of demoralizing her 
 whole nature, it makes her more angelic. 
 
 Oberon drops upon all true brides the enchanting juice 
 of the flower, '' Love in Idleness," by which he caused 
 the fair Titania to be enamoured of the transformed 
 Bottom. Marriage dispels the enchantment, and she comes 
 gradually and against her resisting will to the knowledge 
 that he is a dull person; that all the bright things he ever 
 said were stock pieces; that he has a little stock of little 
 ideas which she has come to know by rote, and that he has 
 no desire to add to them, and no soul higher than his 
 body. 
 
 When she finds the creation of her fancy disenchanted, 
 and nothing but a commonplace and even a vulgar man, 
 she meekly holds no one but herself to blame for her delu- 
 sion. This is the meekness of woman's nature. She real- 
 izes how lunatic her fancy was, and that it was all her own. 
 She even accuses herself of having deceived him by her 
 fancy's transformation of him, and by her adoration of tho
 
 IS WOMAN A LIVING LIE? 157 
 
 creation of her own fancy, wliicli drew him into a marriage 
 that is mentally incompatible. The consciousness of this 
 gives her meekness, and makes her accept all the wifely 
 part as the path of duty, and to walk in it patiently. She 
 feels that she ought to feel for him that love which once 
 pervaded her whole being, and that it is her own fault that 
 she does not. Iler conscience is smitten that she ever 
 allowed him to believe he had possessed her soul, and this 
 ^akes her tender and true to him when all the halo with 
 which her imagination once enveloped him is dissipated 
 and all the glow of her feelings is cooled down. 
 
 This, instead of living a lie, is the devotion of her life 
 to the faithful performance of that which she has under- 
 taken, and to keeping the truth of her professions. It is 
 the keeping of her contract sacred to the utmost of her 
 ability. It is a life of self-sacrifice to truth. Instead of 
 reacting upon woman's moral nature, and making her 
 incapable of truth in all things, this chastened life, this 
 constant bearing of the cross, and this meek thought that 
 she alone is to blame for the conjugal yoking of intellect- 
 ual and spiritual opposites, naturally and logically brings 
 to women a finer tenderness and truthfulness. It makes 
 'them more considerate and submissive wives, having always 
 toward the husband some feeling of remorse for having 
 deceived him. It makes them more devoted to their chil 
 dren, lavishing upon them the wellspring of love which had 
 ceased to gush to the man. It makes them more spiritual 
 minded, more given to seek the consolations of religion, 
 more charitable toward their neighbors, more unselfish in 
 all things. Indeed, so paramount and all-pervading is the 
 influence of this delusion of love and disillusion of mar- 
 riage on the character of woman, that we are not capable 
 of judging what she would be without the experience of 
 this paradise, and of this fall, which comes to every woman 
 who marries in the natural way.
 
 XXXIY. 
 EQUAL RIGHTS OF THE CHILD. 
 
 THE claim of woman's equal rights was hardly heard 
 of till the present century. If the earth is only five 
 thousand or fifty million years old, this is great encourage-, 
 ment to'the women advocates to persevere. In fact, the 
 claim of women's rights in this country has sprung chiefly 
 from the Declaration of Independence. The declaration 
 that all men are created equal — improved in the common 
 speech to "^free and equal" — was a potent weapon in the 
 hands of the anti-slavery people; it is now a powerful 
 argument in the mouths of the women of the platform. 
 That it will ultimately break down man's oligarchy, as it 
 broke down slavery, can not be doubted by any who have 
 faith in the prevailing power of truth. 
 
 The term man in the Declaration means mankind, 
 which embraces womankind. The equality which is de- 
 clared is not a quality which the person grows into at some 
 lawful age arbitrarily fixed by others, but is a state into 
 which the child is born. Every female orator goes armed 
 with the Declaration of Independence, as Corwin, in the 
 greatest speech of his time, said our troops invaded Mex- 
 ico, carrying habeas corpus and trial by jury at the cannon's 
 mouth. Before this declaration of equal rights man stands 
 confounded. The logic of the rights of man carries 
 the rights of woman, and the same reasoning carried for- 
 ward makes undeniable the equal rights of the child. 
 
 Recent sensational events. West and East, in which 
 boys have shot their fathers, and girls have poisoned them, 
 because they chastised them by whipping, have brought 
 
 158
 
 EQUAL RIGHTS OF THE CHILD. 159 
 
 the question of cliildren's rights to the front. In a case 
 in Missouri the boy boldly asserted that his father had no 
 right to whip him, and that h*e had defended his own 
 rights by shooting him. This shocks ancient prejudice, 
 but so does the claim of woman's equal rights. ^\iiy not 
 ancient ideas be as much at fault in this as in regard to the 
 equality of woman? 
 
 Herein have children struck that blow which the maxim 
 of liberty requires of all who would be free. If woman 
 should strike the blow, she would make man respect her 
 cause through his fears. If they should declare a separa- 
 tion, holding men as enemies in war, until peace should be 
 arranged on honorable terms, they would soon fetch men 
 to their senses. But to proclaim independence and equal- 
 ity while seeking man's yoke as woman's proudest destiny, 
 and making his protection, and what they call his love, 
 essential to her existence, is to rant in words of freedom 
 while hugging the chains of bondage. 
 
 The logic of woman's right to the elective franchise is 
 irrefragable. First, all persons are by birth equal. Second, 
 the Fifteenth Amendment declares that "All persons born 
 or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the 
 jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and 
 of the State wherein they reside." Thus men, women and 
 infants are constitutional citizens. They then go back to 
 the Dred Scott decisioii, which declared that the term citi- 
 zen was limited to those possessed of the elective franchise. 
 By this they prove that women, being now constitutional 
 citizens, have the right to vote. 
 
 This was the lawyer process by which Benjamin F. But- 
 ler asserted that women are now voters de j'lcre, whereby 
 that gay deceiver captivated the credulous suffragists of 
 Massachusetts. The acute logical quality of the female 
 mind, which instinctively goes straight to the desired end.
 
 160 EQUAL RIGHTS OF THE CHILD. 
 
 takes a firm grip on this law process, which adds the defini- 
 tion of citizen, in an overruled judicial decision, to the 
 Article of the Constitution which overruled it. Upon this 
 firm foundation of logic and law do the woman suffragists 
 plant their rights, surely believing that it makes them 
 voters dejure, and than they are kept out of their rights by 
 brute force. They who are fit to be free, themselves will 
 strike the blow. 
 
 The same law process enfranchises every person born in 
 the jurisdiction, or naturalized — man, woman and child. 
 This may startle old prejudices; so does the enfranchise- 
 ment of women; but the argument is the same, and the 
 argument against is alike untenable. Logic does not quail 
 at results. It will be said, that the child is dependent on 
 parents, and therefore is not a free elector; so it is said that 
 the wife is dependent on the man, and will have to vote as 
 he does. But this does not silence woman. All voters are 
 led in some way — by their party, their newspaper, their 
 friends, and so on. What influence more wholesome than 
 that of man on the voting wife, and of parents directing 
 the voting infant? 
 
 The ancient notion that children are under obligations 
 to parents for bringing them into the world, and, therefore, 
 have no right to freedom until they have reached a certain 
 age, arbitrarily fixed by the parents, has no place under the 
 Declaration that all men are created equal. They are not 
 created men, in the sense of being full-grown, but are 
 created equal, in that they are born equal. Nor will the claim 
 of parents that the child is under obligation to them for 
 fetching him into the world, or for protecting, supporting 
 and rearing him, bear rational investigation. 
 
 The foundation principle that underlies the bottom of 
 our institutions is that they are founded on the consent of 
 the governed. In flagrant violation of this principle the
 
 EQUAL RIGHTS OF THE CHILD. 161 
 
 child is brought into this world without his consent. lie 
 has never been heard in court on tliis claim of parents. He 
 may demand whether they brought him into the world for 
 his good, 01* for their own glory; whether they did not 
 force him into a hard destiny in this world, and into fear- 
 ful chances in the next, in utter tlioughtlessnessfor his fate. 
 The argument would surely go against thera. A just court 
 would have to decide that instead of his owing duty to 
 them, they owe him the service and earnings of their lives 
 for the life which they recklessly forced upon him. 
 
 Therefore the growing practice of the sons and daugh- 
 ters of this fashionable generation to begin in early years 
 to reckon how the parents will cut up, is in line with their 
 just right to get even with them for imposing on them, 
 without their consent, the dreadful fact of existence. Thus 
 must all notions of the obligations of children to parents 
 be eliminated from the question of their equal rights, as in 
 all subjection of the wife to the man from her right to vote. 
 All persons are in some way directed how to vote. What 
 voters can be better guided for the State than children by 
 parents Avho owe them the duty to train them up in the 
 way they should go? Shall not our elections be wrapped 
 in associations which appeal to all the softer parts of human 
 nature, when the mother, herself a voter, guides the tiny 
 hand of the babe at her breast, as she lovingly loosens its 
 instinctive clutch, to jilace in the box — 
 
 " A weapon that comes down as still 
 As snowflakcs fall upon the sod, 
 But executes a freeman's will. 
 As lightning does the will of God?" 
 
 11
 
 XXXY. 
 
 WAS THE CREATION A FAILURE ? 
 
 THERE is on record the testimony of very high 
 autliority that the work of creation was well done. 
 But that was long ago. Not a few very good people think 
 they magnify their own goodness by calling the world very 
 bad. They honor the Creator by making creation a failure. 
 They lose their brains in wandering mazes in the inquiry 
 into the origin of evil, to account for creation's going back 
 on the Creator. The origin of good seems easy, but tne 
 origin of evil is a puzzle. How good can be without evil 
 is further along than they have got. 
 
 Thus do many good people make the work of creation 
 such a failure that they allege that there must be another 
 creation which is good enough to make things even. Their 
 wonderful logic reasons from the superlative badness of the 
 known to the superlative goodness of the unknown. They 
 exalt the Creator's unknown work by making the worst of 
 the known creation. Thus they make pessimism in the 
 reality ground for optimism in the unseen; the condem- 
 nation of everything here as wrong the reason for the con- 
 clusion that everything is right elsewhere. 
 
 If they should put their minds to conceiving a world 
 which was good, they might discover that creation is a 
 work which needs a master hand. Each one can imagine 
 for himself what he thinks betterment; but reflection 
 would show that it is selfish, and would not be betterment 
 to all. The fancy generally takes the shajie of riches 
 enough to supply all wants of ease and luxury. But riches 
 can not command ease and luxury nor comfort unless they 
 command the labor of other persons. To make a few rich 
 
 162
 
 WAS THE CREATION A FAILURE? 1C3 
 
 would not better the creation. Universal riches would be 
 the same as universal poverty, and each one would have to 
 scratch for his living. 
 
 Can the mind conceive a world without #vil, which 
 would not be a world without good? Can it conceive vir- 
 tue without vice? A world in which it would be impossi- 
 ble to sin, would make its inhabitants no better than 
 sticks and stones, or than those we call brute beasts. A 
 world in which sin brought no penalty, would be utter 
 debasement. By sin is meant any violation of pliysiologi- 
 cal laws — any transgression of the laws of our well-being. 
 If they could sin without consequences, correct living 
 would be no elevation, and virtue and vice would be on a 
 level. The principle of debasement is, also, the principle 
 of elevation. One can not be without the other. 
 
 The moral law — which is the same as to say tlie physi- 
 ological law — makes sin lasting in consequences. Men 
 may think to sponge tlie score by what they call repent- 
 ance, but they do not obliterate the consequences. These 
 remain in the world; they stick to their own natures. 
 They are transmitted to posterity. Necessarily the sins of 
 the parents are visited upon the children. If men might 
 debase themselves with no evil consequences to offspring, ■ 
 the physiological living of parents would be no improve- 
 ment of offspring. Thus, virtue and vice, good living and 
 bad living, would all be on a level, and the attempt to create 
 a good world by having no evil consequences to sin, would 
 come out at a world without moral law. 
 
 The consequences of sin in all their ramifications in 
 this and succeeding generations, are the causes of correct 
 living. They are all the working of the benevolent law by 
 which the fittest survive and the unfittest perish; by which 
 correct living is elevation and unphysiological living is 
 degradation. Any other law would be moral chaos, uni- 
 versal degradation, and final extinction. In fact, under any
 
 164 WAS THE CREATION^ A FAILURE? 
 
 other law existence could not begin. They who are search- 
 ing for the origin of evil may find it in the origin of good. 
 
 Men fancy existence in a climate always soft, in which 
 nature's b^som supplies food without being harried by 
 labor; but in such circumstances man sinks to an indolent, 
 stupid beast. The toilers fancy a life without work, but 
 man would lose mental energy, and would sink to degrada- 
 tion. They fancy that things could be improved by 
 abolishing the rigor of winter; but the contention with 
 nature's rougher conditions produces the highest physical 
 and mental energies of the human race, and the changing 
 seasons make each a delight, whereas a constant sunny 
 climate would be depressing monotony. 
 
 Each one may think he could create a world which would 
 be better for himself; but if he puts his mind to conceiving 
 one which would be better for all, he would gain more 
 resj)ect for the creation as it stands. The unthinking 
 think that death is an evil. It may be to the individual. 
 It is fortunate that he has not the choice. As evil is req- 
 uisite to good, so death is requisite to life. If men did 
 not die, men could not be born. "Without the passing 
 away and the ever renewal of life, the world would bo like a 
 living thing chained to a corpse. 
 
 If Eve fetched in death, as many do foolishly accuse 
 her, she is our blessed mother; as blessed in this way of 
 making room for the race as in beginning it. One was 
 nccessai-y to the other, and one was as great an invention 
 as the other. In the exercise of the inalienable right to 
 pursue happiness, men may enjoy the idea that all that is 
 is wrong: may think pessimism piety; may wonder how a 
 good Creator could let evil slip in and spoil the work. 
 But if they keep on searching they may find the origin of 
 evil in the origin of good, and may possibly come to the 
 conclusion that when the work of creation was pronounced 
 good, it was by One who knew.
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 SACRILEGIOUS PLAYS. 
 
 THE Mayor of New York refused a license to a trans- 
 formed church in which the " Passion Play " was to be 
 performed. Public sentiment required it. The line 
 against plays which touch sacred things sliould be drawn 
 somewhere, and for the present it is drawn, by common 
 consent, at the ''Passion Play"— a play which makes the 
 crucifixion a dramatic spectacle. People go on pilgrimages 
 to see it at Oberammergau, and describe its effect on them 
 as deeply religious; but this is different from fetching the 
 play to our country, and into audiences which would be as 
 promiscuous as in the usual theatres. 
 
 The "Passion Play " is a relic of the miracle plays of 
 the olden time, which were performed in the churches, in 
 which God and the other divine persons were personagi s 
 of the drama, and in which miracles were rendered by 
 stage machinery, very much as Wagner does now. The 
 elder Disraeli, in his ''Curiosities of Literature," gives 
 some curious records of accounts kept of the payments for 
 the various theatrical properties for the divine drami(h's 
 jjcrsonce. An incident is told that an actor who personated 
 God narrowly escaped being smothered by a brass head- 
 piece and visor, which he wore to make his face to shine. 
 The common people were more reverential to sacred things 
 than those in our day, and they saw nothing sacrilegious 
 in these plays. 
 
 The drama grew away from Church uses, and left 
 sacred things, but it seems to be returning. The latest 
 opera, Wagner's "Parsifal," has a grand and solemn 
 
 1G5
 
 l66 " SACRILEGIOUS PLAYS. 
 
 spectacle of tlie Kniglits of the Holy Grail taking the 
 sacrament. Catholics hold this to be the very body and 
 blood of Jesus Christ; Protestants, that it is so in a 
 ** spiritual sense"; all, that it is a sacred rite. In another 
 act, Parsifal, as a preparatory ordeal for recovering the 
 sacred spear from the diabolical enemy, is subjected to 
 trial of his constancy by the voluptuous charms and 
 blandishments of the nymphs of the ballet. Beholders say 
 the effect of this opera is deeply religious. Wagner says it 
 is so religious in character that it should not be performed 
 elsewhere than at Bayreuth, to which people come in a 
 state of mind. 
 
 In ''Freischiitz" Agathe kneels and sings a prayer. 
 It is a religious act, and is done with the accompaniment 
 of orchestra, and in the face of an audience who come for 
 pleasure. Yet the prayer is so natural in her distress, and 
 is so sweet and prayerful, that the audience is religiously 
 affected. So is the religious feeling deeply moved when 
 Zerlina, in " Fra Diavolo," as she is undressing in her 
 bed-chamber, unconscious of the presence of the bandits 
 who are watching and mocking her, kneels and commends 
 herself to the keeping of the Blessed Virgin; and again, 
 when sleeping, she unconsciously repeats words of the 
 prayer as the bandit is about to strike his dagger into her, 
 and he, cowed by the sacred words, is unable to do the 
 deed. 
 
 Sacred things dramatically presented on the stage do 
 not seem sacrilegious. They are easily described as such, 
 especially to those who think the theatre wicked; but 
 spectators see them without consciousness of sacrilege or 
 sin. The oratorios have religious personages and events, 
 and prayers, and praise, and hallelujahs, sung by sinners, 
 and heard by audiences as musical entertainments. Masses 
 — the sacred music of the worship and prayers of the
 
 SACKILEGIOUS PLAYS. 167 
 
 Savior's sacrifice for tlie redemption of man — are sung in 
 our festivals as a mere performance. John Sebastian 
 Bach's *' Passion Music ''is a lyrical rendition in dramatic 
 form of the life and death of the Savior, and is done and 
 heard as a mere musical entertainment. 
 
 All this shows that the drama has entered so largely 
 into religious things, that the line has become fine, and 
 can not be made consistent. Religion is so tremendous an 
 element in mankind thg,t the drama can not get along 
 without it. If it avoids sacrilege to the feelings of the time 
 by taking the classical or pagan religions, as for examiile, 
 " Norma,'^ which is all religious, yet this is hardly a more 
 religious notion of sacred things than that of the Protest- 
 ants who are not shocked by Catholic holy rites on the 
 stage, or than of the Catholics who can see no sacrilege in 
 making Protestant religious things parts of the drama. 
 
 In the opera of "Moses in Egypt "^re prayers and 
 altar services by Moses and the Hebrews ; a colossal eye in 
 the cloudy background, to represent the All-seeing eye; 
 Moses works the miracle of restorin-g light to the darkened 
 day, and of calling down a thunderbolt to break the image 
 of Osiris; the Hebrews pass through the parted Red Sea, 
 its waves made by kicking-boys underneath green canvas, 
 and escape behind the wings. Moses is priestly and majes- 
 tic, and all is solemn until it comes to the passage of the 
 Red Sea, which is a se^vere strain of the imagination to 
 make all seem adequate. 
 
 Perhaps the rudest invasion of holy things is by the 
 recent opera " Mefistofele." In the "Prologue in Heaven," 
 all the heavenly host and the throne are supposed to be 
 present but invisible, and the saints and angels round the 
 throne sing hail and holy, and Mephisto, who is visible, 
 mocks their worship and chaffs them, and scoffs at their 
 " Sovereign Lord," and challenges him to a trial of jiower. 
 And so, through the medium of the saints and angels a
 
 168 SACEILEGIOUS PLATS. 
 
 wager is laid, resembling, that for the trial of Job; and 
 Mephisto undertakes to tempt Faust to his destruction. 
 This seems not to have aroused any sensibilities of sacri- 
 lege. 
 
 The office of a priest is sacred to the Catholics. The 
 Protestant thinks the minister's a holy calling; although 
 in his relation of pew-owner he may hold the minister sub- 
 ject to his notion. Priests are put into plays, even to 
 administer marriage, which Catholics call a sacrament, and 
 which Protestants think God's holy ordinance, and that it 
 should be sacred so long as the tempers are compatible. 
 Mr. George Wilkes, who has commented on Shakspeare 
 ''from an American point of view," proves that secretly he 
 was a Catholic. The evidence is that his Catholic priests are 
 reverend men; such as the priest at the burial of Ophelia, 
 and Friar Lawrence in " Eomeo and Juliet," who made a 
 pretty mess of it; and, on the other hand, that his "reformed" 
 ministers are scurvy fellows, such as Sir Oliver Martext and 
 Sir Hugh Evans. 
 
 In the church scene in the opera of "Faust," the stage 
 presents an altar and the officiating priest and acolytes. 
 Catholics think this the place where the sacrifice of the 
 Savior is rejieated. Some of them rise and leave the theatre 
 when this scene is presented, thus letting their light shine. 
 It does not apjjear to shock the feelings of the Protestants. 
 The theme of the whole drama is that prof oundest affair of 
 mankind, the perdition or salvation of a soul. The drama 
 would be weak if forbidden to touch this greatest of the 
 concerns of life. It does enter largely into it, and the line 
 of discrimination has become fine and inconsistent. Per- 
 haps, if rationally viewed, the worst sacrilege is in the use 
 of the words and music of worship and of the greatest of 
 sacraments, for mere musical entertainment. Whether the 
 present lino Avill last is a thing which can not be foretold, 
 but for the present it gives great satisfaction.
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE STRONG- 
 MINDED, 
 
 AEASH EDITOR of a paper in that iiucultured region 
 which is called Out West, made a mannish fling at the 
 lot of orators at a woman's suUrage convention by this: 
 
 " Several platform women were there. These women 
 were either old maids or married wo?nen who were not par- 
 ticularly happy at home. There is not a single woman on 
 the platform of female suffrage in the whole broad land 
 who has a happy family of husband and children, not one.'^ 
 
 A friend to woman took this as meaning that these 
 platform speakers lacked ability to perpetuate their S2)ecics. 
 He wrote Miss Susan B. Anthony about it, as the highest 
 authority. 
 
 Miss Anthony has at all points the best intellectual 
 equipment of all the apostles of woman's rights; but she 
 was unable to state in her own case the effect of intellec- 
 tual activity on the child-bearing ability. She said, how- 
 ever, that she is the only one of the pioneers of the suffrage 
 movement who has refrained from marrying, and she gave 
 the number and sex of the children of the most distin- 
 guished of her co-laborers. For Miss Susan B. Anthony 
 is the St. Paul of the woman's rights dispensation — the 
 only one who can kee]) contiiient to this exclusive devotion 
 to the cause of her down-trodden sex. 
 
 A scientist has taken hold of these statistics, and has 
 pointed out that of the offspring of five of the most distin- 
 guished orak)rs, namely, Antoinette Brown Black well, 
 Lucy Stone, LucreLia Mott, Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. 
 
 109
 
 170 THE CHILDREN OF THE STRONG-MINDED. 
 
 Blake^ making nineteen in all, seventeen are girls. This 
 is remarkable enough to excite inquiry as to the cause. The 
 eleven mothers listed have forty-four children, which seems 
 a fair fecundity in an old community; but the scientist 
 jDoints to the fact that twenty-five are females, to nineteen 
 males, showing a preponderance of twenty-five per cent, of 
 females in the families of the strong minded women; 
 whereas in, general, the sexes are about equal in the births. 
 
 The suffragists need not trouble themselves about peo- 
 pling the earth. Unless it can be made better, it is a ques- 
 tion if population is commendable. The whole had to be 
 drowned, once, like a surplus litter of blind kittens, and the 
 testimony of all the preachers is that the need is as great 
 now as then. Enough will attend to the affair of perjjet- 
 uating the species, while the strong-minded apply them- 
 selves to a higher mission. A division of labor — the in- 
 tellectual taking the jilatform, and tlie jjlacid doing the 
 family duty — may give higher results in this as in other 
 arts. 
 
 Men and women in all times have devoted their lives 
 to special services to mankind, sacrificing domestic joys, 
 and feken on vows of celibacy. If the advocates of wo- 
 man's rights had followed the example of Susan B. An- 
 thony, and dwelt in maiden meditation, fancy free, in order 
 to devote soul, mind and strength to the cause of their sex, 
 they might have approached her intellectual eminence. 
 And they need not have concerned themselves about pop- 
 ulation. Herein was Mrs. Cady Stanton's weakness. She 
 prided herself more on the mere fact of being married, and 
 having children — a relation common to all viling crea- 
 tures — than on her mind or her cause. 
 
 The affair of procreating would take care of itself 
 without any need to divert their minds from their great 
 mission. And if it be true that the mental activity of the
 
 THE C'Hll.IiUKxX OK THE STliONG-MlN DEI). 171 
 
 beuriiig of a great cause restricts child-bearing, it is the 
 more reason for leaving the' office to those women whose 
 powers of maternity and lines of beauty are not diminished 
 by shriveling thought. 
 
 One of the most distinguished of the suffrage orators 
 has said on the platform that to bring a daughter into the 
 world where women are so opi)ressod made her to weep 
 and to wail. But she must have thought better of it, for 
 she is listed by Miss Anthony as having two children, both 
 girls.* LikeAvise, her colaborers must have thought differ- 
 ently, for they continued to repeat girls. And there is 
 good reason for this sober second thought, as will appear 
 fHrther along. 
 
 All the elements of the problem must be taken in before 
 a scientific fact can be deduced. The inquiry must 
 embrace the men whom these intellectual women have 
 married before it can derive anything from the paucity or 
 number or sex of the offspring. The sage magistrate of 
 Messina' cited the maxim: " An two men ride of a horse, 
 one must ride behind.^' If it be true that but one in the 
 yoke can be strong-minded, this fact must be taken into 
 the account as bearing on the fruitfulness of the pair and 
 the sex of the children. 
 
 That women whose minds run on female wrongs and 
 man's oj^pressions, and who often feel the inflation of the 
 oratorical fervor, and the inspiration of a symjiathetic 
 audience, should conceive 'females, is according to nature. 
 By the same law their girls will be strong minded; will 
 have great intellectual activity, and will take up, genera- 
 tion after generation, with increasing numbers and intel- 
 lectual power, the mission which their mothers stamped on 
 their beginning. 
 
 Therefore, when rightly viewed, the preponderance of 
 female births in the platform orators of the suffrage move-
 
 173 THE CHILDEEN OF THE STRONG-MINDED. 
 
 ment is a constantly growing power for woman's emanci- 
 pation. So will the advocates of her cause increase and 
 multiply and make the earth resound. Who can doubt 
 that with this multiplication of its species it will ultimately 
 prevail? And if this high work leaves their male yoke- 
 fellows in mental resignation and weak inactivity, is not 
 this as well as the requirement on the other side, that 
 woman shall not think and shall not find out her rights 
 and wrongs, nor know good and evil, lest she weaken the 
 maternal function? •
 
 XXXYIII. 
 THE THEATRE. 
 
 THE theatre is under the ban of the truly good, and 
 periodically it receives a blast of anathemas from the 
 pulpit; yet it is the chief popular recreation in the 
 large cities, and, under the circuit system, is rapidly 
 extending into the small towns. A number of Ohio towns 
 of from ten to twenty thousand inhabitants have theatres 
 as handsome as any in Cincinnati. Theatre notices are 
 a leading feature in the city journals. Yet the truly good, 
 who never attend the theatre, pronounce it wicked, and 
 would make actors and actresses outcasts. A clergyman 
 who does the burial service over an actor is celebrated as 
 exceptionally liberal. Even he has to deplore that the 
 departed chose such aprofe.-sion. This custom led the late 
 Charles Thorne to resolve, with two brother actors, that 
 no burial service should be performed for him. 
 
 In the land is heard the sound of lamentation over the de- 
 cline of the influence of the pulpit; yet the theatre increases. 
 If it were bad, the outlook for society would be bad. 
 Many seem to find a pious enjoyment in saying that the 
 outlook is utterly bad, Wiiat is the theatre? A personi- 
 fied portrayal of human experience. Tlie playwright's 
 fancy can not transcend the reality of existence. It is a 
 representation of scenes of universal humanity, delivered 
 so as to seem real events. It is a portrayal, in a life-like 
 form, of scenes in tlie battle of life; of the passions of 
 human nature; of great and mean ambitions; great and 
 mean crimes, and of retributions; of courage and coward- 
 ice; of whatever is heroic in human nature, contrasted 
 
 173
 
 174 THE THEATRE. 
 
 with mean passions;' of the eternal contention between 
 good and evil, with an improvement over the way this con- 
 tention is portrayed in the pulpit, in that on the stage 
 good generally gets the better of evil. 
 
 Like as experience in great trials is more effective than 
 written maxims, so is the dramatic delineation of the traits 
 and trials of hnmanity more powerful than preaching. 
 This impersonation is a high art, embracing the accom- 
 plishments of oratory, the graces of action, and the rare 
 combination of the faculty to conceive the character, and 
 the faculty to deliver that conception. The theatre is an 
 education in speech. Preachers might do well to study 
 the elocution of its masters. The worthy pursuit of this 
 art is an honorable profession. It has been distinguished 
 by men and women of rare gifts of body and mind, who 
 brought to this laborious art the lire of genius and the 
 enthusiasm of great ambition. 
 
 There are theatres and theatres. Why should othse 
 that are high be rated with the low? This is not the way 
 we judge the newspaj^er press or the book press. There 
 are vile newspapers and vile books. An ill rejiute remains 
 to the theatre from olden times, when plays ran much to 
 coarseness; when women of fashion went masked to the 
 theatre because of its indelicacy; not, however, because of 
 their own delicacy. Yet many of those who condemn the 
 stage, affect a liberality by speaking of it as degraded from 
 the olden time. Of these are they who join the general 
 affectation of lauding the Shakespeare plays as refined, and 
 moral, and religious. Yet they have to be much pruned 
 for the present stage. And the critic who is not demented 
 by the Shakespeare mania, would look in vain, in most of 
 them, for a sign that the playwright had any sentiment of 
 morals, or care for anything but the stage business. 
 
 The theatre has steadily grown in decency. The plays
 
 THE THEATRE. 175 
 
 which run on the ragged edge of indelicacy are those that 
 are called classical, and are the best remains of the olden 
 time. Earely is anything offensive spoken in the theatres 
 which are classed as respectable. Tlie theatre of our time 
 is moral. It holds virtue up to admiration and vice to 
 reprobation. In the drama poverty is no disgrace; whicli 
 can hardly be said of fashionable society, church society, 
 or any other society. Rags are honorable on the he or slie 
 who is struggling with misfortune. The theatre has no 
 respect for riches without generosity. Only in this mimic 
 world is justice executed without respect to jjcrsons. 'J'lie 
 sympathies of its beholders are always with the oppressed, 
 and they give the oppressor what he deserves. 
 
 In the corrupted currents of this world — as was observed 
 by Hamlet's TJncle — offense's gilded hand may shove by 
 justice, and the wicked gains themselves may bribe the 
 law, and make society and Church respect the great thief; 
 but it is not so in the theatre. There tlie action is judged 
 on its merit, and riches are no shelter from retribution. 
 The poverty of our country in the literary talent for play- 
 writing — as well as in general literary talent — and the 
 needs of the numerous dramatic companies have brought 
 out many American plays that are very crude. Indeed, 
 an American play is a fearful name. But, as a class, they 
 are dreadfully moral. They make the way of the trans- 
 gressor harder than it is in either fashionable or religious 
 society, and show that, although the wicked may flourish 
 for a time, he is cut down at last like a green bay tree. 
 
 The truly good think the gallery of the theatre especially 
 bad — depraving the boys and young men and the " lower 
 classes, '^ who have not acquired the character to resist its 
 bad influence. But the sinful gallery is vociferous in its 
 morals. The tritest moral sentiment brings it down. It 
 applauds all that is good and heroic, and hisses all tliat is
 
 176 THE THEATRE. 
 
 mean and cruel. The heavy villain, or the smooth and 
 sanctimonious villain, has an ungrateful part to play before 
 the righteous Judgments of this wicked part of the 
 theatre congregation. It specially admires the heroic 
 courage which defies the tyrant and his minions; v/hich 
 rescues beleaguered innocence from villainy and helpless 
 lives from peril; which plunges into the burning house 
 and fetches out the fainted damsel, and then marries her; 
 which brings to retribution the hard-hearted landlord, who 
 has turned the sick laborer and his wife and nine small 
 children into the street. It applauds all that is high in 
 conduct, and scorns all that is base. 
 
 Wherein is the badness of tlie stage which subjects it 
 to the general condemnation of the truly good ? In general, 
 this sentence lacks specification, and when it attempts to 
 specify it shows total ignorance of what the theatre is. 
 Last Sunday the Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby, of New York, 
 did put an accusation into form, by declaring that even 
 the best of the theatres are but places of vice, where the 
 marriage vow is made light of, and where most of the 
 plays hinge upon some filthy intrigue. But this is untrue. 
 If the Rev. Crosby were not truly good, it would be very 
 wicked in him to pronounce such a calumny on the theatre 
 and on those who attend. Tliere is a piety which consists 
 of dreadful pictures of the wickedness of the world and 
 of giving thanks that we are not as they. 
 
 In general, when the truly good try to give a reason 
 for calling the theatre bad, they come down to a meaner 
 one than this by alleging the immoral lives of members of 
 the dramatic profession. By this they give tongue to a 
 cruel calumny against a whole class, for the supposed 
 errors of some, of which they can know nothing. They 
 are mere scandal-mongers. What do they know of the 
 private lives of actors and actresses? What business have
 
 THE THEATRE. I'J"? 
 
 they to know? They either go out of their way to hunt 
 for scaudal, or they take it to tliemselves without evidence. 
 They whose minds are unclean, have nothing in their 
 bodies to brag of. That the mind is tlie real existence is 
 both scriptural and scientific. Yet not a few think that 
 to be ever talking of sexual sins proves their own purity. 
 
 Theatre circles are no better than society circles; 
 scandal is entertaining to them, and is as reckless, envious 
 and cruel, and members of the profession are peculiarly 
 exposed to this low part of human nature. But as to the 
 truth of such scandals, people who do not busy themselves 
 to fish in such foulness can know nothing, and honorable 
 people will not descend to this scandul-mongcring, nor 
 utter v/ithout knowledge. The public's relation to the 
 members of the dramatic profusion is as artists, the same 
 as the works of the sculptor and painter. Their acting in 
 the characters of the play is all that the public can know 
 or can properly care for as to their characters. 
 
 Men and women whose great endowments have honored 
 this profession, have honored it by lives as good as those 
 who would make them outcasts. This calumny testifies 
 only to the badness of the minds which utter it. The 
 theatre, in the face of this pious ban, is growing more and 
 more into prominence as the popular recreation, as an 
 educator of the people, and as a moral power. On the 
 other hand, the moral influence of those who condemn the 
 theatre is comparatively growing less. This is a social 
 problem which needs a new method of treatment. 
 
 IS
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 THE REAL DISABILITY OF WOMAN. 
 
 WOMEN who think they are emancipated in spirit, 
 and who set themselves up as apostles of woman's 
 rights, betray that they are still servile, by making the fact 
 of marriage a higher boast, and by casting reli ections on 
 their own sisters in the cause, because a man has not saved 
 them. Thus Mrs. Henry B. Stanton has been heard to say 
 on the platform, on which sat Susan B. Anthony and other 
 advocates of woman's rights, single and married, that she 
 was a happy wife and mother; boasting thereby her supe- 
 riority, and casting the reflection that the general lot of 
 advocates of woman suffrage are soured maids or disappoint- 
 ed wives. 
 
 She who must have a man to lean upon, or boast of, is 
 not herself emancipated, and can not have great power as 
 an advocate of woman's enfranchisement. Of all the women 
 who have taken the platform for woman's cause, Susan B. 
 Anthony is the best endowed, intellectually, and is the 
 most free from this servile spirit and from all the womanly 
 weaknesses which make them seek the protection or 
 admiration of man. Yet, this has made her almost iso- 
 lated, even among those who regard themselves as having a 
 special mission to declare woman's indej)endence; for all 
 these have made husbands and children the chief end of 
 their existence. There was pathos, as well as cause for 
 thought on the possibilities of woman's cause, in Miss 
 Anthony's remark to a friend, just before she sailed for 
 Europe: 
 
 *' I feel lonely here. Everybody else who has been iden- 
 178
 
 THE REAL DISABILITY OP WOMAN. 17'J 
 
 tificd witli tlic movement for the advancement of women 
 seems to have ceased to live for the cause and is living for 
 herself. I am probably the only one of the many women 
 who are striving for the emancipation of the sex who has 
 been nnsurrounded by home duties and home cares. Eliz- 
 abeth Cady Stanton has seven children. Antoinette Brown 
 Blackwell is the mother of five girls. Lucretia Mott lias 
 six children, Lillie Devereux Blake has two, Mrs. Olympia 
 Brown two, Martha C. Wright five, Belva A. Lock wood 
 two, and even Lucy Stone has one. They are all surround- 
 ed by home comforts and more or less moved by home 
 interests. I am all alone. I begin to feel as though I had 
 no place, and I am going abroad. Not that I hope to 
 accomplish anything on the other side, or that things will 
 be much better when I return, but because I feel I ought 
 to have some change." 
 
 To say that her sisters in the movement are married, 
 and have ceased to live for the cause, embraces but a small 
 part of the fact. They have regarded marriage and the 
 protection of a man as the highest attainment. They tell 
 others to be free of man, while they seek bondage to him, 
 and regard his chain as their most honorable decoration. 
 
 What chance has woman for emancijiation when her 
 own nature seeks subjection? She declaims for freedom 
 on the platform, while her heart embraces captivity as her 
 chief glory. She makes the freedom of her sisters their 
 chief reproach. Even the great intellect of Susan B. 
 Anthony, and the great honor she has given to her sex,will 
 not save hot- from the pity of shallow-minded dcclaimersin 
 the same cause,»who are possessed by men. She sees that 
 the radical disability of woman is in her own nature, and 
 that custom and law have simply conformed to it. She 
 beholds that her sisters in the movement for the advance- 
 ment of woman have found their own highest advancement
 
 180 THE REAL DISABILITY OP WOMAK". 
 
 in marriage, and that woman's nature is to seek this as her 
 destiny. 
 
 Her remarks sound like a lament for the mistaken devo- 
 tion of mind and a life; as if she had realized that the 
 movement for woman's advancement is abstractly intellect- 
 ual, and has taken no hold on her true nature; as if, after 
 devoting her life and intellectual endowment to what she 
 thought the cause of woman, she had reached the sad con- 
 viction that woman's subjection to man is in the order of 
 nature. The foremost advocate of the rights of her sex 
 finds that she has no place among them. She does not 
 expect to do any good abroad, nor to find things any better 
 when she comes back, but she seeks a change. Yet other 
 women will rise up, and with lesser mental furniture will 
 declaim the emancipation of woman, and will keep their 
 eye on the main chance of bondage to a man as their high- 
 est advancement.
 
 XL. 
 
 LESSONS OF THE FLOOD. 
 
 THE FIRST lesson of the Ohio River flood is of char- 
 ity to the antedihivians, and of thankfulness that 
 we are not held to the same judgment. There has been 
 plentiful lack of this charity. The world has assumed that 
 they were served right because it is written that they were 
 wicked, and thereupon has commended its own goodness. 
 But were they more wicked than this generation? Accord- 
 ing to the general notions of time, they had not had so long 
 a spell in which to grow wicked. The common belief of 
 the good is that the people continually grow wickeder, and 
 the longer the time the greater the degree of wickedness. 
 If the description made by the truly good may be received, 
 the people are now very wicked. Said a preacher last 
 Sunday, expounding God's providence in the Ohio River 
 flood: 
 
 "Behold a more fearful, more devastating flood, the 
 flood of sin, by which our whole city is submerged. The 
 onrushing flood, seething, foaming, unchecked, damning, 
 is upon us. The very foundations of the city shake with 
 the swelling thereof. Behold the sight! Thousands of 
 saloons where flow the waters of death; gambling hells, 
 open day and night; brothels open on every street, with their 
 thousands of ' strange women ' to tempt and destroy, unob- 
 structed in their hellish traffic in human flesh. Behold the 
 onrush of the proud waves of this flood in the flaunting 
 infidelity; the rank atheism; the political corruption; the 
 obsequious press; obscene literature; the Sabbath desecra- 
 tion; the godless theatres, with minstrel shows and obscene 
 
 181
 
 182 LESSOlfS OF THE FLOOD. 
 
 and filthy plays, profaning the sacred day, making it a 
 holiday instead of a holy day; the broken moral and civil 
 Sabbath laws, that give us a day of wine and wassail, and 
 not of worship." 
 
 This presents a picture of more elaborate and highly 
 developed wickedness than the Scripture account of the 
 antediluvians, which is thus: 
 
 ''And God saw that the wickedness of man was great 
 in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts 
 of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the 
 Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved 
 Him at His heart." 
 
 Can things have been worse than this before the reform 
 flood? On the contrary, some of the most potent of these 
 causes of sin have no mention in those times. Minstrel 
 shows are a recent American invention. The theatre, as 
 it now is, is modern. The Italian opera, the most sensuous 
 form of the drama, is of recent development. Political 
 corruption is particularly rank in constitutional and popu- 
 lar governments, which are modern contrivances. Noah 
 must have preserved all the gambling device of his time, 
 and, as perpetuated, it was only a casting of lots divinely 
 directed. Nor does the preacher touch upon the worst of 
 gambling, namely, that in ideal stocks and ideal produce, 
 whose daily reports have a large sj)ace in our newspapers, 
 and which is immeasurably the more tempting and the 
 more ruinous because it is held respectable, and its votaries 
 hold costly pews in the churches. 
 
 The only clear mention of intoxicating drink in Scripture 
 is of wine — a very inconvenient liquor to carry and to keep. 
 The common belief is that distilling is a modern invention. 
 The Sitka Indians improvise a still with acouple of petro- 
 leum cans; but the history shows that Noah had no means 
 of intoxication till he had planted vines and grown grapes,
 
 LESSONS or TirE FLOOD. 183 
 
 which must have taken as much as three years. The com- 
 mon notion is that intemperance docs not grow to great 
 porportions in wine countries. In the statistical argument 
 of the salvation of our world through prohibition of the 
 manufacture and sale of spirits, it is stated that ninety-five 
 per cent, of our social evils is caused by drink. If we set 
 off five per cent, of this to vinous and nuilt liquors, still there 
 is left ninety per cent, of wickedness of our world from a 
 cause Avhich did not exist before the flood. 
 
 As they had no newspapers, they were exempt from that 
 part of the flood of sin which is made by an obsequious 
 press. In the primitive social relations of polygamy and 
 concubinage, the " strange women " Avere not so great a 
 social evil as in monogamous civilization. Obscene litera- 
 ture has come from the art of printing and a free press, both 
 of which are modern inventions. No mention is made of 
 political parties, of packed conventions, landgrabbing rail- 
 roads, blind pools, political assessments, or fraudulent elec- 
 tions in those days. The greater numljcr of the sins of 
 modern civilization have no mention in the time before the 
 flood. 
 
 That unbelief abounded is probable; but is it likely that 
 it was any worse than when Eobert IngersoU travels from 
 city to city, drawing crowds that fill the largest theatres, 
 and finds it profitable to scoff at all beliefs save in himself? 
 Were people before the flood more inclined than this gen- 
 eration to set up other things than the true God as the 
 supreme object of man's pursuit? That the Sabbath "was 
 broken then, as Sunday is now, is likely, but not any worse 
 than now — probably not so bad, as they lacked several of 
 the breaking instrumentalities which are here enumerated. 
 Probably they had other immoralities,but they appear to be 
 exempt from those things which make the greater part of 
 our sins. Without these it is not easy to see how they can
 
 184 LESSONS OF THE FLOOD. 
 
 have been so wicked as we. The ninety or ninety-five per 
 «ent. of our wickedness which is charged directly to spirits 
 makes a very large margin in their favor. 
 
 People have lightly received the account of the flood, as 
 a just judgment upon a wicked world, and have felt no 
 pity for it. Yet they were of like passions, feelings, social 
 relations, and ambitions as the world of our day. As now, 
 only the few rich could pursue pleasure; the mass were 
 struggling simply to live and to perpetuate their species. 
 The hardships and losses which we thought a great calam- 
 ity, when a small portion of our jDopulation was driv6n out 
 of the low lands by the rising river, and a small part of our 
 trade was damaged, were but the small beginning of theirs, 
 as the continually rising flood drove them from all food and 
 shelter to the hills, perishing by thousands in sight of each 
 other, as the wild waters climbed after the flying, until at 
 last the highest place was overtopped, and the last man 
 drowned. 
 
 All this has been read and thought on without pity or 
 charity. We asserted that the flood was sent upon them 
 for their sins, and that the punishment was just, and as we 
 are not drowned we complacently thought that it is because 
 we are too good; whereas a little reflection would show us 
 that we have added many inventions in wickedness to the 
 simple sins which the flood was sent upon. Nor is our 
 view of God's providence in the Ohio River flood any more 
 charitable. They who officially expounded this flood agree 
 that it is a special providence, and that it was sent because 
 of sin in the world; but, as in the case of Noah's flood, they 
 put the sin away far from themselves and upon people in 
 general. 
 
 The above extract enumerates sins enough for a general 
 drowning, yet the flood reached only the bottoms, and 
 made no discrimination between the justand the unjust, The
 
 LESSONS OF THE FLOOD. 185 
 
 hard-working father, supporting wife and little ones by 
 daily toil, and finding consola'tion for a hard lot here in the 
 promise of an easy one hereafter, and the faithful daughter 
 struggling to keep a home for infirm parents, found their 
 dwellings invaded by the pitiless waters the same as the 
 stores of the sharp trader. Another expounder says it was 
 to teach us our dependence on God. How is that, when 
 they who did put their trust in God, and daily gave thanks 
 for his protection, were served the same as they who trusted 
 in riches? Another says it Avas to teach us to lay up treas- 
 ures in heaven, where they are above high water. But 
 would these feed those Avhose provision was swept away? 
 And shall they not still respect the command to '*be dil- 
 igent in business and fervent in spirit? " 
 
 One says that it is a providence, and has a meaning, 
 but what that meaning is we may not undertake to say. 
 Yet he conveys that he knows. When people talk of mys- 
 terious providences, they mean mysterious to others, but 
 plain to themselves. A providence which has a meaning 
 that no fellow can find out would hardly be in the line of 
 moral government. It would convey no instruction or 
 moral lesson. One expounder sets forth with much argu- 
 ment that mankind are a continuous body politic or person, 
 which at all times is liable foi the sins of all previous 
 times; therefore, we can credit ourselves with the river 
 flood against the National sins of slavery, and the corrup- 
 tion of ^'our officials at Washington a few years ago." 
 Thus: 
 
 "The National person suffers. Hence our officials at 
 Washington, a few years ago, became corrupt as the Valley 
 of Jehosophat, and the citizens of Boston, Chicago and 
 the Northwest suffered from destructive fires. Hence our 
 Nation supported human slavery — that sum of all villain- 
 ies — and one million soldiers fell and nine billion dollars
 
 186 LESSONS OF THE FLOOD. 
 
 consumed. Heuce our Nation pei'sists in lier rebellion 
 iigiiinst God, and President Garfield is cut down 'in his 
 high i)laces' and we are suffering untold misery from de- 
 structive floods." 
 
 In this divine economy National sins fetch local lircs 
 and freshets; Guiteau becomes an instrument of Provi- 
 dence, and President Garfield's death and Arthur's acces- 
 sion a judgment. Thus is God's government an intelligent, 
 moral government — to those to whom it is revealed. 
 
 All the expoundings agree that the scourging by the 
 flood is much less than our deserts. Said one, referring to 
 the Puritan fathers: 
 
 " Had the flood occurred during the days of these godly 
 men, they would not have hesitated, I think, to call this 
 flood a special judgment on this sin-cursed city and valley 
 of Ohio. That its cup of iniquity is full, and that it 
 deserves a flood of fire from heaven, we do not deny." 
 
 Yet he and another argued that Providence had worked 
 out its design through laws made in the beginning, and 
 that this visitation has come through the cutting away of 
 the forests. Thus are the sins of the woodman who spared 
 not the tree visited upon those who never owned one. 
 
 Our esteemed contemporary, the Advocate, says, "the 
 flood reveals the mercy of God," because the conditions cf 
 a previous heavy covering of snow, and such a rain, migiit 
 give a rise of one hundred feet, whereas we have had but 
 sixty-six feet; the mercy being that God did not do to us 
 as badly as He could. All seem to concur in the opinion 
 that local punishments for National sins, and special judg- 
 ments which fall alike upon the righteous and the wicked, 
 are in accordance with God's moral government, and they 
 make trust in Him, daily acknowledgment of dependence 
 on Him, and daily prayer for His protection, and daily 
 devotion to pious duty, no cause for discrimination in His 
 scourgings for the wickedness of others.
 
 LESSONS OF THE FLOOD. 187 
 
 In all this is there not a strain of that complacent 
 uncharity with which we consign the antediluvians to their 
 fate, as served right because they were wicked ? When we 
 talk of National sins, and of our *' sin-cursed city," and of 
 a prevailing Avickedness, which deserves a consuming fire, 
 and a flood that would drown all, do we mean our own per- 
 sonal sins? Does not our liberality in confessing sin come 
 from the sense that we are confessing the sins of other 
 people? Or, if we in a sort of general way include our- 
 selves, is it not with that mental reservation with which 
 one says in public that he is the chief of sinners, and 
 thinks how good he is to say so? 
 
 The Scripture has many lessons on the presumptuous- 
 ness of undertaking to assist God, and of assuming to compre- 
 hend His mind, and to expound Ilis counsels. Yet men will 
 keej) doing it, and at the same time will talk about inscrut- 
 able wisdom, as if they could talk intelligently of wisdom 
 which is inscrutable. Let us hold them to their frequent 
 affirmation that the finite mind can not comprehend the 
 infinite. When it assumes to, it simply brings the infinite 
 down to the finite, and shapes it in its own image, and 
 comes out in a malignant being, who has always a club 
 uplifted, with nothing to do but whack his creatures on 
 the head, hitting the righteous and the wicked all the 
 same, and who is to be praised because he does not do as 
 cruelly as he can.
 
 XLL 
 
 TRIAL BY JURY, A DEFEAT OF JUSTICE. 
 
 A SUITOR who has confidence in the justice of his 
 cause prefers to have it tried by the Judge, feeling 
 that justice may be confused in the minds of twelve 
 jurors who are not expert in law, even if not chosen from 
 the unintelligent part of the community. This gives his 
 estimate of the value of trial by jury. An unjust man, 
 resisting a just claim, always demands a jury, calculating 
 that a lawyer may so confuse the minds of some of the 
 twelve that justice will be lost. This is his tribute to the 
 glorious right of trial by jury. A lawyer will say in sub- 
 stance to an applicant, that he has a very weak case in law, 
 but perhaps he can get something out of a jury, therefore 
 he will undertake it. This is the unconscionable lawyer's 
 estimate of trial by jury. If a lawyer thinks the cause 
 good in law and justice, he will prefer to have it tried by 
 the Judge. Trial by jury is therefore a great promoter of 
 litigation and of unjust and oppressive suits, and is recog- 
 nized by all parties as a means of defeating justice. 
 
 Men are commanded to leave their vocations to come 
 and try unjust causes, which Avould not venture to come 
 into Court at all but for this gambling on the chances of 
 the jury's going wrong. To serve these ends of injustice^ 
 and to serve very badly any end of justice, a lot of jurors 
 must be summoned at the public expense. That part 
 which is taxed to the suitor is but a small part of the cost 
 which is taxed on the public. The people know not the end 
 of the cost of juries, Avhich comes upon them all in the 
 general sea of taxes. Every notice and every summons 
 
 18§
 
 TRIAL BY JURY A DEFEAT OF JUSTICE. 189 
 
 costs, and the distance to the juror's residence is taxed in 
 the officer's mileage, although the summoned person comes 
 up onl\' to be challenged or excused. When at last the 
 trial begins the great waste of time and expense fairly sets 
 in. The aim of the unjust side is to confound right and 
 wrong in minds of the jurors, and to play upon any preju- 
 dice of jurors, whether of policital party, of religion, of 
 race, of nationality, of social position, and any otiier 
 element which may turn men's minds from considerations 
 of justice between the parties. 
 
 Lawyers do this professionally, and hold that they would 
 come short of their duty to clients if they did not resort to 
 this practice. This is their estimate of trial by jury. The 
 unjust side multiplies witnesses to fetch in things which 
 have no relevancy to the justice of the case. The calcula- 
 tion is that this may chance to fetch in some testimony or 
 influence that will prejudice the] mind of a juror. Thus 
 the attorney summons many witnesses to testify to irrele- 
 vant things, whom he would not offer at all if the case were 
 tried before a Judge. The just side has to meet these tac- 
 tics by summoning a lot of witnesses to counteract the 
 other lot in irrelevant things. Thus the case that should 
 be tried at one sitting is spread out into a week and more, 
 stopping the administration of justice and turning its 
 tribunals to institutions of injustice. 
 
 In all this lugging in of irrelevant testimony, the law- 
 yer who is resisting justice makes exceptions to the rulings 
 against the admission of the testimony which he offers, and 
 exceptions to the rulings which admit testimony on the 
 other side, for the purpose of taking an appeal on points 
 of law, in order to get a new trial to repeat the same 
 gambling on the chances of fooling the jury, and the same 
 imposition on the Courts, and on the public. Thus is the 
 jury trial a defeiit of the administration of justice, a costly
 
 190 TRIAL BY JURY A DEFEAT OF JUSTICE. 
 
 imposition on the public, and tlie great bulwark of wrong. 
 The chief practice under it plainly recognizes it as a mock- 
 ery of justice, and as a protection of the strong wrongdoer 
 against the just cause of the weak. It has the respect of 
 neither bench, bar, nor people. The traditional reverence 
 for it is even m©re senseless than the worship of a wooden 
 imao'e which the worshiper has fashioned, for that at least 
 can not hurt him, while this is a monstrous oppression. 
 
 Trial by jury trifles with justice in criminal trials in 
 like manner. The process begins with an indictment by a 
 grand jury. This seems even a more farcical proceeding. 
 A person caught in the act of murder or robbery or steal- 
 ing or forgery, has to be indicted by a grand jury, sum- 
 moned at great cost. A rational supposition is, that if an 
 offender is caught, and the offense on its face is fit to go to 
 the grand jury, the going there is unnecessary; that, in 
 short, any offense that is flagrant enough to go to the grand 
 jury, and, upon testimony on one side only, to be reported 
 for prosecution, is flagrant enough to be prosecuted upon 
 complaint or information, without going through the grand 
 jury. As for another part of the functions assumed by 
 grand juries, namely, the making inquest in the commu- 
 nity at large to inquire if anybody is doing that for which 
 he ought to be indicted, that would be better if left out 
 altogether. It does not seem to belong to a system of law. 
 
 Through this costly and absurd process the accused, 
 perhaps caught in the act of an atrocious crime, is brought 
 into Court, the indictment read, his plea made, and then 
 a jury has to be impaneled, to which he has several per- 
 emptory challenges, and unlimited clmllenges for cause. 
 To have formed any idea of the crime from public report 
 is generally found a sufficient cause for challenge. As all 
 atrocious crimes are given notoriety by the newspapers, and 
 by public rumor, this in general serves to disqualify the fairly
 
 TRIAL BY JURY A DEFEAT OF JUSTICE. 191 
 
 intelligent people for jurors in any trial for flagrant crime. 
 Thus is the cause of i)ublic justice degraded to the most 
 ignorant and irresponsible element of the community. 
 The trial from beginning to end is a fight against justice, 
 in which all the advantages are given to the offender, llis 
 attorney sprinkles the testimony of the prosecution all 
 through with his exceptions to its admission, and he then 
 excepts to any ruling against the testimony which he offers. 
 This is to find some technical error upon which he can get 
 the Supreme Court to set aside the verdict, and order 
 another trial, to repeat the same game. 
 
 He multiplies witnesses to testify to irrelevant and im- 
 proper things, to confuse and prejudice the minds of the 
 jurors. As any one of twelve can prevent a verdict, he has 
 twelve chances to play upon men who can not be expected 
 to be of high intelligence, »or of any expertness in sifting 
 and weighing testimony. If there be among the twelve 
 even one who is susceptible to prejudice of race, religion, 
 nationality, political party, secret order, or any other, he 
 brings all his ingenuity i» play upon this. The Judge has 
 to rule off-hand on his many objections to testimony, and 
 in this he has the chance that out of all the rulings he may 
 find one that is erroneous. And as the Supreme Court 
 may not take upon itself to judge how much may have 
 hung upon this error, it rules largely in sending back the 
 case to be tried over again, with all the enormous cost to 
 the people, and with all the chances of playing the same 
 game over again. 
 
 When this appeal on error of law is taken to the Supreme 
 Court — to which, in criminal cases, it goes directly, with- 
 out stopping at the District Court — a record of the multi- 
 farious testimony has to be sent with it, and this has to be 
 examined by the Supreme Court, and, in the present 
 practice of that Court, has to be road to or by all the
 
 193 TRIAL BY JURY A DEFEAT OF JUSTICE. 
 
 Judges. As miicli as half the time of the Supreme Court 
 is taken up in examining the records of testimony in 
 criminal trials, upon questions of error which are raised in 
 the attempts to defeat justice by confusing the minds of 
 jurors, and which would hav^e no existence if the eause 
 were tried hy the Bench. Nor is this the end of the 
 objections upon which to procure a new trial. They go 
 back to the grand jury. Altliough the accused may have 
 been caught in the act of crime, yet, after the verdict is 
 rendered, if he can discover any technical irregularity in a 
 grand juror, such as a residence just over the county line, 
 or a defect of naturalization, or any other technical dis- 
 qualification, he can get the verdict set aside, and a new trial 
 ordered. 
 
 The fact that he has pleaded to the indictment without 
 exception does not bar him from going back to search for 
 a flaw in the grand jury. He has also the same chances 
 with the petit jury, together with the allegation that 
 improper considerations entered into their verdict, as dis- 
 closed by the babbling of some of their number. Thus 
 does the imposture of criminal trial by jury clog all the 
 Courts, and make the Supreme Court unable to administer 
 in the civil suits, which also are spread out in the same 
 impracticable way. Thus it comes that to look rationally 
 into our judiciary with the view of reform, leads to the 
 conviction that nothing short of a revolution from bottom 
 to top can be a real reform. The conclusion of this 
 examination of the jury system is that justice should be 
 administered by the intelligent, not by the ignorant; that 
 from Justices of the Peace to the Supreme Court it should 
 be administered by lawyers, chosen from members of 
 highest standing at the bar, in such a way as to make 
 the judiciary independent of those to whom it administers 
 justice.
 
 XLII. 
 WOMEX AND MATERNITY. 
 
 TO ASSAULT women bodily is not generally thonglit a 
 brave act. Why should it be thought brave to assault 
 them in public speech? To use advantages of intellect 
 and opportunity to make an onslaught on defenseless 
 women is no more manly than to go at them with the fists. 
 Yet the public writer, the bully preacher, and the sham 
 reformer can always make their mark by a general denun- 
 ciation of the sins of women. The Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix 
 has lately taken a turn at this easy sensationalism by a 
 Lenten sermon on the degeneracy of the women of society, 
 in which he has done the customary act of justice by 
 describing the worst sjjecimens, and classing all as such. 
 
 With much wholesale specification he comes to this gen- 
 eral conclusion: "Thus is the ideal of an earnest, modest, 
 simple womanhood brouglit into contempt and replaced by 
 a poor substitute made of vulgarity, heartlessness, froth 
 and flash. All this prepares the way for false, selfish and 
 profane conceptions of marriage, and girls arc thus trained 
 downward to low, coarse, and even vicious ideals of the 
 holy state of marriage." That the reverend bully drew 
 this picture of the girls of society from his own conscious- 
 ness, makes him all the better in his own estimation. For 
 if the goodness which is made by lamentations of the 
 general wickedness were cut oif, the stock of betterments 
 left to give thanks for would be small. His chief speci- 
 fication against society women is that they do not exercise 
 the maternal function enough — do not have large families. 
 
 Women have been much assaulted with this accusation 
 13 193
 
 194 WOMEK AND MATEKlflTY. 
 
 from the pulpit and in the newsjiapers. In addition to 
 their general defenselessness against public denunciation, 
 the delicacy of this subject further disables them from 
 vindication; but delicacy ought not to prevent a defense 
 against an accusation which is preached from the pulpit. 
 The reverend Doctor holds that women who do not keep 
 on having children through the period of child-bearing are 
 guilty of a great crime. If this is not the effect, where 
 would he draw the line, and at what number would he say 
 that the crime of avoidance is tolerable? 
 
 The child-bearing capabilities and fortunes vary so 
 widely in the natural way, and through the living, education 
 and occupation, that a preacher can not justly assume 
 anything as to the wife's methods because of fewness of 
 offspring. He pronounces savage judgment without 
 grounds. To pronounce this sentence on women in general 
 is all the more unjustifiable. If he believes that such 
 criminal practices are used by any member of his flock, 
 his duty is to deal with it individually, instead of delivering 
 a general accusation. If the reasonable limitation is by 
 continence, is not this self-denial more virtuous than to 
 force children into being for mere selfish indulgence? 
 
 To come down to the marrow-bones of the matter, is 
 child-bearing a duty? In this the reverend Doctor seems 
 to be like those told of in the Scripture, who lay on others 
 burdens grievous to be borne, while themselves will not 
 touch them even with their little fingers. There is a wide 
 disparity in the parts borne by man and wife in child- 
 bearing Wherein is there any duty in maternity, that 
 women may not avoid it if they please? Such injunctions 
 as the Scripture has, to increase and multiply and re- 
 plenish the land, were when it needed peopling and re- 
 plenishing, or were given to a particular family, of whom 
 it was designed to make a chosen race. They have no ap- 
 plication to the world or to people as they now are.
 
 WOMEH AND MATERNITY. 195 
 
 PeoiDle are too many. All the social evils multiply with 
 the increase of population. Ileckless propagation is the 
 obstacle to all the 2>lans of human philosophers for improv- 
 ing the condition of mankind. Each of them comes at 
 last to the conclusion that the social evils are incnrahlc 
 without restriction on procreation, and that to beget chil- 
 dren to poverty is immoral. Good people condemn tlie pan ■ 
 per and the indolent drunkard who go on begetting chil- 
 dren, yet Dr. Dix's rule would make this reckless act their 
 saving grace. All hold that to increase the family beyond 
 the ability to provide, is recklessly selfish; but a provision 
 for children born and educated in wealth, must be accord- 
 ing, and thus they are under a limitation the same as the 
 poor. 
 
 To create a life for tliis world, and an immortal soul 
 for that which comes next, is a serious business. If Dr. 
 Dix should forecast the destiny of the born, it would be a 
 life of labor, care, and much affliction, and a very large 
 preponderance of chances for worse in the hereafter. Wlien 
 he considers the battle of life here, and the chances beyond, 
 can he think there is a duty to force beings into such a 
 destiny? What can be so immoral and so lacking in con- 
 science as to fetch children into these tremendous liabili- 
 ties, for a momentary gratification? Our pretense of a 
 government by consent of the governed, is a cruel mockery 
 when we thrust beings into the world without their con- 
 sent. The time may come when the lost child shall 
 arraign the reckless parents before a dread tribunal, and 
 say, " Thus didst thou ! " 
 
 So far as Dr. Dix can know, the limited amount of 
 breeding done by the women of fashionable society is by the 
 practice of self-denial; therefore he is bound in justice — to 
 say nothing of Christian charity — to supjiose that it is so, 
 and to exalt them therefor. Perhaps women have a higher
 
 196 WOMEiq^ AND MATERlflTY. 
 
 idea for their lives than he has for them. They may think 
 that they can do better by improving their minds, and by 
 serving the cause of humanity, than by giving themselves 
 ujj to the increasing of the surplus population. A limita- 
 tion of the maternal function may allow time for such cul- 
 ture as will give higher training to the fewer children, 
 and will supply an intellectual tonic to the man in his own 
 house- 
 Numbers are of no account in mankind; it is elevation 
 that counts in benefiting the race. One superior mind, 
 body and character is better for the world than any num- 
 ber of the low. She who resigns herself to the function of 
 maternity during all the natural period, can not have that 
 mental exercise which is requisite to keep up with the 
 minds of her grown up children, if they get education, 
 nor even with tlie growing intelligence of the man. Be- 
 sides, the mother, at each birth, becomes herself like a 
 little child, and her speech and mind come down to the 
 germs and slow development of the infant understanding. 
 This repeated going back to the beginning of mind and 
 speech keeps her from intellectual development. 
 
 Therefore, is it customary to say of a wife who has 
 been faithful in the maternal service, that the man has 
 developed while she has stood still, and thus they have 
 become intellectually incomj)atible, and he has to go astray 
 for mental companionship. 
 
 There is a bad habit in preachers of assuming a prev- 
 alence of sins of which they know nothing. Dr. Dix 
 can know nothing of that which he denounces as a com- 
 mon practice; or if he does know, he has the pastoral duty 
 to deal with it individually. No one has the right to sup- 
 pose that woman's avoidance of an undesired number of 
 children is by any other method than self-denial. This is 
 greatly to their credit. There is no call for the multipli-
 
 WOME^r AND MATERNITY. 197 
 
 cation of the species, and no obligation of duty. And 
 when the temporal and the everlasting consequences of the 
 creation of a life are taken into the account, conscientious 
 men and women will call up the sober second tliouglit 
 before they take upon themselves this dreadful responsi- 
 bility.
 
 XLIII. 
 FISHING AND MOKALS. 
 
 A SUNDAY bill in the General Assembly of New 
 York, which, among other sports, forbids fishing, 
 has aroused newspaper discussion, in which some main- 
 tain the innocence of fishing on Sunday, and some make 
 the customary appeal to the literature which praises this 
 " gentle art," and some cast reflections on that piety which 
 is carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, and 
 which has the command of its own time and sports on 
 week days, and, therefore, has no appetite on Sundays for 
 the things it forbids to the toilers. This agitation, and 
 the prominence given to fishing as the favorite recreation 
 of our President, call for a deeper discussion of its nature, 
 and of its claims of bodily, intellectual and moral benefit. 
 The sedentary form of most of this fishing gives away 
 any merit of active exercise of the body as a relief from 
 sedentary pursuits, and limits its claims to the intellectual 
 and moral influence. The pretense of general contem- 
 plation and philosophical thought is idle, and, what is more, 
 is untrue, for the fixity of the mind on the object of getting 
 a bite, limits thought to that and a very narrow circle 
 thereabout. The effect is mental vacuity. This pretext 
 is itself a sign of the immoral influence of this art. The 
 object is to delude the fish to his death by a bait in the 
 semblance of his natural food, on a fatal hook. The mind 
 of the fisher is bent on this stratagem to deceive an inno- 
 cent being to his undoing. 
 
 > This is his intellectual and moral occupation for hours 
 at a stretch, and often from day to day. Every well-trained 
 
 198
 
 FISDIKG AND MORALS. 199 
 
 child has often heard from his motlier tlic maxim that 
 deceiving is lying. Arc not all the ideas of moral training 
 belied if this bent of the mind on dece2)tion can go on 
 from hour to hour and day to day, and can become the 
 favorite recreation for a season from year to year, without 
 effect on the character? Must not this effect of applying 
 the mind to the work of treachery be intensified l)y the 
 cool blood and deliberation in which it is done? In tliis 
 is none of the excitement of the resistance of the victim, 
 or of the chase, or of danger, as in the hunting of some 
 wild beast; it is all to tempt and beguile an innocent, 
 unresisting thing to its death. 
 
 Said Hamlet: " They do but jest; poison in jest." So 
 the fisher cheats and kills for sport. To say that this 
 practice of deluding beings to death, by false pretenses, for 
 physical, mental and moral recreation, has no effect on the 
 character, is to deny all the accepted principles of moral 
 training. A very serious part is its hereditary consequences. 
 Darwiii's evolution of morals, and the practical rules of 
 breeders of domestic animals, alike, testify to this moral 
 heredity as the order of nature. The training of the 
 pointer dog becomes hereditary. Can it be that the prac- 
 tice of deceit by men until it becomes an addiction, will 
 not transmit a deceitful nature to the child? Surely man 
 is not less than a dog. 
 
 " The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's 
 teeth are set on edge," was the strong metaphor by which 
 the guileless Israelites affirmed the law of moral heredity. 
 If we are not infidels, must we not believe that multitudes 
 of little girls, with little curls, and with that moral polar- 
 ity which Rev. Dix says is in every woman, by wliicli she 
 must be either very good or very bad, have been whipped 
 for lying in consequence of their father's fishing excursion 
 when they were alike unknowing and unknown;' Tlie Ohio
 
 200 FISHING AND MOliALS. 
 
 Senate, which has passed a bill to inquire into the convict's 
 childhood and moral training, for remitting the penalty, 
 should look to this, and put into its catechism the question 
 whether his father ever went fishing. Of all the sad list of 
 temjitings, deceivings, desertions and breaches of promise 
 to women, how many must have been consequent, either 
 immediately or by heredity, upon addiction to fishing? 
 
 The progressive force of habit has been strongly set 
 forth by De Quincey, whereby a man who is in the habitual 
 practice of murder may, in the course of moral degeneracy, 
 come to be a procrastinator. In a man addicted to fishing, 
 for mental recreation, we may look for the practice of 
 temptation, finesse, intrigue and stratagem on his fellow- 
 men, and also on his fellow- women; for an instinctive pro- 
 pensity to catch the innocent unawares; for a thinking that 
 gain by deception is an intellectual achievement; for what- 
 ever may be expected to come from a course of moral 
 degeneracy thus broadly entered upon. This is not theory; 
 it is moral science, established by all human experience, 
 and made the foundation of our moral education. 
 
 In a President addicted to this pleasure of duping the 
 innocent, moral science compels us to look for a want of 
 faith in fellow-man and in straight methods; for an idea 
 that politics are a game; for a nature that delights in keep- 
 ing appointments on the hook, to tantalize applicants, 
 while their hearts sicken with deferred hope and their 
 hardly scraped up money is spent on Washington hotels; 
 for a hesitancy in intrusting authority; for belief in luck 
 rather than in the wisdom of the people; for an insensible 
 but inevitable tendency to turn the whole administration, 
 in the present and in foreordaining the future, into the 
 practices of baiting and angling. 
 
 If the practice of truthfulness and honest dealing form 
 character, the practice of deceit and treachery must form
 
 FISHING AND MORALS. 201 
 
 a reverse cliaracter. If moral qualities are transmitted 
 with the physical, this addiction of the male parent to the 
 practice of deceiving the unsuspecting, can not beget sons 
 with little hatchets and the inability to tell a lie. If 
 straightforwardness, free expression and open conflict 
 foster courage, the practice of lying in wait for the inno- 
 cent must foster the opposite. The question of fishing on 
 Sunday is morally a small matter in view of the moral inilu- 
 ence of all fishing for sport.
 
 XLiy. 
 
 THE CASE AGAINST WOMAN-A REHEAR- 
 ING. 
 
 WOMAN'S aspiration to a higher life is continually 
 confounded by man's throwing in her face that the 
 Avoman's fault brought all the trouble into the world. From 
 the high Doctor of Divinity who improves the Lenten season 
 by a series of sermons to give a setback to the rising spirit 
 of woman by reminding her of her sentence of penal servi- 
 tude, and accusing her of shirking the pronounced curse 
 of maternity, to the low boor who lives upon his wife's 
 wages, she hears the same old croak that this is a wicked 
 world, and that she is the cause. 
 
 Whether she seeks amelioration of the unequal con- 
 ditions of marriage, or property rights, or a right to her 
 own earnings, or social and political equality, or whatever 
 else belongs to freedom, she encounters the same old fling 
 that she once had her own head and made a mess of it, and 
 that what she did plunged a perfect and happy world into 
 wickedness and misery, and that all her attempts at eleva- 
 tion are a revolt against her just sentence. 
 
 Is it not time for women to revolt at this, so far at least 
 as to examine the scripture authority for it? Must her 
 aspiration to be free be forever crushed by the utterance 
 of her final condemnation, without looking into its founda- 
 tion? They of whom Jesus said, **^Ye have made the 
 word of God of none effect by your tradition," were very 
 religious and exceedingly strenuous for the law. Did the 
 custom of fixing upon the Word of God a gloss which 
 perverts it cease with the Church of Judea? 
 
 Going to the fountain head, and taking the Bible in its 
 203
 
 THE CASE AGAINST WOMAN — A IlEHEAUING. 203 
 
 literal ])urity, let it be asked, "What was the woman's fault? 
 It was this: Against the prohibition she ate of the fruit of 
 the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and gave it to the 
 man, and he did eat. This was the whole of her sin. If 
 a sin, it was the sin of both. The man did it with more 
 deliberation. Just penalty would be as heavy on him. 
 To plead that the woman led him into it is childish and 
 unmanly to the last degree. Such a plea would not be 
 received in a court of justice. And for him to magnify 
 the greater penalty on her, and to assert her subjection to 
 him because of the mutual fault, is to reward himself for 
 his own sin by enslaving her. 
 
 What was the effect upon them of their eating the for- 
 bidden fruit? Let the Scripture tell: 
 
 ''And the eyes of both of them were opened. And 
 the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, 
 to know good and evil. And now lest he put forth his 
 hand and take also of the tree of life and live forever, 
 therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of 
 Eden." 
 
 It was truly the tree of knowledge to them. Their 
 eyes were opened; that is, they had become enlightened. 
 They had acquired knowledge like unto the gods. There- 
 fore they were sent out fi'om the garden where the tree of 
 life grew. Not because they were ignorant, depraved, 
 wicked, or in any way unfit to live in the garden, but 
 because they were enlightened as the gods, and might seize 
 the tree of life and become immortal as the gods. 
 
 Where in this did that universal evil come in, which the 
 woman is accused of? The Bible history has no account 
 of it. Was it in being sent out of the garden? That 
 garden was not for the human race. To that He gave the 
 whole earth. He said to the first pair: " Be fruitful, and 
 multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. and
 
 204 THE CASE AGAINST WOMAN — A REHEARING. 
 
 have dominion over every living thing that moveth upon 
 the earth." The garden was solely for the use of *' the 
 Lord God/* for His own recreation. He planted it, and 
 put the man in it to keep it in order. The Scripture says: 
 "And the Lord God took the man and put him into the 
 Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it." His *' cus- 
 tom always of the afternoon" is told in the account of 
 their seeking cover when enlightenment had made them 
 ashamed for their nakedness. ^'And they heard the voice 
 of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the 
 day." 
 
 The garden was reserved and planted by the Lord God 
 for his own delectation, and the first man's office of 
 garden-keeper was exceptional. The whole earth had 
 been created for mankind. Therefore the exclusion of the 
 pair from the garden was no judgment upon the race. 
 
 Still sticking to the straight way, brushing aside super- 
 stitious tradition, and taking the Scripture in literal 
 purity, let this rehearing proceed to ask what was the 
 consequence of the enlightening act. This to the woman: 
 
 "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; 
 in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thy desire 
 shall be to thy husband [or ''subject to thy husband"], 
 and he shall rule over thee." 
 
 4-nd this to the man : 
 
 ''Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt 
 thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles 
 shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of 
 the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till 
 thou return unto the ground." 
 
 This is all of it. If it pronounced a heavier penalty 
 upon women for the equal fault, it is not for man to cast 
 it at her. If it declared that "he shall rule over thee," 
 it is not for him to assert for their equal sin, nor to accuse
 
 THE CASE AGAINST WOMAK — A REHEARING. 205 
 
 her of bringing evil upon them, to give him the right to 
 take it out of her. 
 
 AVhere in all this is that plunge into misery which the 
 woman is accused of giving the world? The blessed earth 
 yields her bounties to man. His bread is sweetened by 
 the sweat of his face. The nobility and moral virtue of 
 labor is sounded in all the land. Witliout labor, and liv- 
 ing on the spontaneous fruits, he sinks to a stupid brute. 
 Conception is a blessing which woman would not part 
 with, and is not multiplied beyond control. Each bring- 
 ing forth is not in sorrow, but in rejoicing and gratitude. 
 Babies are the joy of the household, and maternity is the 
 spring of perpetual youth to the family and the race. In 
 all this did woman bring no curse upon herself. And 
 even if she had, it would be nothing for man to fling 
 up at her. 
 
 Human tradition has foisted fable upon this plain his- 
 tory. It charges that the woman's eating brought sin into 
 the world. As if sin were an exterior being; or as if prior 
 to this enlightenment they knew not enough to sin. But 
 this ignores the word of the Lord God, who said: ''Be- 
 hold, the man has become as one of us to know good and 
 evil." Was this sin? And sin is the doing. It is from 
 within, not from an exterior being. 
 
 But the human tradition alleges that by this sin death 
 came into the woi'ld. Is it physical death? That was the 
 condition of man's creation when the Creator blessed the 
 pair, and said "Be fruitful and multiply," Without 
 death, birth could not be. If all that have been born had 
 lived, they would now be standing on each other's heads 
 all over the earth. They would be crawling upon and 
 feeding upon one another like a mass of vermin. The 
 mind can not have the smallest conception of the horrible 
 state of the human race if procreation went on without
 
 306 THE CASE AGAINST WOMAN— A REHEARING. 
 
 dissolution. '^ Dust tliou art, and unto dust slialt thou 
 return," was the condition of man's creation, and death 
 and birth are mutual parts of the immortality of man. 
 
 Is it moral death? Where in the Scripture's history 
 of this affair is any ground for such a theory? It is bet- 
 ter to stick to the Bible. The Lord God tells the moral 
 effect of the eating of the forbidden fruit. Their eyes 
 were opened. They were enlightened by knowledge. Is 
 that depraving? If so it reaches to the throne of heaven. 
 This is the word: ''Behold, the man has become as one of 
 us, to know good and evil." Is that moral death? On 
 the contrary, it lifted the man from a mindless being 
 to a being of godlike knowledge. If this was Avoman's 
 work, then she brought into the world all the thinking 
 faculties which lift man above the other animals, and 
 which inspire him to seek higher knowledge and to soar 
 into the unknowable in pursuit of the tree of life. 
 
 A gross superstition has degraded this history into a 
 notion that the woman was tempted by a talking snake, 
 which stood upon the tip of its tail. It has mixed up this 
 with another superstition of the fascinating power of 
 snakes. Painters have materialized this gross supersti- 
 tion by a picture of the snake with head resting on the 
 crotch of the tree of knowledge, talking to the woman; 
 by others, of the snake standing on the tip of its tail 
 weaving up and down in coils to display its brilliant colors 
 before the woman, to convey that her childish and ignor- 
 ant senses were captivated by the snake's pretty stripes. 
 
 This superstition is as gross as the African voudooism, 
 and like that it makes the snake its chief person. Is it 
 not wonderful that religious people let it be taught to 
 childhood? Is it not strange tliat clergymen, who take 
 up collections to send preachers to the heathen, do not lift 
 up their horn to denounce this lowest heathenism? Alike
 
 THE CASE AGAINST WOMAN— A REHEARING. 207 
 
 gross is the snaky superstition that, in order to captivate 
 the woman's senses, Satan — once aliigli prince of heaven, a 
 being formed in the image of CJod — laid oil' liis celestial 
 form and took the shape of a snake. The snakiness of 
 the religions of the lowest savages has been engrafted on 
 the Bible to degrade woman. 
 
 Snakeology has been made theology. It has so cor- 
 rupted the Word of God that preachers are afraid to touch 
 this history. The plain Bible narrative has neither Satan 
 nor snake in this affair. The Serpent's knowledge proves 
 him a higher being than man. The analogies of creation 
 prove to him a form according. The statement that ''the 
 Serpent was more subtile (wise) than any beast of the field 
 which the Lord God had made " proves him of a different 
 order from the beasts. Probably he was pre-existing. He 
 knew the tree of knowledge and its effects, which man 
 knew not. The sentence plainly transformed him to a 
 snake, and this was the end of the Serpent and of all his 
 wisdom. 
 
 If the Serpent had been Satan or the devil — which 
 some ignorantly think identical with Satan — then the 
 sentence would have left no more Satan or devil except in 
 the snakes. 
 
 The plain Scripture narrative tells that the woman's 
 aspiration for knowledge led her to eat. Said the Ser- 
 pent: "God doth know that in the day tluit ye cat 
 thereof your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, 
 knowing good and evil." Her desire for a higher life was 
 aroused. Her latent mind was stirred. Says the Scrip- 
 ture: ''And when the woman saw that the tree was good 
 for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to 
 be desired to make one wise, she did eat, and gave also to 
 her husband with her, and he did eat." 
 
 The custom is for man to seal the condemnation of
 
 208 THE CASE AGAINST WOMAK — A REHEARIITG. 
 
 woman,' and let himself out of it, as did the Rev. Dr. Dix 
 in his series of Lenten discourses on women, by citing the 
 words of Saul of Tarsus in his first letter to Timothy, in 
 giving a reason for keeping her under : 
 
 " Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 
 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority 
 over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first 
 formed, then Eve; and Adam was not in the transgression, 
 but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. 
 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in child-bearing, if 
 they continue in faith and charity and holiness with 
 sobriety. ^^ 
 
 Paul gave this version of the creation and of the dis- 
 obedience as the reason for the heavy disabilities he pro- 
 nounced on woman. These have weighed heavily on her, 
 but they are not now accepted as the Word of God. Paul 
 thought woman a mistake in creation. He thought it 
 better for men not to marry. He made a concession of 
 marriage for a reason which debases it, and which few will 
 plead in their own behalf. If his views of woman and the 
 relations of the sexes be taken, they must be taken in the 
 whole. He has furnished a way to let the people out by 
 allowing that, as to marriage, he did not assume to speak 
 by the Spirit. This permits its extension to all his utter- 
 ances on woman. All women have discerned that his 
 words on them were not from the Spirit. 
 
 If the above be received, the man was not in the trans- 
 gression. This would take out Adam's fall, and the com- 
 forting doctrine that mankind inherited through that a 
 nature incapable of any good act. But the Lord God 
 sentenced Adam in the transgression. If not being de- 
 ceived he transgressed, it was an aggravation, as her being 
 deceived a palliation. Paul makes the sin not in the dis- 
 obedience^ but in being deceived. But the Word of God
 
 THE CASE AGAIXST WOMAX — A REHEAEING. 209 
 
 stands, and it is higher than the word of Paul. And in fact 
 neither was deceived by the Serpent. Tliey gained the 
 knowledge which he said would come by the eating, and 
 they did not die thereby. 
 
 As to the concession that if she is very good she shall 
 be saved in child-bearing, it appears to be above Paul's 
 jurisdiction; for holiness shows no influence on this act. 
 
 Priority of creation is not higher rank. If it were, the 
 beasts would rank above man. The order of creation was 
 from lower to higher. In this order the woman would be 
 a higher creation. The fact of her subsequent creation 
 can not be made a reason for her subjection to the man. 
 It is not received by the religious world as a reason for 
 forbidding her to teach, nor for any of those degrading 
 disabilities whicli Paul pronounces on her, nor are they 
 received as authority. 
 
 According to the word of the Lord God, the eating of 
 the forbidden fruit brought not sin or death, but know- 
 ledge, which is the real life. It made the woman and the 
 man as the gods. It brouglit the god-like faculties of 
 thought and reason, and made man a responsible being. 
 Remission of sentence is not instability, but the divine 
 attribute of mercy. Other instances as great are in the 
 history of God's dealings. He repented and grieved that 
 He had ma^e man [Gen. vi., 6]. Provoked by the panic 
 of the Israelites at the evil report which the spies brought 
 from the Promised Land, he determined to smite them 
 with pestilence and disinherit them, and to make of Moses 
 the chosen and a greater people; but Moses dissuaded Him 
 by the suggestion of the triumph this would give to the 
 Egyptians, and the way they would fling it up. [Num- 
 bers, xiv.]. But for that rclQuting the Israelites would be 
 Mosaics, 
 
 Woman's transgression which was from the noblest 
 14
 
 ^10 THE CASE AGAINST WOMAN" — A RElIEAtllNO. 
 
 aspiration, has been debased to the freak of female abnor- 
 mal desires and longings of appetite. The persnasion of 
 her reason by the promise of knowledge like the gods has 
 been debased into the baby idiocy which is attracted by 
 the pretty colors of a poisonous snake. The snaky 
 superstitions of the lowest tribes have been foisted upon 
 the plain Bible narrative, to degrade the woman who came 
 perfect from the Creator's hand, the loveliest of her sex. 
 Her noble seeking for a higher life has been made the 
 proof of her base creation. She has been charged with 
 evils which did not come, and man has depraved himself 
 in order to charge his depravity upon woman. She who 
 brought into the world knowledge which made men like 
 gods has been charged with sinking it into ignorance and 
 misery. 
 
 Man has always taken the office of expounding the 
 Word of God, and this is an example of his ability in per- 
 verting it to his own glory and to woman's degradation. 
 Have not the strong-minded sufficient ground for their 
 declaration that man has abused his usurped office of 
 revealing and expounding the Scriptures, to make them a 
 means of betraying woman to a state of servitude through 
 her higher religious nature ?
 
 XLV. 
 WOMAN'S REVERSIBLE POLARITY. 
 
 IS A BAD woman worse than a bad man can be? Piev. 
 Dr. Morgan Dix sa3's so, and he knows it professionally. 
 He said it in the concluding sermon of his Lenten series 
 on "A Mission for Woman," when fasting had filled him 
 with charity in place of victuals. He said that woman is 
 both better and worse than man. She is like the little 
 girl who had a little curl that hung straight down on her 
 **forrid"; when she is good she is very good, and when she 
 is bad she is horrid. And because she can not touch sin 
 without utter defilement, his mission for her is that if not 
 saved by marriage and much child-bearing, she should be 
 saved by consecrating herself in holy sisterhoods to the 
 work of rescuing the world from the tidal wave of man's 
 infidelity. 
 
 The Rev. Doctor's logic ranks with his moral sense. 
 Man sins and is not spoiled; but when woman does it, down 
 she goes, and there is no redemption. 
 
 " Man's sin is of his life a thing apart; 
 'Tis woman's whole existence.' 
 
 Here is the holy man's indictment of woman: 
 *'And let me suggest one more topic for reflection — a 
 terrible one, indeed. Remember that in the woman are 
 the poles of the good and evil in human nature. AVhcn 
 good, she is the best of all that exists; when bad, she is the 
 worst. Nothing is so lovely as a woman true to God and 
 herself; nothing so frightful as a woman false to self and 
 God. In the history of woman you shall find extremes so 
 wide asunder as to confound and terrify in the comparison, 
 
 Sll
 
 212 woman's EBVEKSIBLE fOLARITlf. 
 
 A woman may be better than any man; she may be worse 
 than any man; there is no conceivable impurity like that 
 of a profligate woman; there is no hate so dire and implac- 
 able as woman-hatred." 
 
 This is an ancient slander, and it is well to have it thus 
 formulated for examination. Because woman is better 
 than man, must she be worse? The Rev. Doctor says she 
 has a moral polarity, and must point either to the good or 
 bad pole, and that for her there is no equilibrium, no mid- 
 dle course where, like man, she may be just good enough 
 to be safe, and not so good as to be in danger of falling. 
 Thus does it appear that the moral safety of man is in his 
 inability to get high enough to fall with momentum. 
 Woman is like the man in the rhyme, who, when he lived, 
 he lived in clover, and when he died he died all over. 
 
 If moral principles and good lives did not build their 
 own foundation, so as to grow strong and secure in the 
 base in proportion as they rise above evil, there would be 
 little hope for the world. But the Eev. Dix finds that the 
 moral nature is subject to physical fermentations in which 
 the sweetest fluids make the sourest vinegar, and the rich- 
 est food the most offensive decay. Thus in his parallel he 
 says : " True it is that the best things become, if corrupted, 
 the worst." His accusation of woman reverses all moral 
 principles and progress, and assumes that goodness of 
 nature and living has no foundation and no security in 
 itself, but that the higher it rises the more is it liable to 
 topple over and fall into the abyss of depravity, in which 
 the depth of her fall is according to the height to which 
 she had attained. 
 
 He offers no reason why man can not be so bad as a bad 
 woman, save that he can not be so good as a good woman. 
 His moral safety lies in his being a moderate sinner. This 
 sounds like the counsel of that professor of moral senti-
 
 woman's reversible polarity. 313 
 
 ments, Mr. Joseph Surface, to Lady Teazle, that her 
 consciousness of her own innocence was a great peril to her 
 reputation, and that if she would sin a little her conduct 
 would be more circumspect and her character more secure. 
 
 When an accusation is contrary to reason, to moral 
 evolution, and to the faith upon which the young are trained 
 in the right way, it needs to be supported by positive 
 proof. Wliat proof has Dr. Dix that woman may be worse 
 than man can? That "there is no conceivable impurity 
 like that of a profligate woman?" Where did he see this? 
 Who has borne him witness? Men are not lacking in con- 
 fidence in man's talent for wi€kedness and impurity. 
 
 The custom is to instance the houses of bad fame as the 
 lowest sinks of iniquity, and the inmates as the sinkers. 
 If the Rev. Doctor has looked to them for his evidence, 
 the thing that most shocked his feelings was that women 
 could be as impure as men. The "prostitute" is no more 
 vile than the prostituter. Society makes outcasts of the 
 one, and tolerates the other, and then makes its own injus- 
 tice tlie ground for pronouncing the total depravity of its 
 victim. But a clergyman, representing a great church en- 
 dowment, and deliberately preparing a series of Lenten 
 discourses on a mission for women, ought not to repeat 
 this terrible injustice. And when he makes this a reason 
 for appointing women to a holy mission to save the world, 
 he seems to show that in his head both morals and logic 
 have turned topsy-turvy. 
 
 If the Rev. Doctor had improved Lent by a course of 
 prayerful humiliation and introspection, instead of a series 
 of discourses on the frailties of woman, he might have been 
 receptive to the sense of justice, which Avould have per- 
 ceived that the penalty which society inflicts on woman 
 exclusively, is her "fall," and that it is not because of a 
 conversion or perversion of her moral nature. If he were
 
 214 woman's reversible polarity. 
 
 not indulging a ferocity of rhetoric in heaping condemna- 
 tion on woman, reason and justice would have directed his 
 moral sense to the fact that the license of the marriage 
 contract is an external thing, and not a thing of the moral 
 and spiritual nature. 
 
 A woman has written a New York paper that once on a 
 time she attended a course of Lenten discourses by Dr. Dix, 
 in which he advocated, with much rhetorical force, the celi- 
 bacy of ministers as essential to their holy office; and that 
 on a subsequent time she was invited to his wedding, and 
 that since then she has less faith in the infallibility of his 
 Lenten oracles. Did the Rev. Doctor then "fall"? Or 
 did he plead to himself the concession in the rule laid 
 down by St. Paul? 
 
 To say that the fact that the woman is sent to the guil- 
 lotine for an act Avhich brings no penalty to the man 
 proves that woman's hold on life is feeble compared to 
 man's would hardly be accepted as medical science; yet it 
 is as rational as the Rev. Dix's moral science, which makes 
 woman worse than man because society executes her for 
 that which brings no penalty to him. This injustice is a 
 terrible reproach to mankind; yet this clergyman sees 
 nothing in it but an occasion to heap condemnation on 
 woman, and to indorse the slanders which run through 
 all ancient literature. 
 
 By one thing alone does woman "fall," and it is that by 
 which man appears to be incapable of falling. In no other 
 offense does society hold woman worse than man,save in that 
 in which she is the victim of its own injustice. By acts 
 of tyranny in power and of ferocity in war, women never 
 fall. Dr. Dix goes on to cite historical instances of 
 woman's cruelty, and to name good and bad woman in 
 juxtaposition, to point his queer rule that woman must 
 fly either to one extreme or the other. And this is his 
 inoral;
 
 ■W0MA^''S IIEVEIISIBLE POLARITY. 215 
 
 ''Contrast these tyjies of your own sex; they form tlie 
 opposite poles; towiird the one or the other you yourselves 
 must incline; for whoever kept an exact equilibrium be- 
 tween the evil and the good? True is it that the best 
 things become, if corrupted, the worst. On that fact we 
 find the justification of our course in speaking to woman 
 as I liave ventured to do; in warning the thoughtless, in 
 awakening the sluniberer." 
 
 The "female furies of the French Revolution" were 
 no worse than the male furies; "the petroleuses of the 
 French Commune " were male and female. One of them. 
 Rose Michel, has lately set forth on the platform ideas of 
 universal humanity from which Dr. Dix might take a 
 lesson. The Communes were fighting, first, for ancient 
 institutions; next, against massacre. Are houses more 
 than lives? The assertion that " the woman conspirators 
 and co-workers in Nihilism " are "used by men as pre- 
 cious above all others for their subtlety and power of un- 
 dying ferocity, merciless, pitiless," contradicts its own 
 charge that woman is worse than man, and, if it proves 
 anything, proves her the more heroic-. It is an indulgence 
 of pitiless ferocity in rhetoric. 
 
 Is there nothing pitiless in the constant train of exiles 
 to Siberia, and in the tyranny which makes even the sus- 
 picion of aspirations for free institutions swift destruction? 
 Is there no cruelty in the Russian despotism save the taking 
 off of a Czar? If the despatching of half a dozen Czars would 
 bring constitutional limitations of tyranny, they would be 
 well spent. In these,and in his contrasted historical names, 
 the Rev. Dix makes the moral muddle of mixing up heroic 
 acts of women, in Avhat they believed the cause of freedom 
 of the people, with lives of sexual sinning, as alike proving 
 the bad nature of woman. He may find in Scripture wo- 
 men honored for the heroic acts which he makes the proof
 
 216 woman's reversible polarity. 
 
 of their bad polarity, as when Judith slew Holofernes and 
 Jael the sleeping Sisera. He may there find tyrannicide a 
 virtue. 
 
 Dr. Dix's Lenten discourses have added not to the 
 world's stock of charity, and have offered nothing to 
 lighten woman's destiny. On the contrary, they have 
 added to its uncharitableness and slanderous disposition, 
 and tJieir tendency is to harden its ancient injustice 
 toward all women and toward those whom it casts out as 
 fallen. His view of woman as wife is not high, and his 
 ** mission for women " who have not the luck to marry is 
 not so high in its conditions as that of Hamlet to Ophelia. 
 He said: *'Get thee to a nunnery; why wouldst thou be 
 a breeder of sinners?" Dr. Dix says: "If no man makes 
 thee a breeder of sinners, get thee to a nunnery!" If he 
 should get down to the bottom of his own system he would 
 find that it is the old Oriental one, which requires women 
 to be shut up in harems. 
 
 That a clergyman deals in things above human reason, 
 need not prevent him from reasoning on morals, unless it 
 be from force of habit. But Dr. Dix does the logical feat 
 of making the frailties of woman the reason for her taking 
 the mission of rescuing the world from man's infidelity. 
 He is so at sea also in his moral sense as to class "women 
 who have done deeds of highest heroism, for what they 
 believed patriotism, with those abandoned in moral degrada- 
 tion, as alike proving the tendency of woman's moral 
 polarity to the bad pole, upon the least variation from the 
 good. The Rev. Dix has made a sensation and a notoriety, 
 and has fostered a bad custom for the Lenten season, per- 
 verting it from humiliation to Pharisaical uncharitable- 
 ness; but still woman will have to work out her own 
 destiny.
 
 XLYI. 
 
 THE DEVILS AND THE SWINE -A LAW- 
 SUIT. 
 
 TO DISCUSS a case which is to be judicially tried, is 
 not good form in general; but the suit against the 
 Church for the value of the swine into which the devils 
 were cast is so famous and far-reaching that discussion 
 will not hold off, even though it may disqualify readers for 
 an unintelligent Jury. The suit is by the heirs of the 
 owners of the swine against the Roman Pontiff, as Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ and head of the Church. Service has also 
 been made on the patriarchs of Constantinople, Autioch 
 and Jerusalem. 
 
 None demur to the liability; on the contrary, standing 
 in the court is sought for even as defendants against a large 
 money claim, as a recognition of legitimacy. But the 
 plaintiff has drawn the line at the Roman and Oriental 
 Churches. Since the Supreme Court of Ohio, in a frame 
 of mind which was legal rather than evangelical, overruled 
 the Superior Court of Cincinnati, which, in a mind more 
 evangelical than legal, had ordered the Sheriff to put the 
 King James Bible into the State schools, this generation is 
 officially so destitute of knowledge of the Scriptures that 
 it will have to refer to the records in order to understand 
 this case. It is found in Mark v. 
 
 The facts are adjudicated. The Church has approved 
 the record as canonical; therefore the facts have not to be 
 tried over and over by three or more Courts, as our lawyers 
 think requisite to a complete judiciary. Only the ques- 
 tions of law are at issue. The claim is that in order to 
 
 217
 
 218 THE DEVILS AND THE SWINE — A LAWSUIT. 
 
 relieve the man from tlie devils they were sent into the 
 swine, who thereupon " ran violently down a steep place 
 into the sea, and were drowned"; therefore that the 
 Church is liable to the owner of the swine for the loss of 
 his property. 
 
 The number of the swine is recorded as " about two 
 thousand" — enough to found a fortune and a family. The 
 interest for over eighteen centuries will make a pretty sum. 
 The record relates that the devils, when commanded to 
 come out of the man, ^'^ besought Him saying: 'Send us 
 into the swine that we may enter into them,'" and that 
 *' Jesus gave them leave." It also makes plain that because 
 of this entry the swine acted in the strange manner which 
 resulted in their destruction. 
 
 If the case were judged according to finite limitations, 
 the record would make it out in favor of the owner of the 
 swine, and nothing would remain but to compute the 
 value of the hogs from the market report of the time and 
 the interest, and to give judgment against the Pope for 
 the sum. But the case runs into infinite matters, and the 
 issue is upon questions which sound the depths of theology, 
 particularly of the demonology branch, and will call forth 
 the profoundest learning of the lawyers of the Vatican. 
 
 What are these devils, and what their right of 
 habitation? By what authority did they possess the man? 
 Where went they when the swine drowned themselves? 
 The suit must fetch forth from the Supreme Pontiff a 
 definition of the nature, source, powers and rights of 
 devils, of whom mankind has much experience with but 
 little knowdedge. The common notion is that they are 
 all emanations from the head devil, who has infinite divisi- 
 bility; as also that good spirits are parts of the Supreme 
 Good Spirit. The learned Alexander Cruden says that a 
 collocation of the Scripture passages in which Satan aiid
 
 THE DEVILS AND THE SWINE — A LAWSUIT. 219 
 
 the rest are mentioned shows that he is identical with Luci- 
 fer who fell from heaven, drawing a third part of the popu- 
 lation with him, also with the devil, Beelzehub, the Ser- 
 pent, Prince of the Powers of Darkness, God of this World, 
 Apollyon, Angel of the Bottomless Pit and many other de- 
 scriptive names indicating the adversary of mankind. 
 
 He says also that " By permission he exercises a sort of 
 government in the world." In the Book of Job is this 
 narration of Satan: ** Now there was a day when the 
 sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, 
 and Satan came also among them.'' Being asked whence 
 he came, he answered: "From going to and fro in the 
 earth, and from walking up and down therein." This 
 seems to be accepted as his proper vocation. It conveys 
 that Satan had either rights or privileges which were 
 respected. All Scripture shows that the devil has had 
 from the beginning a great kingdom in mankind; nor are 
 signs visible of its running out. They who by their divine 
 vocation have expert knowledge, say that Satan has hold 
 of the greater part of mankind. 
 
 The record relates that when the devils were com- 
 manded to come out of the man, they "besought Him 
 much not to send them out of the country." In them 
 there breathed no soul so dead who never to himself had 
 said, this is my own, my native land. They had the pa- 
 thetic sentiment of the ballad of Sweet Home, for which a 
 generous citizen has dug up the author's bones. They had 
 chosen to abide even in the swine rather than to be sent 
 am ong strangers. Yet there are those who deny person- 
 ality to devils. Likewise do they deny a personal God. 
 They talk of a good spirit and an evil sj^irit; but they can 
 not conceive either without personal identity. The Posi- 
 tivists tried to substitute the worship of the ideal virtues, 
 but they found they could not idealize without materiuli?-
 
 220 THE DEVILS AND THE SWINE — A LAWSUIT. 
 
 ing. So they resolved to idealize in tlie form of a woman, 
 which was not so bad as they might do. 
 
 The law of the case will be found to hang on a single 
 point. He who commanded the devils to come out of the 
 man, wielded legally all of the Creator's power over the 
 universe. The foundation of the science of theology is 
 the principle that the Creator may do His pleasure with 
 the created, to save or destroy. The swine and the man 
 were alike His. No right of private property can be set 
 up against the Creator's supreme riglit. Such a claim 
 is impious. The man in whom the devils were had a case 
 for damages as much as the owner of the swine. If this 
 were allowed, all sorts of people, possessed with all sorts of 
 devils, would be suing for damages. For the power to 
 cast out devils was conferred on the Apostolic Church. 
 
 Nor could an action lie against the devil. Whatever 
 dominion he exercises, and whatever or whoever he 
 possesses, must be either by permission or by concurrent 
 and equivocal power. In neither alternative could an 
 action against the devil be maintained. When the suit is 
 stated in its real nature, as for trespass on created things, 
 against the very Creator of all things, its impiety is visible 
 even to the naked eye. The case will be tried on the 
 record. Much irrelevant discussion will be had by those 
 who think themselves advanced thinkers because they 
 attack our cherished beliefs, but who are crudely and 
 simply getting an inkling of ideas which have been ground 
 over since the world began . 
 
 If comments of Eastern journals on the part which 
 pork has played in esthetic culture in Cincinnati were 
 other than envy, a writer in this center of the fine arts 
 might be biased by culture on the side of the respected 
 owner of two thousand hogs which were sacrificed to get 
 the devils out of one beggar; but the judicial mind can not 
 avoid the conclusion that the claim is untenable in law.
 
 tfiE DEVILS AND THE SWiKE— A LAWSUIT. 221 
 
 In all ages and civilizations have mankind peopled the 
 world with spirit beings. The world has never got along 
 without devils. Preachers always find them handy to have 
 about them. They furnish a charitable explanation of the 
 conduct of husbands, wives, children, relations, friends 
 and enemies. 
 
 The number which possessed this man shows an allow- 
 ance for increase of population, and supports the common 
 belief in the prevalence of demoniac possession. There is 
 a record of a case in which seven devils were cast out 
 of one wonittn, indicating a generous allowance to that 
 side of animated nature. The plaintiff in this suit will 
 surely be defeated; but the trial will be very interesting, 
 because of the authoritative definition of the state, rights 
 and limitations of devils which may be expected from the 
 Vatican theologians.
 
 XLVII. 
 
 THE CONVEETED PRIZE-FIGHTER. 
 
 CONVERSIONS of the heaviest villains are easy when 
 they come to the gallows. Your hangman's noose 
 is a powerful preacher. When a man must travel, he 
 packs his carpet-bag. What a pardon or commutation 
 would do can never be found out without trying, therefore 
 it should never be tried on a converted murderer. Let his 
 salvation be made sure. Some who have been noted for 
 wickedness have been converted without previous convic- 
 tion at law, and have become preachers or exhorters, 
 testifying what saving grace has done for them, and urg- 
 ing others to try it. In general they do not hold out. 
 When the bracing of the new sensation and notoriety has 
 slackened they are apt to fall back, as the dog mentioned 
 in Scripture, that encores his surfeit, and the waslied sow 
 that returns to her congenial mire. Not so with Ben. 
 Hogan, once a j)rize-fighter, gambler and rough of New 
 York, but for the last two years a soldier of the cross in 
 the Evangelical Army, and fighting the devil and his works 
 at Chicago. Ben. Hogan has now evinced a Christian 
 spirit — or rather the spirit of Christ — which is an example 
 to the best of those who were born of pious parents and 
 trained in piety from their mother^s knee. 
 
 Two years of perseverance is pretty good proof of the 
 sincerity of this conversion, but Hogan has now given one 
 much higher. His example converted his pretty wife, who 
 also joined the Evangelical Army. They were successful 
 in Chicago, were well received by the clergy and the tem- 
 perance workers, and have a record of over five hundred 
 
 S23
 
 THE CONVERTED PKIZE-PIGHTER. 223 
 
 conversions through their instrumentality. In an evil 
 hour, probably through the contrivance of him who, for 
 some inscrutable reason, is permitted to go about hunting 
 souls to perdition, Ilogan, about five weeks ago, went to 
 Omaha for evangelical work, leaving his wife at Cliicago, 
 where this gentle lamb fell a prey to a wolf well dressed in 
 the sheep's clothing of an officer of the Evangelical Army. 
 When Hogan returned he found his wife had departed 
 and was living with this wolf in another quarter. Did 
 he go there in a rage to kill her or her seducer in the 
 usual Christian mode — to then plead emotional insanity, 
 and be acquitted by the jury and applauded by a crowded 
 court-room and the newspapers as a man who had vin- 
 dicated his honor? 
 
 Did he take advantage of his pugilistic training to 
 "slug" the sanctimonious villain within an inch of his 
 life? Did he shoot him, and turn his deserting wife out 
 upon the world to an outcast's life? He did none of these 
 heroic, chivalrous and honorable things which the world 
 holds necessary for the man to do in such cases, to vindicate 
 his manhood and honor. Instead of the conventional, 
 heroic madness, he was stricken with grief for his bereave- 
 ment, and with pity for his erring wife. Instead of the 
 savagery of honor which demands murder and ruin of 
 others to appease itself — the same noble rage that inspires 
 two rival lords of the heifer herd to lock horns to the 
 death — he was crushed with affliction. The heroic vein in 
 such cases is purely selfish; but Ilogan's sorrow was for 
 his fallen wife more than for himself. His chief solicitude 
 was lest she should suffer the usual fate of the fallen 
 woman, and be deserted by her seducer) 
 
 He sought their abiding place, and found them to- 
 gether. Here was no Othello suspicion, but the fact. This 
 ex-prize-fighter talked compassionately to the wife who had
 
 SI24 THE COKVERTED tRIZE-FlGHTER. 
 
 deserted liim, and entreatingly to the man who had — in 
 the current phrase — dishonored him. He exhorted him to 
 be kind to her, and having thus assured him against any 
 fear of his revenge, he tearfully bade them farewell. This 
 was not heroic in the conventional mode. It was not that 
 selfish honor which slays the man and destroys the wife to 
 appease itself. But when heroes come to be measured by 
 the true test, shall not Ben Hogan's name stand above all 
 the rest? It is merely equal and impartial justice between 
 accusers and accused, which says ''let him that is without 
 sin cast the first stone at her," but here was a husband, a 
 man of muscle and courage, in the presence of his stolen 
 wife and of the man who had robbed him, saying in pity 
 and sorrow to him : Be kind to her, as I have been." To 
 call this the Christian spirit would be inadequate; it is the 
 very spirit of Christ dwelling in the soul of an ex-prize- 
 fighter. Up aloft, where the nautical ballad has sent Tom 
 Bowline, is a high seat for this pugilist whose heroism 
 and manhood have made the murderous rage which is 
 called honor in these cases appear a beastly butchery.
 
 XLYIII. 
 
 THE CASE OF SIIYLOCK-LAW REVIEW. 
 
 THE original case was a suit of Shylock against Antonio, 
 upon a bond for the payment of three thousand 
 ducats or a pound of his flesh, but its conversion by the 
 Court to a criminal proceeding, with penalty of forfeiture 
 to the State, made it a State case. The judgment stands, 
 mocking all principles of law, making the judiciary a 
 juggle, perverting the public morals, making opprobrious 
 metaphor an easement to the conscience for breach of con- 
 tracts, and fostering a cruel religious prejudice. 
 
 For the credit of the Bench and of the profession of 
 law, and because of its pernicious influence on morals, the 
 judgment of the Court should be overruled, as it must be 
 when tried by that perfection of reason of which they say 
 the law is the result. Nor is the case beyond a. measure 
 of restitution. As to the law points, both the counsel for 
 the defendant and the Court admitted that the contract 
 was lawful. Counsel did not even plead that it was against 
 public policy; which is a handy higher law to let corpora- 
 tions out of their contracts; like as tlie vague phrase that 
 an act is a police regulation, is a way of driving it through 
 the Constitution. 
 
 The Court having adjudged tlie contract lawful, must 
 construe it in a rational sense to make it practicable. The 
 office of the judiciary is to enforce the specific pcrfoi-mance 
 of contracts, not to fetch in extraneous conditions to make 
 performance impossible. The contract to sell a thing is a 
 contract to do and to permit the buyer to do all that is 
 necessary to put him in possession. It includes the use 
 15 225
 
 236 THE CASE OF SHYLOCK — LAW REVIEW. 
 
 for the time of whatever other things of the seller are 
 requisite to en;ible the buyer to take his purchase. 
 
 For example: He who, on his own land, sells a horse, 
 can not miike the buyer a trespasser for riding him over 
 that land to take him home. He who sells a piece of land 
 in the center of a tract, gives to the buyer the right of way 
 to the land, though this be not expressed. He who sells 
 a ci'op on the ground, implies a contract that on his prem- 
 ises the buyer may do all that is requisite to gather and 
 carry away the crop. 
 
 When Antonio contracted to Shylock a pound of his 
 flesh, to be cut off by Shylock wherever he chose, the sale 
 included all that was requisite to Shylock in taking 
 possession. If blood-letting and danger to life were con- 
 sequent, they were incidents of the contract, and were 
 Antonio's lookout, not Shylock's. The ruling that he 
 must cut off, neither more nor less than a pound, and that 
 the smallest variation in weight either way would subject 
 him to dire penalties, is no more relative to this than to 
 any other contract for future delivery. 
 
 In adjudicating a contract the flesh of this fleshy 
 merchant was no more to the Court than hog's flesh, or 
 any other that is bought and sold. Antonio having made 
 merchandise of his flesh, the contract must be treated as 
 simply for merchandise, and must be construed in a 
 rational way to make performance practicable. 
 
 Suppose that one of our merchant princes should con- 
 tract with one of our drover princes for hogs enough to 
 make so many pounds of side-pork, the buyer to take from 
 the lot and kill till he got his amount, would a Court hold 
 that if he killed a part of a hog more or less than was 
 required to make the exact weight the contract was for- 
 feited? Suppose that hogs had risen, and the seller desired 
 to back out, would an honest Court come to his aid by 
 such a ruling as this:
 
 THE CASE OF SnYLOCK— LAW REVIEW. 227 
 
 "Therefore prepare thou to butcher the hogs, 
 Shed thou no bloiMl, nor cut thou less nor more 
 But just tlie exact weight; be it but so much 
 As makes it light or heiivy in the substance 
 Or the division of the twentieth part 
 Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn 
 But in the estimation of a hair. 
 The contract is broken, and all your pork is forfeit." 
 
 Such a judgment would make the Court a juggling 
 convenience for cornered gamblers in produce. 
 
 The second part of the Court's decision is that the con- 
 tract brought Shylock within the criminal law of Venice, 
 which forfeited the goods and life of any alien found guilty 
 of seeking by either direct or indirect means the life of 
 any citizen; one-half of the goods to the State, the other 
 half to the citizen plotted against. This judgment is 
 overthrown by the prior judgment that the contract was 
 lawful. 
 
 The Court without reservation had decided the contract 
 lawful, and had thrown Antonio upon the mercy of Shy- 
 lock. The strange deputy lawyer, who came in to repre- 
 sent the famous counselor, Bellario, in behalf of Antonio, 
 had admitted that the contract was lawful, and had 
 eloquently besought Shylock to have mercy, and not exact 
 the penalty of the bond. A Court can not adjudge lawful 
 a contract which it holds to be an attempt to take the life 
 of a citizen unlawfully. 
 
 Plaving decided the contract lawful, the Court can not 
 hold that it is an unlawful attempt to seek the life of a 
 citizen, nor that it comes under the law of crimes in any 
 way. The decision that a lawful contract is an unlawful 
 act is so plain a contradiction that it leaves the Court's 
 judgment not a point to stand on, and makes its sentence 
 upon Shylock clearly illegal. 
 
 This judicial tribunal presents the novel spectacle of a
 
 228 THE CASE OF SHYLOCK — LAW EEVIEW. 
 
 fresh advocate taking complete possession, usurping the 
 functions of the Bench, reversing its judgment, and pro- 
 nouncing the law of the case. This impropriety would be 
 excepted to by Mr. Evarts, and by any lawyer who knew his 
 trade, and would be sufficient in any higher court to set 
 aside the verdict. And this pretended lawyer was a beauti- 
 ful woman in masculine garb. 
 
 But all that behold the trial are knowing that this dis- 
 guise of male attire is of the flimsiest, and in fact is rather 
 to reveal the special female charms than to hide them. In 
 another celebrated case, ''The Trial by Jury," in Gilbert^s 
 operetta, the charms and wrongs of the lovely plaintiff in 
 the suit for divorce, turn the heads of judge and jury, make 
 them forget law and propriety, and cut up antics unseemly 
 in a court of law. 
 
 So it is likely that Portia's charms, revealed rather than 
 concealed by the male costume, turned the heads of the 
 soft Duke and of the dummy Magnificoe, and made them 
 accept her swaggering declamation as law, and to give 
 a judgment which is so monstrously unjust, so defiant of all 
 principles of law, and so contradictory to itbelf that it is a 
 stain on the character of the judiciary, and a standing 
 testimony that the court was for the time thrown off its 
 balance by a woman. 
 
 The law of the case is also the moral of the case. Anto- 
 nio, a venturesome merchant, fortunate for a time, prob- 
 ably a successful cornerer, ostentatious and prodigal in his 
 expenditure, had gathered upon himself a lot of young 
 spendthrift bloods, who were living upon him, borrowing 
 of him, consuming his substance, and in all ways playing 
 the character which, in the choice Italian of the time, was 
 called the dead-beat. Insolent with his lucky speculations, 
 he had made the meek, money-lending Shylock the subject 
 of his gibes and ignominious insults.
 
 THE CASE OF SHYLOCK — LAW REVIEW. 229 
 
 The profligate crew had squeezed him dry for tlie time, 
 and had to look about for a way to make a raise. The 
 head-center proposed to go in the guise of a rich gentleman 
 on a fortunc-liunting expedition. Wanting an outfit, lie 
 promised Antonio that if successful he will repay this loan, 
 and wipe out the old score, from his bride's fortune. "J'o 
 promote this delectable scheme Antonio comes to Shylock 
 for a loan to the adventurous Bassanio. 
 
 Shylock, finding the Christian merchant in this amiable 
 mood, reminds him of his contumelious treatment. Tlie 
 description touches any heart that is susceptible to pity; 
 but it fetches no contrition in Antonio. It angers liim, 
 and he makes the truculent declaration that although he 
 borrows, he will continue to maltreat the lender. Shylock 
 tries to conciliate. He pleads that a Jew hath the same 
 members, senses and sensibilities as a Christian, and sullers 
 the same when abused. 
 
 He lends the money without interest. Bassanio's name 
 was worthless and Antonio's not negotiable. Their bond 
 would be a mockery of security. Shylock comprehended 
 the humor of the situation, and proposed a boiul, which 
 was but a joke on security, and whose forfeit no one could 
 think probable. Then some of the very money that Shy- 
 lock lent was spent to fit out one of the profligates, Lorenzo, 
 to carry off his daughter. 
 
 While in the agony of his bereavement, a couple of 
 these rakes mocked him with cruel Jests for the way he had 
 been duped and robbed of his daughter. Then a feeling of 
 righteous retribution seized upon his soul, and he resolved 
 that if the bond should be forfeited, he would exact the 
 penalty. But he found that the law of Venice had no jus- 
 tice for the son of Israel; that its supreme tribunal was a 
 juggle, and its code that of pirates. 
 
 His life and property were declared forfeited; one-half
 
 230 THE CASE OF SHYLOCK — LAW llEVIEW 
 
 his goods to the State, the other to Antonio. The Duke 
 pardoned his life, and agreed that the State would remit its 
 moiety of the fine, and that Antonio should hold the other 
 to give to the scapegrace who had carried off Shylock's 
 daughter. To this was added the crowning atrocity, that 
 Shylock should embrace Christianity, and should record 
 then in Court a gift of all that he died possessed of to 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 These exactions being made as commutations of an 
 illegal sentence, were in fact seizures by the State, and the 
 State is liable for them. The liabilities of a State are never 
 outlawed. Venice ia now part of the kingdom of Italy. 
 That great government would hardly consent to stain its 
 cliaracter for justice by denying a rehearing to this case, 
 and a rehearing would unquestionably order a restitution 
 of all these exactions and interest to the descendants of 
 Shylock. A specific performance of the contract for the 
 pound of flesh can not now be enforced, but that part may 
 be compounded with money. 
 
 The case is within the province of international negoti- 
 ations. Our Government, by remonstrating with Russia for 
 the cruelties to the Jews, has made a precedent for pre- 
 senting the case of Shylock to the Government of Italy. 
 Shylock's wealth and the interest thereon will be a pretty 
 sum for his heirs. But the essential part is to obliterate 
 this stain from the judiciary; to end this perversion of the 
 moral sentiments; to remove that which supplies a term of 
 opprobrium wherewith to palliate default in contracts; and 
 to reform that which fosters a cruel race prejudice.
 
 XLIX. 
 
 EYILS OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF 
 MALES. 
 
 THE recent expounding of the evils resulting from the 
 higher education of females, in creating a distaste for 
 home life, for family duties, and for maternity, has con- 
 vinced every reasonable male. He who has laid up this 
 wisdom will seek in a wife those unsophisticated domestic 
 qualities which the honest farmer, in speaking in praise of 
 his departed wife, in pastoral language truly Virgilian called 
 ''a good family beast/' He will shun the females who are 
 addicted to culture, and will seek a wife Avhere the poet 
 seeks inspiration, in simple nature. 
 
 But the expounding has taken no heed to the males ; 
 yet the most of the arguments apply as well to these as to 
 the females; and it is alike important to the family, the 
 propagation of the race, and to preservation of society, that 
 the males should be right. This does not refer to the 
 necessary education for the professions. That may be 
 kept in a narrow line, and it confines the mind to business; 
 it refers to education of the intellect for its own sake. 
 Culture is as prone to distract the mind of the male from 
 that intense pursuit of a profession or trade which the 
 struggle of life makes requisite to success, as the mind of 
 the female from family duties. 
 
 Among business men is a saying that the college unfits 
 boys for business. H so with this rudimentary part, what 
 can be expected of the higher education? They who are 
 successful in trade or the professions, can not sink the 
 shop for culture. They who are cultured up to a high 
 
 231
 
 232 EVILS OF THE IIIGIIEll EDUCATION OF MALES. 
 
 intellectuality can not sink it for the shop. "When they 
 should be applying their whole minds to business they 
 will be running off into science, or art, or the sj)eculative 
 pursuit of the origin of things, or of the absolute mind. 
 This multiplication of ideas dissipates the one-ideaism 
 which is essential to success in any practical line. 
 
 Therefore do we behold the illiterate rising from nothing 
 to wealth, by means of one idea that absorbs the whole 
 mind, and draws all their energies, while the educated, 
 who ought to be made more capable thereby, are unsuccess- 
 ful. Also, the higher education of the male magnifies his 
 feeling of superiority over the female, makes him more 
 arrogant; unfits him for companionshi]3 with her, and 
 leads him to seek his intellectual society away from home. 
 Thus, it is frequently said in cases of marital infelicity, 
 that the male has intellectually grown away from his wife, 
 so that they have ceased to be comjiatible; which is to say 
 that he has found another female who is more congenial. 
 
 Males of the higher education are not companionable to 
 their females. Their minds are preoccupied with books of 
 other men's ideas, or are in search of the unknowable. They 
 can not let down their superior minds to converse on such 
 things as run in the female head. They lose the faculty 
 of conversation in the family circle. On the other hand, 
 belief in education is a superstition, and it is reverenced, 
 although its outward manifestations may be only stupidity. 
 The female regards the higher education of the male with 
 awe, although his bodily presence may be weak and his 
 speech comtemptible — as St. Paul said was the contrast 
 his critics made between his epistles and his personal 
 appearance. In many various ways the higher education 
 of the male oppresses and bows down the female, and helps 
 to keep her in slavery. 
 
 Paternity is alike important with maternity in forming
 
 EVILS OF THE HIGHEK EDUCATION OF MALES. 233 
 
 the family and preserving the race, and the higher educa- 
 tion has as marked an effect on this function of tlie male. 
 Like should beget its like, and the progeny of the intellect- 
 ual male should, in the order of nature, go on to higher 
 attainments from generation to generation. But the fact 
 is universally recognized that males of superior intellect 
 rarely have sons that can succeed them; that in general their 
 sons are not above mediocrity, if so high as that. This 
 happens, although highly intellectual males are apt to 
 marry silly females, as if to counteract the degeneration 
 of the higher education by striking an average. 
 
 Much of that scantiness of offspring which the Rev. Dr. 
 Morgan Dix makes the ground of a heavy arraignment of 
 wives, as a consequence of the distaste created for family 
 duty by too much culture, may be the result of the inor- 
 dinate development of the intellectual part in males. But 
 the graver consequence is the degeneracy of the offspring 
 of males of the highest intellect. For an inferior breed is 
 worse tban none. Higher education has, also, the like 
 effect on the males of fostering a conceit and presumption 
 of learning which runs to scepticism and unbelief. They 
 who think themselves knowing, are always prone to go to 
 the bottom of things, and to overturn the handiwork of 
 creation, told by Moses, and to make creation do itself. 
 Religious faith is as important to the paternal as to the 
 maternal being, and a conceit of learning which impairs it 
 in the male, is as destructive of the family and of society 
 as in the female. 
 
 The recent expoundings against the higher education 
 and enlarged sj)here of the female are but a repetition of 
 the utterances of the male for the past six thousand or 
 sixty million years; all of which was to the end of keeping 
 the female in subjection. The male has been generous and 
 unreserved in the argument, thinking its application all on
 
 234 EVILS OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF MALES. 
 
 one side. But when examined it is found that all the 
 argument of the shrinking and demoralization of the 
 family and of society by the higher education of the female 
 is alike applicable to the male, and that the preservation 
 of the family and of the race alike demands his return to 
 the simplicity of nature. 
 
 Then shall be the equality of the male and female, 
 which makes the ideal marriage. No more shall be the 
 arrogance of higher education in one, and the meekness of 
 superstitious reverence for it in the other, which is not true 
 marriage, but domination and oppression. Then shall 
 their minds run on tlie same easy subjects, and conversa- 
 tion shall be unconfined. Then no more shall intellectual 
 incompatibility put asunder the twain who have become 
 one flesh. Then shall the male find his mental tonic by 
 his own hearth, in conversing on domestic and neighborly 
 topics, instead of taking his higher education to other 
 pastures. The demonstration of the evils of higher educa- 
 tion of females has done well in turning the mind to the 
 same evil in the males, which is thus discovered to be a 
 chief cause of our social ills.
 
 L. 
 
 WOMAN'S SUPERTOR USTTTJITTONS. 
 
 MAN'S flattering ascriptions to woman have alwa3'S the 
 peculiar quality that their logical sequence is against 
 her cause of equal political, civil and domestic rights. This 
 unvarying tendency ought to suggest to woman's perceptive 
 mind that the complimentary attributes which man be- 
 stows so bountifully and inexpensively on woman are Greek 
 horse gifts. But woman's nature is so trusting to man 
 that his flattery makes her his blind subject. She even 
 turns upon her own defenders, who point out to her the 
 effect of these lavish ascriptions of superiority upon her 
 rights of equality. 
 
 These papers have heretofore remarked this course of 
 cunning stratagem, and have warned those devoted women 
 who are agitating the cause of woman's equal rights, 
 against the seeming support of men who add to the suffi- 
 cient argument of woman's equal birth and capacities, the 
 claim of her superior spiritual or moral nature, or of any 
 other superiority because of sex. For such claims fetch 
 up directly the argument that her superior virtue is be- 
 cause of her seclusion from affairs, and that her political 
 elevation will therefore be moral degradation. But 
 woman's nature towards man is so confiding that she does 
 not recognize as friends the champions of her political 
 equality when they warn her against the false flatterers of 
 her moral superiority. 
 
 When woman asserts a superior spiritual nature because 
 of her sex, she pulls out the underpinning from the argu- 
 ment of her equality, and puts into the mouths of her 
 
 235
 
 336 woman's supekior intuitions. 
 
 masters the argument tliat if she has this superior virtue, 
 society had better let well enough alone, and not drag her 
 down into the affairs of the sex of the lower moral order. 
 The most insidious of the ascriptions which man's cheap 
 bounty has given to woman, is that she is superior to man 
 in her intuitions, and that by instinct she jumps to right 
 conclusions, while man's duller nature has to Avork by a 
 laborious reasoning process, and at last is apt to come 
 out wrong. 
 
 Woman swallowed this like a young robin; she has 
 swallowed it for ages; she has unctioned her soul with the 
 flattery, all unconscious that man by this places her in the 
 lower order of animals, to whom he ascribes a larger in- 
 stinct in the place of reason. She is all unconscious that 
 this is a conclusive argument against educating woman. 
 For through education comes in the habit and power of 
 reasoning, which is incompatible with intuitional leaps. 
 Between the two would bean irrepressible conflict; instinct 
 jumping to an opinion, and reason plodding after and apt 
 to pull the other way. Torn by this internal conflict, 
 woman would be as King Claudius, the man who loved 
 not wisely and too well his brother's wife, described him- 
 self: 
 
 Though intuition be as sharp as will, 
 Stronger reason defeats my strong intent; 
 And, like a man to double business bound, 
 I stand in doubt where I shall first begin. 
 And both neglect. 
 
 To educate woman in that way of systematic mental 
 training which develops reason is to make a conflict or rea- 
 son must go to the wall. If her intuitional nature is to 
 prevail, then education would be useless. If by giving hei 
 the same education as man, reason is to be created in her 
 the same as man's, then her intuitional nature must be over- 
 come. She has to choose between the two.
 
 woman's superior Intuitions. 237 
 
 Can woman afford to be trained to reason, at the sacri- 
 fice of the superior intuitional quality? Can society afford 
 to lose this spiritual guidance of woman for the sake of 
 such reason as man's education produces? On the other 
 hand, is woman's sexual superiority of intuitional percep- 
 tions in the affairs of herself, her family, and thecommun- 
 it}', such that in order to keep this spiritual faculty unim- 
 paired, she can afford to forego systematic training of the 
 mind? 
 
 The question is a serious one. Indeed, it involves a 
 crisis to society. Thus far has it come with the saving 
 element of woman's quick spiritual intuitive perceptions in 
 one-half the race, and tliis half paramount in inlluence in 
 the domestic sphere, and with the saving element of the 
 slower and less trustworthy reasoning faculty in the other 
 half. But now it is proposed to extinguish the hitherto 
 superior saving element by training woman's mind to the 
 same reasoning methods as man's, by giving her the same 
 education as man. The experiment is of tremendous mag- 
 nitude. 
 
 The question is made more difficult by the blindness 
 of even the strong-minded women to the consequences, 
 and by their intuitive inability to distinguish the true 
 champions of woman's equal rights from the designing 
 flatterers of her superior nature. She fondly thinks that 
 she is to form reason like man's by man's form of educa- 
 tioTi, and still is to retain her faculty of leaping to conclu- 
 sions by instinct. In like illogical manner she asserts her 
 equal political rights by a claim of the superior virtue 
 which she keeps by her seclusion from affairs. 
 
 The failure of woman's intuitions to discern among 
 men the true advocates of her equal rights from these who 
 fasten her chains by ascriptions of superior virtues, is the 
 most disheartening element in this cause. It is probable
 
 238 woman's superior intuitions. 
 
 that she would resent a demonstration that all this ascrip- 
 tion of a finer intuitional nature to woman is a fiction. 
 She would cling to this, although it classes her with the an- 
 imals that have not reasoning souls, and although it is an 
 invincible argument against educating her. 
 
 But is there any reality in this attribute of a superior 
 intuitional nature to woman? Do the men who repeat 
 this old fallacy act upon it? Do they think their wives less 
 ajjt to be duped by the sharpers in all sorts of guises? Do 
 they find intuitions of wives and daughters trusty guides 
 in discerning character in man and woman? Are they 
 willing to let a designing villain roam in their families, 
 trusting to this female intuition to detect him? When the 
 shepherd of the flock is found to be a wolf, is it not invari- 
 ably discovered that he has long been duping the ewes and 
 she lambs? Where were then these unerring female intui- 
 tions? And when the wolf is exposed, who are they that 
 still cling to him? The ewes and lambs with the unerring 
 intuitions. In what line does the medical mountebank find 
 success so easy as in the specialty of female complaints? 
 
 This ascription to woman, which has stood for ages 
 unchallenged, will not bear scientific examination for a 
 moment. It falls to j^ieces at the touch of reason. But 
 it ought to be discarded and resented by woman because 
 it classes her with those lower animals to whom, by man's 
 confession, reason has been denied. The saddest thing in 
 this however, is that she will cling to this degrading flat- 
 tery, and will resent the exposure of its true character.
 
 LI. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL BREEDING. 
 
 IS IT just to charge the feeble intellects of men to the luck 
 of education of the mothers ? A New York paper lias 
 done this, in its commendation of the admission of females 
 to the public examinations of the Cambridge (Kiiglaud) 
 University. This charge calls to mind a little incident in 
 the Garden of Eden, now for the first time used as a 
 literary simile, in which he said, " She gave me and I did 
 eat." Saith this accusing editor : 
 
 ** Mankind does not expect a millenium, but the world 
 will have taken some steps toward it when a stronger and 
 wider education comes to lift women out of the pettiness 
 of gossi]} and dress. With wiser mothers will come wiser 
 sons." 
 
 Here is an imputation that the foolishness of sons is be- 
 cause of lack of college education of the motliers. Is there 
 any ground for this grave charge ? Comparatively few men 
 are college educated, and these do not distinguisli them- 
 selves by begetting wise sons. The ranks of the literate 
 have to be recruited from the illiterate, to keep up the 
 stamina. But we pass by the physiological question, to 
 treat of the fact of this grave reflection on women. They 
 that watch over the welfare of mankind have remarked the 
 better culture of tlie daughters of this generation tlian of 
 the sons, and the philosophical mind has inquired whether 
 this does not threaten man's supremacy. 
 
 It is true that some boys go through college witli the 
 usual uncertainty as to its bringing forth any positive ca- 
 pacity. If these then go onto the study of a profession 
 
 239
 
 240 IKTELLECTtJAL BREEDING. 
 
 which is of an intellectual nature, and if tliey pursue it 
 capably, they have perhaps a larger education than is avail- 
 able to woman, save under difficulties. If, however, the 
 college boy ceases his education at that point, and thinks 
 he is educated, as is frequent, the college is wasted on him, 
 and he remains fixed in the conceit of a small mind. But 
 in the greater number of the sons and daughters of respect- 
 able people, the boys leave school earlier than the girls. 
 Of the ninety-six graduates of the Cincinnati high schools 
 in 1879, fifty-four were girls. Of the number that entered 
 the high schools, 519 were boys, 565 girls. More girls than 
 boys reached the top grade of the intermediate schools. 
 
 In the school report for the city of Hamilton, 0., for 
 1880, of tlie nine graduates of the high school eight are 
 girls; also of the number entered in the first year of the 
 course, thirty were girls and seven boys. A similar dis- 
 parity is observed in the upper grades of the district schools. 
 Tiiese high schools furnish a sufficient foundation of edu- 
 cation for those Avho have the zeal to go forward. College 
 can do little for those who have not the zeal to go beyond. 
 A feature of much significance is furnished by the Ham- 
 ilton report, which gives the occupation of the parents of 
 the high school pupils, showing that of the eighty-two 
 fathers, eighteen are mechanics and laborers, twenty-one 
 unclassified, twenty-two "small tradesmen," eight farmers, 
 five merchants, and eight professionals. Thus the same 
 higher education of girls than of boys is reaching the 
 daughters of the unskilled laborers. 
 
 But this is only a small part of the disparity in the 
 education of the girls and boys of tliis generation. In 
 general, intellectual culture ceases with the boys when 
 they leave school, but with the girls of what are called so- 
 ciety people, and of all that are in middling circumstances, 
 there is a general practice of continuing culture in a vari-
 
 INTELLECTUAL BREEDING. , 241 
 
 ety of ways. "With yoimg women this supplies the mental 
 occupation which young men find in smoking, drinking, 
 and vapid talk in public resorts. A very serious social 
 question is, where are the young women to find the society 
 of intellectual young men? It is a matter of common re- 
 mark that the young men of the day are not cultured, and 
 that contemporary young women are their intellectual 
 superiors. 
 
 Education, in men, has not now that social rank which 
 it had when there was not so mucli gratis schooling. Tiie 
 boys of people in middling circumstances, and of those 
 that are called society, drop out of school young, to enter 
 some kind of light and genteel employment, to support 
 extravagant habits, while the girls of the same class keep 
 on. The sons do not observe that this loses them anything 
 in society estimation, and they have little incentive to pur- 
 sue any sort of intellectual exercise. But culture is more 
 esteemed .by the daughters and mothers, and as they look 
 for their enjoyment in the domestic circle, rather than in 
 places of public resort, they have more time aiul incentive 
 to pursue it. Ideas are degenerating to the acceptation that 
 women are the cultured part of the race, and that to be 
 male is all that man can be expected to contribute to intel- 
 lectual society. 
 
 If higher education of the future mothers is requisite to 
 the breeding of more intellectual sons, how much more the 
 higher education of the future fathers! Does not the 
 moral and intellectual state of the father have as much 
 bearing on jjrogeny as of the mother? According to all the 
 known facts of physiology, does it not have more influence? 
 The sufl;rage platforms have set forth the proposition that 
 it is necessary that woman should vote in order to be states- 
 men in order to breed statesmen, and that without this the 
 breed of statesmen will run out. There is plausibility iu 
 16
 
 242 INTELLECTUAL BREEDING. 
 
 this. Indeed, that there ever were any statesmen is illogi- 
 cal, but as to laying of the weak minds of sons to the 
 lack of culture in women, the boot is on the other leg — to 
 use a homely metaphor.
 
 LII. 
 LOVE AND ISa^SIC. 
 
 AN AFFAIR of misplaced love in a neighboring town 
 has caused hearts to ache in several families; has 
 broken down the good position of a man who has been 
 faithful in a place of trust, and who was otherwise an exem- 
 plary church member and was leader of the choir; has 
 forced him to abandon wife and children and the property 
 which he had patiently earned to go into exile, and has de- 
 stroyed the fortunes of a girl who appears to have striven 
 vainly against this misplaced affection. Except in the dis- 
 closure of the struggles of each against the passion, and 
 the girl's honest confession of the unhappy love, while 
 denying all bodily offense, and the man's honesty in trans- 
 ferring all his property to his wife and departing alone, 
 this crossing of love is not so uncommon as to be remarked 
 for its strangeness. But there is matter of serious solici- 
 tude to the citizens of this metropolis of music culture, in the 
 statement of the Directors of the institution in whicli tliia 
 unfortunate man held a high trust, that " the only thing of 
 which they complained was his extreme fondness for music," 
 to which the narrator adds this reflection: ''A fondness 
 which the sequel will show proved his ruin.' 
 
 What the sequel does show is the young woman's nar- 
 rative that the proximity by which she caught her infatua- 
 tion was in the choir of the Methodist church, of which he 
 was leader, and in rehearsing for the May Music Festival 
 of the Vicinage. If musical concord brings sympathy of 
 feeling, if the melodious responses of tenor and soprano 
 awake responses of the heart; if joining in the harmonies 
 
 243
 
 244 LOVE AND MtJSlC. 
 
 of song harmonizes the affections,, and lifts up the soul 
 above conjugal pledges, then are our citizens, by their ex- 
 cessive devotion to high musical culture, destroying their 
 family relations and placing in peril that oft-imperiled 
 structure, the framework of society. If this were true, 
 then would the innocent-looking throng of students at our 
 great College of Music be entered on the broad way of 
 ruin. If this were true, then should we raze our great 
 Music Hall to its base as another Tower of Babel, by which 
 men wrought the dissolution of society by aspiring to 
 greater heights. 
 
 But happily we are able to quench this alarm by show- 
 ing that high musical culture, instead of inordinately devel- 
 oping the feelings, emotions, susceptibilities, tend to 
 eliminate them. The most uncultivated are they that 
 are most suspectible to melody. That concord of 
 notes which is called harmony strikes the natural ear. 
 The sensibility to this is born. The emotions of the un- 
 cultured are most wrought upon by these properties of 
 music, and therefore the danger of its stirring up respon- 
 sive affections, and setting them awry, is greatest with 
 least culture. But high culture in music eliminates mel- 
 ody and harmony, and dries up the natural susceptibility 
 to them. High culture therefore transcends the feelings 
 and rises to pure music — that is to say, to pure art — which 
 is purified from both melody and harmony. 
 
 This is not merely our own opinion — although that 
 alone would be infallible — nor merely the observation of 
 music execution, but it is stated by high writers on music. 
 Not long ago an article in the Atlantic told how musicians 
 enjoy music, and showed that it is wholly above the suscep- 
 tibility to such simple elements as melody and harmony. 
 It spoke contemptously of the unsophisticated ear to which 
 the note of the ^olian harp is pleasing, and alike pitifully
 
 LOVE A^■D iiusic. 245 
 
 of the childish who are pleased with simple harmony. It 
 showed that the way iiiusiciaiis enjoy music is not musi- 
 cal, but artistic, such as a critical observation of some par- 
 ticular phrase of the composition; just as the anatomist 
 finds most interest in the dry skeleton, while the unlearned 
 most admire the simple beauty of form, color, ami expres- 
 sion in the flesh. 
 
 A like working of high culture may be observed in the 
 other arts — for example, in sculpture. (J reck sculpture 
 reached its highest in representing the human form. A 
 remarkable example of the energy of a new country and 
 free and equal birth in creating gen: us for art is seen in the 
 incidents that whenever our people take up any art their 
 native talent transcends the classic works. No sooner 
 have we formed a school of sculpture upon classic models 
 than our American genius risesabove the mechanical imag- 
 ing of the human form, and expands its wings to the mod- 
 eling of a multitude of forms for the decoration of pottery, 
 Avails, frames, furniture, and so on — forms which merely 
 suggest real objects Avithout mechanically imitating any. 
 The sculptor's art reaches a higher development in the 
 plasterer's art, and we continually have to reconstruct our 
 p-rt schools, and lift them up to the flights of our native 
 genius. 
 
 There is a profoundly logical maxim that the exception 
 proves the rule. The exceptional departure of love in this 
 church choir proves the rule that choirs are secure against 
 such straying of hearts. All that have Avhen young served 
 a term in a choir, know that the oflice of praise, of Avhich 
 these are priests and priestesses for the congregation, im- 
 presses such solemnity that they have no susceptibility to 
 the personal feelings. Even if it were not so, and if 
 choirs were the hotbeds for the growth of love, this could 
 be turned to good Avork _^by udmitting only marriageable
 
 246 LOVE AND MUSIC. 
 
 persons to the office of worship. For the great object of 
 creation is that the earth may be peoj)led. All that pre- 
 pares the way to this chief purpose are entitled to preced- 
 ence in any time and place. Calling this sad event an ex- 
 ception, it proves the rule that church choirs, although 
 their music culture is not high enough to have ex- 
 tinguished the natural feelings, are safe places to let them 
 out, if rightly directed. But, as we have shown, a higher 
 culture eliminates from music all that touches uj^on the 
 emotions, and is thereby a protection, instead of a peril, in 
 matters of the heart. 
 
 Even in the less high stages of music cultivation lifts 
 it out of the primitive emotions by directing the effort 
 wholly to execution. He or she that is striving to attain 
 to that which shall give most effect naturally loses suscep- 
 tibility. Thus do we prove that high musical culture, such 
 as is generally diffused among our citizens, removes the 
 dangers of the indulgence of simple musical sensibilities — 
 that it removes the danger that musical sympathies shall 
 cause the affections to go astray, and that in reality it pro- 
 tects the family relations, and braces up the framework of 
 society.
 
 LIII. 
 UNEVEN" GROWTH OF MAN AND WIFE. 
 
 AN intellectual disparity is of ten remarked between man 
 and wife, by which they seem mismated. Society 
 commiserates the man who has the lack of intellectual 
 society at home, and it excuses him for seeking it abroad, 
 which is apt to cause domestic unpleasantness. Naturally 
 the simple and honest argument is that he made his own 
 choice of an intellectual companion, and can not go back 
 from it; that he judged for himself how much mind he 
 wanted in a wife, and that if he chose a weak one it is be- 
 cause he wanted to be the superior in order to dominate 
 her mind as the law enables him to do in his station. 
 
 Man, according to his nature, wants not that his wife 
 shall be mentally superior to himself. Her inferiority is 
 no call for pity to him, even if his caution has overdone it. 
 But there is a commonly received argument which sets 
 aside all this, and alleges that the wife ceases to grow 
 intellectually, but the man keeps on; that the intercourse 
 of the man with men in business affairs and public affairs, 
 and especially in the brain-developing affairs of our poli- 
 tics, carries him on in growth of mind, while his wife, con- 
 fined in domestic concerns, and in a large degree to the 
 society of women and children., ceases intellectual develop- 
 ment, and thus they grow apart, and are not, in fact, the 
 two whom the forms of law joined together. 
 
 This sounds plausible, and it is often uttered in abate- 
 ment for the man when his socking intellectual equality 
 away from home has led to attachments not regarded as 
 wholly intellectual. A curiosity in this is that the man in
 
 248 UNEVEN GROWTH OF MAN AND WIFE. 
 
 his daily and nightly intercourse does not take the wife 
 with him in this progress. Oral discourse is the most 
 effective mode of imparting instruction. There are pro- 
 fessions in which diplomas are taken by hearing lectures. 
 The wife is subject to his conversing and his orating, in the 
 early morning hour, at meals; and in the still hours of the 
 night. She sits as a jaupil at his feet. She listens in admir- 
 ation to words of knowledge from his 'expanding mind. 
 She is naturally anxious to keep pace with him. How is 
 it that all this continual rain of words of wisdom runs away 
 from her like water from a duck's back? 
 
 But although strange to such as know the didactic habit 
 of the man and the teachable spirit of the wife, this growth 
 into a mental disparity is accepted as a fact, and it is 
 undertaken to be explained by the averment; that while the 
 man is engaged in the large and expanding affairs of busi- 
 ness, the wife is engaged in mere household cares and in 
 bearing and rearing the children, all of which keeps her 
 mind at a standstill. This assumes that the affairs of the 
 household are not so important as those of the bread-win- 
 ning business; that they are small and dwarfing in their 
 influence; that child bearing and raising is a part of the 
 same domestic confinement to things which dwarf the 
 mind. 
 
 That the two whom — as the marriage form has it — God 
 hath joined together should grow apart by the necessary 
 diversity of their vocations, seems to make marriage a 
 failure. It represents that a couple who, when joined in 
 wedlock, are made one in flesh and person, as they are one 
 in soul and heart — two souls with but a single thought, 
 two hearts that beat as one — begin from that time to 
 grow apart into two souls with great disparity in thought, 
 two hearts that beat out of time, two persons and two 
 diverse fleshes; and all this by the necessity of married
 
 UKEVEN GROWTH OF MAN AND WIFE. 249 
 
 life, which assigns one to exterior business, and the other 
 to the interior concerns of the houseliold. Thus it is rep- 
 resented that deligence in their respective duties works 
 their separation in mind. 
 
 How shall they whom God has joined together be kept 
 from growing asunder? To bo legally unlocked is not all 
 of divorce. The substance of divorce has come in when a 
 disparity in intellectual progress has brought a separation 
 in mind. How shall this inevitable tendency of marriage 
 to separation by the evolution from the liomogeneous to 
 the heterogeneous be changed to a growth to a more perfect 
 union? Prevention seems a vital necessity to save marriage. 
 This is a subject for the serious consideration of tlie Oliio 
 anti-Divorce League. Perhaps that worthy society may 
 proceed more scientifically by investigating the causes of 
 the separation Avhich cause parties to ask for legal divorce, 
 than by narrowing the divorce statutes. ' 
 
 How can this unevenness in the mental growth of man 
 and wife be prevented ? The difference in the occupations 
 of man and wife is alleged as the chief cause. This 
 appears without remedy save by relieving the wife from the 
 household cares and taking her into the business affairs 
 and public life of the husband. Tlie woman suffragists 
 argue that equal rights and the exercise of political privil- 
 eges will give the wife an equal enlargement of mind, so 
 that her progress will be an equal pace. But politics are 
 but a small part of living except to a select few. And the 
 averment that the household cares of the wife are lower 
 than the business of man, and, therefore, that they keep 
 her mentally inferior to him, puts out of the question any 
 possibility of real equality of the wife without abandoning 
 her vocations of household things, child-bearing and child- 
 raising and the rest. 
 
 This disease of growing into mental incompatibility
 
 250 UNEVEi^^ GROWTH OF MAN AND AVIFB. 
 
 appears to be modern. It is not read of in the books of 
 antiquity. No mention is made of it in the Bible patri- 
 archs. But j^erhaps this is because the additional wives 
 which they took on were according to their advanced stages 
 of intellectual developement. This left the elder wives to 
 the household drudgery while providing the man with his 
 higher intellectual tonic in the fresh aunexings. It is 
 strange that it has arisen with the more general education 
 of woman, and with her demand for equal rights. Another 
 and a worse paradox is that while she demands equal rights 
 upon the claim of her equal abilities, she alleges an infer- 
 iority because of the lower degree of her vocations as to 
 those of man, which makes essential that she shall be 
 relieved from these as the first step to the attainment of 
 equal abilities and equal rights. 
 
 This is only another measure of the revolution which 
 the coming triumph of woman's cause is to make in all the 
 social relations. The right can abide the consequences 
 without apprehension. If it shall be found that the yoke 
 of wedlock is irreconcilable with the independent career 
 of woman, or that the consigning of the most active pe- 
 riod of her life to the practice of maternity cuts her off 
 from such a chance for a career as is open to man, or that 
 household occupations dwarf her intellectual growth; and 
 thereby consign her to an inferior state, she must be eman- 
 cipated from them. Woman's equal rights mean liberty 
 and all which that implies. She is not going to take it in 
 fetters, and to receive privileges doled out to her in limited 
 measure, to keep her where she is, but she will have that 
 entire freedom which shall make her master of her own 
 destiny.
 
 LIV. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN OF SIXTY. 
 
 WOMAN is so wonted and subdued to the entire of tlie 
 disabilities which man has heaped upon her tlirough 
 the ages, that her revolt is hardly to be looked for against a 
 mere detail which puts a limitation on the age at which 
 she may be susceptible to love which is no limitation to 
 him. Else would she rise up and sjieak out against the 
 assumption of the general commentary on the Burdett 
 Coutts-Bartlett marriage, that it is abnormal and improper 
 for a woman of sixty to marry; still more to marry a man 
 of thirty-two. 
 
 Why is it abnormal and improper that a woman of 
 sixty should marry? Is it that she is too old to love? Let 
 the women of sixty who say they are too old to love, rise 
 up and fling stones at her. She would be in no danger of 
 being stoned. It is that she is too old to be loved. Let 
 men who have wives of sixty say that to their faces, and 
 give them the reason why. 
 
 Is the argument that this is not love such as runs in 
 what the pious hymn calls ''the heat of youthful blood," 
 and that it is more intellectual than animal; is that reason? 
 Rather does it not exalt the quality of the love of a woman 
 of sixty? Men join in this defamation. But no man of 
 sixty will admit to himself that he is incapable of love. 
 Observation makes this a susceptible age in man. His put- 
 ting this limitation on woman is therefore only his custom 
 of putting all sorts of disabilities on her, which he takes 
 not upon himself. 
 
 May not a woman of sixty be admirable in character, 
 251
 
 25% THE RIGHTS OF AVOMEN OF SIXTY, 
 
 mind, disposition and person ? Even if her charms of per- 
 sonal form have begun to wither, yet to make that an argu- 
 ment that she is incapable of loving or being loved, would 
 put love oh a very material basis. 
 
 May she not be capable of giving and receiving all the 
 enjoyments of companionship Avith man? May she not 
 enjoy them as highly and rationally as at any age, and 
 does she not appreciate them better and need them as well 
 as* the girl who is giddy with animal spirits and a light 
 head? Is not a cultured woman of sixty more intellect- 
 ually attractive than when she was at the age at which it is 
 thought a girl ought to be caught in wedlock! Surely 
 these are things which make marriage honorable and fitting 
 and happy. 
 
 Suppose the argument bo tliat this can not be the hot 
 love of youth, but that it can be only esteem, friendship, 
 kindness, rational affection, and soon: are there not mar- 
 ried persons who started in wedlock young with what they 
 thought was love to die for, who can now say that they 
 would be contented if they had esteem, respect, friendship, 
 companionship, kindness, and so on? 
 
 To say that a woman of sixty can not have the physi- 
 ological, spiritual, emotional, or whatever the proj)erty 
 may be, to sanctify marriage as " God's holy ordinance," 
 is to unsanctify the marriage of all that have arrived at 
 this age, and to degrade it into a mere lingering and drag- 
 ging out of wedlock after the soul of it has departed. If 
 logic be logic, she that is capable of keeping and continu- 
 ing love in married life at the age of sixty, is capable of 
 taking it on afresh in case of a vacancy. 
 
 When a woman of sixty has found in a man of thirty- 
 two the qualities which she admires and desires, why should 
 the difference in ages prevent love and marriage? A man 
 of sixty is liable to take a woman of thirty-two and under,
 
 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN OF SIXTY 253 
 
 and it is thought the natural order for a man. Men thin 
 tliis the way of man. And women think tliat tlie maid of 
 tliirty-two wlio marries a man of sixty does a good tiling, 
 and a still better thing if he can leave the wherewith to 
 console her affliction when he ascends the golden stairs. 
 Wiiat makes the difference? Is there more intellectual 
 parity in a man of sixty and a woman of thirty-two than in 
 the vice-versa? This would be contrary to the general 
 rating of man and woman. Is there more physiological 
 parity than in the vice-versa case? Who can tell? Can 
 they who put this disability on woman give a physiological; 
 psychological or intellectual cause for it? 
 
 May not a man of thirty-two who from his youth up 
 has known a great a noble woman, a benefactress to man- 
 kind, esteem, honor and admire her in the highest degree, 
 enjoy her society, feel honored by her preference and grate- 
 ful for her bounty, and love her above all women? Let 
 those who deny this define the quality of the love whose 
 lack makes this marriage unfitting. 
 
 Is love a soul-union? Poets and young lovers think 
 this the highest ascription. The soul has an existence 
 which makes the term of twenty-eight years an inconsid- 
 able speck. A difference of twenty-eight years in the 
 eternity of two souls is so small that the mind can not take 
 it in. May not the soul of sixty and the soul of thirty- 
 two have but a single thought, when both are bent on it? 
 May not their two hearts beat as one, while they are kept 
 up to concert pitch? Is marriage a oneness of the flesh, 
 as the Scripture has it? Then the two are one flesh, and 
 no disparity of ages remains. The resultant age is the 
 average of the two. The oneness of sixty and thirty-two 
 is exactly forty-six years, which is hardly up to that mov- 
 able period which is called middle age, and is a good 
 enough time to marry either man or woman. Thus it is
 
 254 THE EIGHTS OF WOMEN OF SIXTY. 
 
 seen that when this proscription of women of sixty is 
 brought to the test of logic, Scripture and arithmetic, it 
 is found to have nothing to do with it. 
 
 Do the women assume that if a woman of thirty-two 
 marries a man of sixty, there is no love on her part? Do 
 they assume that she has married to get a situation, or that 
 she is speculating on his remains? On the contrary, is it 
 not the common acceptation that a girl may love a man 
 twice or thrice her age enough to marry him, if his circum- 
 stances are adequate? 
 
 Young single women may have joined in this censure 
 on their elder sister for marrying a young man, in a 
 thoughtless calculation of their own interest; but the re- 
 flection that they are traveling the road to the sixties will 
 convince them that their true interest lies in maintaining 
 the right of women to love and marriage without limita- 
 tion of age. 
 
 American women should rise up with more spirit to 
 vindicate this marriage, because the Queen has taken a 
 conspicuous occasion to manifest her disapproval of it, 
 and this has excluded the eminent woman and great public 
 benefactor from the court receptions. This ill-mannered 
 freak of the Queen does not turn one hair white or black, 
 nor change any moral aspect of the affair. Has she turn- 
 ed her back on any of the young brides of old nobles? has 
 she snubbed any of the old nobles who have married girls 
 of less than half their years? This settles the rationality 
 of her demonstration of ill-temper in this case. She has 
 had her chance ; what right or fairness is there in her say- 
 ing that the Burdett-Coutts should not have hers ? Is it 
 because she deferred it too long ? She is the only compe- 
 tent judge of that. The political station and environment 
 of the Queen bar her from love at sixty ; because she is 
 fettered she would put fetters on all women. There is an
 
 THE EIGHTS OF WOMEX OF SIXTY. 255 
 
 applicable parable of a fox who proposed that all foxes 
 should be curtailed because he happened to lose his tail in 
 a trap. 
 
 A great j)rinciple is in this matter — a principle which 
 is even higher than the high rule that woman should keep 
 available all the chances in the contingencies of her life — 
 the principle of woman's equality of rights with man; 
 a principle which is infracted by any unequal limitations 
 imposed on women in the aifairs of love and marriage; a 
 principle which requires of women the exercise of tliat 
 eternal vigilance which is ever the cost of liberty; a vigil- 
 ance which discerns in this attempt to put on woman a 
 limitation of age in the affairs of love, which is not put on 
 man, a part of that design and system which all down the 
 ages has piled disabilities on woman until both man and 
 woman have come to think that her condition of subjection 
 is the order of nature.
 
 THE CHAPERON QUESTION". 
 
 A CITY fashionable preacher preaches that the American 
 girls are going to rack and ruin by going their gait 
 without chaperonage. He had visited Europe and found 
 that they do things differently. Such opening of the eyes 
 to native nakedness comes from culture by the European 
 tour. In like manner when the fruit of the tree of know- 
 ledge had opened the eyes of our first parents, they saw 
 that they had no clothes on. Also the demi- American 
 novel has set forth this native want in a dreadful way, 
 by an American girl abroad, unconscious of the conven- 
 tionalities of civilization, the terror of the British matron 
 with grown-up sons and daughters at the continental so- 
 journs, the wonder of the clumsily dressed British daught- 
 ers, and the sport of the British fast sons, whom she floors 
 at last by the impregnability of her unconscious innocence. 
 The growth of population and of cities induces the social 
 conditions in America which have made chaperonage 
 the rule in Europe. Unless America is to revolutionize 
 society, that which propriety and necesssity have erected 
 in Europe, is what our society must come to. If society 
 is to be as it always was, it is obvious that the free running 
 together of young people of both sexes in the primitive 
 American way can not continue in the altered conditions 
 of large towns, and in the corruptness of a higher civiliza- 
 tion. The youngness of our country is surprisingly illus- 
 trated in that the greater number of the mothers of the 
 grown up daughters in that which calls itself society, grew 
 
 350
 
 THE CHAPERON QUESTION". 257 
 
 up in primitive circumstances, in wliich cliaperonage was 
 not known. 
 
 As the mothers had it not. and knew not the need in 
 their own girlhood, they feel reluctant to recognize the 
 need to their daughters, and to put them under restraint 
 from which their mothers were free. Therefore a genera- 
 tion or two may pass before the establishment of the fash- 
 ion of chaperonage, even after the matrons of society have 
 become convinced of its propriety and need. So lacking is 
 the courage of this conviction that a number of matrons 
 in a large city proposed to brace up themselves to the en- 
 forcement, and to establish the fashion, by forming an as- 
 sociation, pledging each member to the practice and to the 
 exclusion of young women from their set, who were not 
 under this regulation. 
 
 Human nature is the same everywhere, and the tend- 
 ency of the growth of all civilization is to the same condi- 
 tions and character. Chaperonage is the natural growth 
 of society, and is as proper and necessary in the larger 
 towns of America as in Europe, so long as American soci- 
 ety is merely a reproduction of the "effete civilization" of 
 Europe. But is the society of free America to be merely 
 a reproduction of that of the "effete despotisms"? Is that 
 to be the lame and impotent outcome of the grand oppor- 
 tunity which the New World opened to the working out of 
 the social problem upon original principles? The Ameri- 
 can female mind looks for better things. It has a grand 
 prospect of woman's emancipation from all the things of 
 the old bondage; a prospect of freedom and all which that 
 implies; of social, economical, civil and political equality 
 with man. 
 
 Freedom is the indispensable qualification of the elective 
 franchise. Is that equality which holds woman under 
 surveillance and leaves man free? She that has to be 
 17
 
 258 THE CHAPEHOX QUESTIOX. 
 
 guarded by another in all her goings has not political free- 
 dom, and is disqualified for it. Protection to her, which 
 is not to the man, would not be equality. Chaperonage 
 and suffrage are no more compatible than woman's political 
 equality and the subjection of the state of marriage. The 
 chaperon question grasps and grips the whole question of 
 woman's rights. 
 
 Political riglits confer political duties which may not 
 be left off. Government by the people requires that the 
 people shall attend to the duties of governing. Popular 
 government by the elective franchise is something more 
 than to drop a ballot into a box, like the dropping of a 
 nickel into the contribntion plate to send the gosjDcl to the 
 heathen. To neglect the duties of government till that 
 time, and to limit them to that feeble act, is to abandon 
 government to the possession of the political banditti, and 
 to abjectly ratify their robbery. The real governing work 
 has to be done before the balloting, in discussion and agita- 
 tion to form popular opinion and shape political action in 
 the primary caucuses and in the conventions. They that 
 stand aloof from this duty are not of the governing people. 
 They are the governed, and might better be under a here- 
 ditary absolutism, which at the worst would be respectable. 
 To give woman the ballot, while holding to customs which 
 keep her from the political activities which make the bal- 
 lot a reality, would only be another instrument for her 
 oppression. 
 
 Could she who can not move without the guardianship 
 of a chaperon, or the protection of father or brother, take 
 any real part in these duties of government by the people? 
 The presence of her surveillance would prevent her having 
 the standing and influence of a free person in political 
 canvassing, in popular assemblages, and in conventions. 
 Even her coming to the poll to vote, under protection.
 
 THE CHAPEROK QUESTION. 269 
 
 would be scoffed at by our popular rulers as a vote under 
 subjection. As to all tlie alTairs of seeking nomination, 
 electioneering, and holding office, woman would be practi- 
 cally disabled by the handicap of chaperonage. A woman 
 with a chaperon would be as unlikely to be elected Presi- 
 dent of the United States, as a woman with a husband. 
 
 Alike fettered would she be in the professions, in trade, 
 in the fierce struggle of the stock and produce exchanges, 
 in commanding ships and steamboats, in the fine and me- 
 chanic arts and industries, in railroad and hotel employ- 
 ments, in the post office and carrier service, in driving and 
 conducting the horse cars and buses, in laborer-idling, 
 agitating, striking, boycotting, rioting and dynamiting. 
 In every line of human activity and in every pursuit of her 
 rightful equality, woman would be as badly fettered by 
 chaperonage as she is by petticoats and a train of skirts. 
 
 To say that marriage frees her from chaperonage, and 
 that she can make all right by simply getting married, is 
 to mock her right to equality by making the acquisition of 
 it depend on the free grace of man, and by subjecting her 
 to a requirement from which man is exempt, and by putting 
 another and a heavier shackle on her freedom. At the best, 
 the social custom which frees the married young woman 
 from the restraints imposed on the unmarried young 
 woman, will not bear philosophical investigation. But a 
 rule which puts on the unmarried woman a restriction 
 which is practically a political disability, and which has 
 no way of removing it save by putting on a marriage con- 
 dition which is a still greater clog to woman in a political 
 or professional career, leaves no chance whatever for a 
 Avoman's equal rights, and puts an end to all her high 
 aspirations. The mind's eye can discern a prospective ele- 
 vation of woman to high careers in a condition of independ, 
 ent singlehood which will have its perfect work in her re-
 
 il60 THE CHAPEROK QUESTIOK. 
 
 fusing to encumber her ambition by liitchiug it to a clog of 
 a husband. 
 
 The natural tendency of human nature to promote dis- 
 tinctions in society — a tendency even more marked in 
 woman's nature — has kept the consideration of the chap- 
 eron question to the narrow field of fasliionable society, 
 and of course, it regards this as servilely following the fash- 
 ions of the ' ' effete civilization " of Europe. But this view 
 would create a distinction between the customs of what 
 calls itself society and the customs of the peoj)le. It would 
 draw the line of caste. It would separate fasliionable soci- 
 ety from polical duty, and put an indignity on the women 
 of our country. Such a view is too narrow for this broad 
 continent, and is incompatible with woman's equality. 
 
 Chaperonuge is therefore an exotic which can never 
 take root in American soil. Cliaperonage and woman 
 suffrage are as incompatible as woman's marriage and free- 
 dom. The American woman is bound to be free, with all 
 that is implied by freedom. She will strike from her mind 
 and members all that fetters her pursuit of a high career 
 in whatever line of life she may choose. She will not con- 
 sent to hold her movements under the cliaperonage of an- 
 other woman, nor submit to take on the clog of a husband 
 as the only way to free her from the protection of women.
 
 LVI. 
 
 WOMAN'S UNTRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 AN eminent English barrister and an eminent English 
 judge have lately made sweeping declarations, from 
 their judicial observation, to the effect that women are better 
 liars than men. Said the barrister "a, woman will swear 
 to anything." And Judge Baron Iluddleston said it was 
 impossible for him **to gauge the credibility of a female 
 witness." Man may concede equal capabilities to women, 
 but the dignity of manhood should be guarded against 
 conceding any superiority. Lawyers are so in the habit 
 of discrediting the witnesses on the other side, without 
 distinction of sex, age, or previous condition, that their 
 soft impeachment of women in general may be largely 
 from the force of professional habit. 
 
 Judges find difficulty in gauging the credibility of wit- 
 nesses in many cases. They gauge them by the counte- 
 nances, manner, consistency and probability, and they also 
 take previous character into the account. To say that out 
 of their own discernment they can gauge the credibility 
 of a male witness, but that this fails before a female, is to 
 attribute to her a fineness in the art of lying which would 
 be highly flattering to her intellect. Indeed it is the same 
 as for Baron Huddleston to say that he can see through a 
 male witness but a woman beats him. This is an elliptic 
 compliment to woman. 
 
 But is it not true that men wear truthfulness very 
 loosely ? He whose word is as his bond is the ideal man. 
 Our courts have a dreadful oath, backed by divine wrath 
 and the penalties of perjury, to keep witnesses from lying. 
 
 261
 
 262 woman's untruthfulness. 
 
 Yet the lawyers on each side suspect the witnesses of the 
 other side. 
 
 Does the lawyer stick to the truth? He makes lying 
 professional. The bigger half of his trade is in making 
 the worse appear the better cause, tlic false the true, and 
 in perverting and defeating justice. Woman can have it 
 out with him by the " you're-another " argument. What are 
 all the judicial oaths and the penalties for perjury but an 
 assumption that man is by nature a liar? Is not lying the 
 common medium of commerce? Who buys a horse witli- 
 out losing faith in man? Can the physician live without 
 the practice of quackery? Could the trader sell if he told 
 the truth, and nothing but the truth of his wares? Where 
 is the newspaper editor who always tells the truth of his 
 own business and of that of the contemporary over the 
 way; of his own party and the other? Does the preacher 
 address his reproof to the special sins of his paying mem- 
 bers? What is the very respectable business of stock spec- 
 ulating but gambling with loaded dice and stocked cards? 
 Is not what we call the genuineness of all our articles of 
 food, our milk, bread, flour, sugar, coffee, and the whole 
 line of what we call groceries, and also of our medicines, 
 merely relative, all having some mixture of fraud? Is upt 
 our political campaigning chiefly lying, at least in one 
 party? 
 
 Man is in no state to throw stones at woman for con- 
 necting the truth to a thing of convenience. But while 
 his lying is mostly mercenary, that of woman is to make 
 life smooth and agreeable. Amiability, friendship, love, 
 charity towards faults, the desire to make others happy, 
 and to beflower the way of life — all the most lovely virtues 
 — lead woman to avoid the habitual use of the truth. In 
 social intercourse, truth is a harsh virtue, so unpleasant as 
 to be a vice. The evil minded pretend for their vicious
 
 WOMA^^'S UXTllUTHFULNESS. 203 
 
 speech the virtue of truth. Every social circle lias speci- 
 mens of these Satanic persons who exercise a malicious dis- 
 position under pretense of rugged candor. Woman avoids 
 the disagreeable quality of truthfulness because she has 
 more than man of the amiable virtues, that lubricate social 
 intercourse. 
 
 Untruthfulness is the pleasing quality in society. The 
 usual language of compliment pays no heed to truth. Tiic 
 expressions of joy at meeting and of pain at parting are 
 all exaggerated, and sometimes downright lies. To lie 
 effusively in welcoming a visitor Avhom you wish in Guinea, 
 and in pressing peoiDle to come whom you would be glad 
 never to see, is politeness. Could society exist without this 
 practice of reciprocal falsehood ? And as society is run 
 mostly by woman, shall we disparage her for that which 
 makes society possible ? 
 
 Although Baron Huddleston is unable to gauge the 
 credibility of a female witness, the blessing on social inter- 
 course by woman's untruthfulness may be gauged by 
 fancying what would be if woman were addicted to truth- 
 fulness and candor. 
 
 Suppose that she were to say to her dear friends what 
 she thinks of them. Suppose she should say to their faces 
 the opinion of their characters and doings which she gives 
 behind their backs. What a sweet world it would be! 
 That is indeed a high virtue in women which reserves their 
 true opinions of one another for the confidential com- 
 munication which expedites currency without giving 
 offense. This keeping of the knowledge of good and evil 
 of one another in an under-current, leaves the surface 
 smooth, and makes society possible without suppressing 
 freedom of opinion and speech. Nor would the common 
 politeness of social intercourse he possible under tlie 
 restraint of truth. It would be quickly extinguished by
 
 364 woman's untruthfulness. 
 
 the expression of the real feeling instead of the superlative 
 joy and regret at meeting and parting, and of the real 
 sentiment instead of the customary language of compliment 
 and flattery. Thus is woman's untruthfulness the language 
 of politeness, the medium of social intercourse, and the 
 engine of civilization. 
 
 Suppose that the wife, after the eating of the fruit of 
 the marriage-tree of knowledge of good and evil, has 
 opened her eyes to the realization that the man whom her 
 blind love had deified, is a being whose little intellectual 
 part is stunted by his large animal preponderance, were to 
 speak out the truth that is within her, and were to 
 tell him of her disenchantment, and that he is so different 
 from the being she supposed when she promised to love, 
 honor and obey, that the promise has lapsed in the lack of 
 personal identity; suppose she were to let out this truth, 
 instead of burying it in her breast and keeping .up the 
 forms of love and devotion; would such truth be a virtue? 
 It would be a demon to disrupt the holy marriage tie. 
 The devil would revel in such truthfulness. Is not the 
 resignation that conceals this disappointment like a worm 
 in the bud, and fulfills all the duties of loving wife, a far 
 higher virtue? And as man is the one that thus sobers 
 her life and makes her live a lie, surely he can not taunt 
 her with that resigned acceptance of the situation which 
 pads the conjugal yoke. 
 
 And woman has had no fair chances. She has been 
 slowly rising from the lowest slavery, and is yet but partly 
 emancipated. Still the law of most civilized countries 
 makes the married couple one, and that one the man. In 
 uncivilized countries the woman has no rights that man is 
 bound to respect. Slavery always debases morality. The 
 ^ime since woman has been known to the law as more than 
 a chattel is short compared with the time it has taken to
 
 woman's untruthfulness. 265 
 
 evolve man from monkey, or even to lift him from a savage, 
 clothed with skins, to a democratic sovereign. It is com- 
 paratively a short time since woman acquired a soul, and 
 in all the world the majority of women have not yet received 
 it. "Without a soul, how can she have a sense of moral ac- 
 countability? Thus whatever there be in her that is not 
 perfect she can fairly charge upon man.
 
 LVII. 
 
 WILL THE COMING WOMAN MARRY? 
 
 PA.KALLEL with the lament of the degeneracy of the 
 age, which affords enjoyment and a sense of moral 
 superiority to a large part of mankind, runs an equally 
 rational talk of the continuing elevation of the human 
 race, and this indulges in speculation on what the coming 
 man will be, and what the coming woman. The expecta- 
 tion of change is greatest in the woman, who now, for the 
 first time since she was ribbed, is to have breathed into her 
 the breath of life by freedom and equality. 
 
 Will the coming woman marry? For what? For pro- 
 tection and support? That would continue the old relation 
 of weakness and dependence — the old oak and ivy-twining 
 relation. The property of freedom and equality is inde- 
 pendence, self-defense and self-support. If she must con- 
 tinue to marry for man's protection and support, she will 
 continue the reality of servitude, whatever may be her lib- 
 erty and equality before the law. 
 
 For love? Bind herself in bonds to a man for love of 
 him? Love makes her defenseless, helpless and dependent 
 on the man. And the indissoluble bond of marriage ends 
 her freedom. If she is to require man to complete her 
 being and outfit her for life, her sexual nature will keep 
 her in subjection in the face of all freedom and equality by 
 legislative act. 
 
 The reply ^.hat man needs woman to complete his being, 
 his living, his comfort, his happiness and the rest, and, 
 therefore, that the need of each of the other puts them on 
 an equality and makes it an even trade, does not answer. 
 
 266
 
 WILL THE COMING WOMAN MARRY? 267 
 
 Judgiug by observation of man, he does not need woman to 
 complete his being in any such sense as she needs him. 
 The ways of the world are all open to him — war, statesman- 
 ship, the professions, trade, adventure, without marrying. 
 In the old relation of the sexes the poet says truly: " Man's 
 love is of man's life a thing apart; 'tis woman's whole exis- 
 tence." 
 
 And when man does love and does marry it seems not 
 to absorb his being as it does woman's. Sacred history 
 shows that man is capable of adapting himself to polygamy, 
 if, indeed, this be not his natural state. But woman 
 has not that capability for plurality of love, or, at 
 least, she has not demonstrated the practicability of it. 
 This makes a radical difference in the sexes. If this is 
 to continue in the coming woman, then she will be likely 
 to become whatever the law may provide. 
 
 In the sacred history of the creation, man was created 
 a complete being. But woman was an addendum, and was 
 not created a complete being. True, the advanced female 
 thinkers kick against the account of the creation of woman 
 as an "afterthought" and against the Almighty fiat that 
 he shall rule over her, and well they may; but to kick 
 against the words is foolish if in all their advanced think- 
 ing and freedom and equality they must abide by the same 
 feminine nature which makes man essential to complete 
 their being. 
 
 Must the coming woman marry for children ? Why 
 should she want to be a breeder of sinners ? — as the ele- 
 gant Prince of Denmark asked his lady-love. Why should 
 she put this poke on her career ? Why bind her life to the 
 multiplying the species, which is always over-multiplied ? 
 Why consign her existence to the giving of existence to 
 others, and to the mind-dwarfing toil of raising them ? 
 Why keep her intellect going back periodically to the state 
 of infancy to bring forward the minds of infants ?
 
 268 WILL THE COMING WOMAN MARRY? 
 
 Maternity binds her to a state of servitude. Man puts 
 no such fetter on his career. Can that be called freedom 
 and equality, in which woman is confined to the breeding 
 of the young ones, and man, unencumbered, has all the 
 ways to culture, fame and power open to him ? In mater- 
 nity and paternity are no equality. Paternity is of man's 
 life a thing apart. See the complacent lord of the bovine 
 herd without a care. Maternity is woman's whole exist- 
 ence. See the herd of cows, each devoting her whole ex- 
 istence to one calf. 
 
 Shall it be answered that women needs maternity to 
 develop her womanly nature? This answer argues her 
 inequality and subjection. For man needs not paternity 
 to develop his manly nature. What is the maternal 
 nature? Is it not a nature which, instead ef shaping her 
 for a career of equality with man, tethers her to a relation 
 of subjection? The wide equality of paternity and mater- 
 nity in limiting a career, and in fixing a woman.s, puts free- 
 dom and equality out of the case if the time-honored 
 maternity business is to continue. 
 
 Woman is now under no command to increase and 
 multiply and replenish the earth. She owes no duty of 
 maternity to the world. If it be argued that her own 
 nature needs it, this assertion of a peculiar nature puts 
 equality and independence out of the matter. If the 
 future of woman is to continue the maternity bondage she 
 will be the same subject woman as she that came sideways 
 to Adam in his sleep. 
 
 Maternity is beautiful but not intellectual. Woman 
 shares this instinct with all other animals. Their affection 
 for their young is the same as hers. The timidest creatures 
 will fight for them. Even the timid goose is frightful to 
 the passing boy when her goslings are about. If mother- 
 hood were elevating, it would have lifted ud all creatures.
 
 WILL THE COMING WOMAK" MARRY? 209 
 
 It is not culture. It works no such expansion of the mind 
 as pottery, wood-scratching, bric-^-brac, decorative stitch- 
 ing, worsted and such elegant arts, nor as the study of 
 other languages and sciences. 
 
 It brings down the Vassar girl to the life of the hum- 
 blest of her sex. It turns her mind from the expanding 
 thoughts of Greek, Latin, the higher mathematics, and 
 the physical sciences, to a one-sided introspection. It turns 
 scholarship and elegant culture to naught, by an over- 
 whelming touch of nature which levels all women to the 
 common instinct, and proves all female creatures akin. 
 
 Motherhood is beautiful, and a babe in the house is a 
 wellspring of joy. But this dwarfs the mind. At each 
 advent the mother's mind goes back to begin anew with the 
 infant's. She loses articulate speech and jabbers gibberish, 
 to begin with its inarticulate language. What an intel- 
 lectual tumble for a Vassar graduate! A young one in the 
 family gathers to its inanities the mind of all the company, 
 and the, visitors go away with a sense of sinking to intel- 
 lectual vacuity. All this is lovely, and does well enough 
 for the present domestic state of woman; but it is not for 
 the emancipated, elevated, intellectual woman that is to 
 come. She is not to serve as a domestic wellspring of joy, 
 but as an intellectual terror. 
 
 Furthermore, the glittering but humbling assertion 
 that woman needs maternity for her full being, is denied 
 by her own practice. As she rises in condition, fashion 
 and culture, her eyes are opened, and she finds she is better 
 without. Our most intelligent women — that is to say our 
 most fashionable — are casting off the old-fashioned bond- 
 age. Woman must be allowed to know herself. She shows 
 that when she has the higher mental occupation of dress, 
 fashionable society, female lunch parties, and summer 
 resorts, she does not need maternity or the fullness of her 
 beine:.
 
 270 WILL the: coming woman marry? 
 
 Must the coming woman marry to take away the re- 
 proach of maidliood ? Then she must be as meek and as 
 subject to man as the woman that is come. If it is a 
 reproach it is because of woman's inferiority. In a state of 
 equality singleness would be no more a reproach to woman 
 than to man. Alike it would leave the career free of im- 
 pediment. But if the coming woman is to have the same 
 fear of keeping her maidliood, she will be as subject to 
 man as now, and equality laws will fail to make her equal. 
 
 Bachelorhood is no reproach. It makes him more 
 valued. Shall not the coming woman lift maidhood to a 
 higher dignity than marriage? Only in the state of single- 
 tude can woman be entirely herself — be all in herself — be 
 truly great in herself — be free in a career for herself. 
 When she has risen to the height of such a state of being, 
 maidhood will be the higher state, and marriage a neces- 
 sity which accepts a lower condition. 
 
 The degree of LL. B — Legum Baccalaureus, Bachelor of 
 Laws — has been conferred by Yale College on Miss Jor- 
 dan. Why not Maid of Laws ? Why shall not this female 
 title of singleness, the same as the male, continue without 
 regard to condition, as with that *' Maid of Athens " who 
 would not give back the heart ? Why is it not as honor- 
 able ? But in the various suggestions to get around the 
 awkwardness of giving, the title of Bachelor to a maid, no 
 woman has proposed that it shall be '^ Maid of Laws.'' 
 
 All this is a recognition of the old condition which 
 makes maidhood a reproach ! Shall not the coming woman 
 remove this? For what shall she marry? Is there any 
 object that does not concede dependence, inferiority, sub- 
 jection, servitude, and that does not let her down from a 
 high estate and from the possibilities of a great career? 
 
 In this high view of the great principles that govern 
 the coming woman's destiny, it is not necessary to descend
 
 WILL THE COMINCt WOMAK MARRY? 271 
 
 to particulars to point out that the being yoked to a man 
 Avoukl be a liincl ranee in any public career, and in all the 
 higher pursuits. In every walk of life she would have to 
 drag this clog, and the inevitable consequence would be 
 that both would be limited to those humble vocations 
 which can be worked in the yoke. 
 
 The conclusion of inflexible logic is, that if the coming 
 woman is to be free, equal, independent, and to have open 
 to her all the ways to a great career, she Avill not marry. 
 As to posterity, she owes it nothing, ^he can be as exalted 
 above that as the Shakers. Or if the debt to posterity is to 
 continue, the elevated woman can relegate it to the lower 
 order. 
 
 On the other hand, if the coming woman shall marry, 
 she will be about the same manner of woman as she that is 
 now the sweetener of the cup of happiness; and the talk 
 and laws of emancipation and equality will be all in vain 
 against a nature which makes her subject to man. There- 
 fore tire abiding faith in tlie future elevation of woman, 
 and that the taste of liberty and education which she has 
 now got will work in her a great transformation, is logic- 
 ally obliged to believe that the coming woman will not 
 marry.
 
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