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ad 
 
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 My Little Daughter Margaret. 
 
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 es 
 PHYSIOLOGY 6 : : A 
 Tl. *LOomMuUCcH Ne onee Hieron’ 
 II]. DARWIN, HUXLEY, AND BUCKLE . 
 III. WHICH IS THE STRONGER ? : < 
 IV. THE SPIRIT OF SMALL TYRANNY . , : 
 Ve tore NOBLE SEX. ; : : F ; 
 VI. THE LIMITATIONS OF SEX 
 TEMPERAMENT . 
 VII. THE INVISIBLE TRB 
 Ville SACRED. OBSCURTE. 
 IX. Our GIRLS 
 X. VIRTUES IN common 
 XI. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 
 XII. ANGELIC SUPERIORITY 
 XIII. Vicarious Honours 
 XIV. ‘' CELERY AND CHERUBS”’ ; : : 
 XV. ‘‘ALLURES TO BRIGHTER ote. AND LEADS 
 ; THE Way” 
 DEE HOME - : 
 XVI. WANTED—HOMES , : 
 XVII. THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION 
 XVIII. THe Low-WATER MARK 
 MeL COREY.” 
 XX. WOMAN IN THE CHETSRT TS 
 XXI. Two Anp Two 
 XXII. A MODEL HOUSEHOLD 
 XXIII. A SAFEGUARD FOR THE FAMILY 
 XXIV. WOMEN AS ECONOMISTS . 
 XXV. GREATER INCLUDES LESS 
 XXVI. A CO-PARTNERSHIP . 
 XXVII. ‘‘'ONE RESPONSIBLE HEAD” 
 XXVIII. ASKING FOR MONEY. 
 XXIX. WOMANHOOD AND didasti matics 
 XXX. CHILDLESS WOMEN 
 
Contents. 
 
 SOCIETY. : s ; ; : - 
 XXXI. THE EMPIRE OF MANNERS c F 
 XXXIT. ARE WOMEN NATURAL ARISTOCRATS? . 
 
 XXXII. Mrs. BLANK’S DAUGHTERS 
 XXXIV. THE EUROPEAN PLAN 
 XXXV. ‘' FEATHERSES” 
 EDUCATION . ‘ 
 XXXVI. INTELLECTUAL ee pertiL AS 
 XXXVII. FOREIGN EDUCATION 
 XXXVIII. TEACHING THE TEACHERS 
 XXXIX. ‘‘CuPID-AND-PSYCHOLOGY” 
 XL. MEDICAL SCIENCE FOR WOMEN 
 XLIL MENTAL HORTICULTURE 
 EMPLOYMENT 
 OLIN  OSisdane Direeeenae OF eros enn” 
 XIII. Miss INGELOwW's PROBLEM 
 XLIV. SELF-SUPPORT . 
 XLV. SELF-SUPPORTING NUiTee 
 XLVI. THE PROBLEM OF WASES 
 XLVII. THOROUGH 5 6 
 XLVIII. TALKING AND TAKING 
 SUFFRAGE . : : : . 
 XLIX. FoR SELF-PROTECTION 
 L. WoOMANLY STATESMANSHIP 
 LI. Too MUCH PREDICTION . 
 LII, EDUCATION V/4 SUFFRAGE 
 LITI. FoLLow your LEADERS. : 
 LIV. How TO MAKE WOMEN UNDERSTAND Ponies : 
 LV. ‘‘ INFERIOR TO MAN, AND NEAR TO ANGELS.” 
 OBJECTIONS TO SUFFRAGE . : : 
 IVI? “THe FACTION SEX. é 
 LVI HOW. wikis It) RESULT? - 
 LVITI. ‘‘I HAVE ALL THE RIGHTS I WANT 
 LIX. ‘‘NoT SENSE ENOUGH TO VOTE” 
 LX. THE RoB RoY THEORY : 
 LXI. THE VOTES OF NON-COMBATANTS . 
 LXII. KILKENNY CAT ARGUMENTS 
 ILXIIJ. DANGEROUS VOTERS 
 LXIV. How WoMEN WILL LEGISLATE 
 LXV. DEFEATS BEFORE VICTORIES 
 
COMMON SENSE ABOUT WOMEN. 
 
 PHYSIOLOGW: 
 
 ** But, before and after being a mother, one is a human being ; and 
 neither the motherly nor the wifely destination can overbalance or replace 
 the human, but must become its means, not its end.”J. P. F, RICHTER: 
 Levana; — § 89. 
 
 I, 
 TOO MUCH NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 LORD MELBOURNE, speaking of the fine ladies in 
 London who were fond of talking about their ail- 
 ments, used to complain that they gave him too much 
 of their natural history. There are a good many 
 writers—usually men—who, with the best intentions, 
 discuss woman as if she had merely a physical 
 organization, and as if she existed only for one object, 
 the production and rearing of children. Against this 
 some protest may be well made. 
 
 Doubtless there are few things more important 
 toa community than the health of its women. The 
 Sandwich Island proverb says :— 
 
 “If strong is the frame of the mother, 
 The son will give laws to the people.” 
 
1O Common Sense about Women. 
 
 And, in nations where all men give laws, all men 
 need mothers of strong frames. 
 
 Moreover, there is no harm in admitting that all 
 the rules of organization are imperative ; that soul 
 and body, whether of man or woman, are made in 
 harmony, so that each part of our nature must accept 
 the limitations of the other. A man’s soul may 
 yearn to the stars ; but so long as the body cannot 
 jump so high, he must accept the body’s veto. It is 
 the same with any veto interposed in advance by the 
 physical structure of woman. Nobody objects to 
 this general principle. It is only when clerical gen- 
 tlemen or physiological gentlemen undertake to go 
 a step farther, and put in that veto on their own 
 responsibility, that it is necessary to say, “‘ Hands 
 off, gentlemen! Precisely because women are 
 women, they, not you, are to settle that question.” 
 
 One or two points are clear. Every specialist is 
 liable to overrate his. own speciality; and the man 
 who thinks of woman only asa wife and mother is 
 apt to forget, that, before she was either of these, she 
 was a human being. “ Women, as such,” says an 
 able writer, “ are constituted for purposes of mater- 
 nity and the continuation of mankind.” Undoubt- 
 edly, and so were men, as such, constituted for pater- 
 
 nity. But very much depends on what relative im- 
 
Too much Natural F{istory. if 
 
 portance we assign to the phrase, “as such.” Even 
 an essay so careful, so moderate, and so free from 
 coarseness, as that here quoted, suggests, after all, a 
 slight one-sidedness,—perhaps a natural reaction 
 from the one-sidedness of those injudicious reformers 
 who allow themselves to speak slightingly of “the 
 merely animal function of child-bearing.” Higher 
 than either—wiser than both put together—is that 
 noble statement with which Jean Paul begins his fine 
 essay on the education of girls in ‘Levana.” | “ Be- 
 fore being a wife or mother, one is a human being ; 
 and neither motherly nor wifely destination can over- 
 balance or replace the human, but must become its 
 means, not end. As above the poet, the painter, or 
 the hero, so above the mother, does the human being 
 rise pre-eminent.” 
 
 Here is sure anchorage. We can hold to this. 
 And, fortunately, all the analogies of nature sustain 
 this position. Throughout nature the laws of sex 
 rule everywhere ; but they rule a kingdom of their 
 own, always subordinate to the greater kingdom of 
 the vital functions. Every creature, male or female, 
 finds in its sexual relations only a subordinate part 
 Of its existence. The need of food, the need of exer- 
 cise, the joy of living, these come first, and absorb 
 
 the bulk of its life, whether the individual be male 
 
12 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 or female. This Azztiopfe butterfly, that flits at this 
 moment past my window,—the first of the season,— 
 spends almost all its existence in a form where the 
 distinction of sex lies dormant: a few days, I might 
 almost say a few hours, comprise its whole sexual 
 - consciousness, and the majority of its race die be- 
 fore reaching that epoch. The law of sex is written 
 absolutely through the whole insect world. Yet 
 everywhere it is written as a secondary and subor- 
 dinate law. The life which is common to the sexes 
 is the principal life; the life which each sex leads, 
 “‘as such,” is a minor and subordinate thing. 
 
 The same rule pervades nature. Two riders pass 
 down the street before my window. One rides a 
 horse, the othera mare. The animals were per- 
 haps foaled in the same stable, of the same progeni- 
 tors. They have been reared alike, fed alike, trained 
 alike, ridden alike; they need the same exercise, 
 the same grooming; nine-tenths of their existence 
 are the same, and only the other tenth is different. 
 Their whole organization is marked by the distinc- 
 tion of sex; but, though the marking is inefface- 
 able, the distinction is not the first or most important 
 fact. 
 
 If this be true of the lower animals, it is far more 
 
 true of the higher. The mental and moral laws of 
 
Loo much Natural Fiistory. 13 
 
 the universe touch us first and chiefly as human 
 beings. We eat our breakfasts as human beings, not. 
 as men and women; and it is the same with nine- 
 tenths of our interests and duties in life. In legis- 
 lating or philosophizing for woman, we must neither 
 forget that she has an organization distinct from that 
 of man, nor must we exaggerate the fact. Not “ first 
 the womanly and then the human,” but first the 
 human and then the womanly, is to be the order of 
 
 her training. 
 
 II. 
 DARWIN, HUXLEY, AND BUCKLE. 
 
 WHEN any wonian, old or young, asks the question, 
 Which among all modern books ought I to read first ? 
 the answer is plain. She should read Buckle’s lec- 
 ture before the Royal Institution upon “ The Influence 
 of Woman on the Progress of Knowledge.” It is 
 one of two papers contained in a thin volume called 
 “Essays by Henry Thomas Buckle.” As a means 
 
 whereby a woman may become convinced that her 
 
14 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 sex has a place in the intellectual universe, this little 
 essay is almost indispensable. Nothing else takes its 
 place. 
 
 Darwin and Huxley seem to make woman simply 
 a lesser man, weaker in body and mind,—an affection- 
 ate and docile animal, of inferior grade. That there 
 is any aim in the distinction of the sexes, beyond the 
 perpetuation of the race, is nowhere recognized by 
 them, so faras I know. That there is anything in 
 the intellectual sphere to correspond to the physical 
 difference ; that here also the sexes are equal yet di- 
 verse, and the natural completion and complement of 
 the other,—this neither Huxley nor Darwin explicitly 
 recognizes, And with the utmost admiration for their 
 great teachings in other ways, I must think that here 
 they are open to the suspicion of narrowness. 
 
 Huxley wrote in “The Reader,” in 1864, a short 
 paper called “Emancipation—Black and White,” in 
 which, while taking generous vround in behalf of the 
 legal and political position of woman, he yet does it 
 pityingly, de haut en bas, as for a creature hopelessly 
 inferior, and so heavily weighted already by her sex, 
 that she should be spared all further trials. Speaking 
 through an imaginary critic, who seems to represent 
 himself, he denies “even the natural equality of the 
 
 sexes,” and declares “that in every excellent charac- 
 
Darwin, Huxley, and Buckle. 15 
 
 ter, whether mental or physical, the average woman 
 is inferior to the average man, in the sense of having 
 that character less in quantity and lower in quality.” 
 Finally he goes so far as “to defend the startling 
 paradox that even in physical beauty, man is: the 
 superior.” He admits that for a brief period of early 
 youth the case may be doubtful, but claims that after 
 thirty the superior beauty of man is unquestionable. 
 Thus reasons Huxley ; the whole essay being included 
 in his volume of ‘‘Lay Sermons, Addresses, and 
 Reviews.” 
 
 Darwin’s best statements on the subject may be 
 found in his “Descent of Man.” He is, as usual, 
 more moderate and guarded than Huxley. He says, 
 for instance: “It is generally admitted that with 
 women the powers of intuition, or rapid preception, . 
 and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked 
 than in man ; but some, at least, of these faculties are 
 characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a 
 past and lower state of civilization.” Then he passes 
 to the usual assertion that man has thus far attained 
 to a higher eminence than woman. “If two lists were 
 made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, 
 painting, sculpture, music,—comprising composition 
 and performance,—history, science, and philosophy, 
 
 with half a dozen names under each subject, the two 
 
16 Comntzon Sense about Women. 
 
 lists would not bear comparison.” But the obvious 
 answer, that nearly every name on his list, upon the 
 masculine side, would probably be taken from periods 
 when woman was excluded from any fair competition, 
 —this he does not seem to recognize at all. Darwin, 
 of all men, must admit that superior merit generally 
 arrives later, not earlier, on the scene; and the ques- 
 tion for him to answer is, not whether woman equalled 
 man in the first stages of the intellectual “ struggle 
 for life,” but whether she is not gaining on him now. 
 If, in spite of man’s enormous advantage in the 
 start, woman has already overtaken his very best per- 
 formances in several of the highest intellectual depart- 
 ments,—as, for instance, prose fiction and dramatic 
 representation,—then it is mere dogmatism in Mr. 
 Darwin to deny that she may yet do the same in 
 other departments. We in this generation have 
 actually seen this success achieved by Rachel and 
 Ristori in the one art, by “ George Sand” and “‘ George 
 Eliot” in the other. Woman is, then, visibly gaining 
 on man, in the sphere of intellect; and, if so, Mr. 
 Darwin, at least, must accept the inevitable inference. 
 But this is arguing the question on the superficial 
 facts merely. Buckle goes deeper, and looks to prin- 
 ciples. That superior quickness of women, which 
 
 Darwin dismisses so lightly as something belonging 
 
Darwin, Huxley, and Buckle. 17 
 
 to savage epochs, is to Buckle the sign of a quality 
 which he holds essential, not only to literature and 
 art, but to science itself. Go among ignorant women, 
 he says, and you will find them more quick and 
 intelligent than equally ignorant men. A woman will 
 usually tell you the way in the street more readily 
 than a man can; a woman can always understand a 
 foreigner more easily; and Dr. Currie says in his 
 letters, that when a labourer and his wife came to 
 consult him, he always got all the information from 
 the wife. Buckle illustrates this at some length, and 
 points out that a woman’s mind is by its nature 
 deductive and quick ; a man’s mind, inductive and 
 slow; that each has its value, and that science pro- 
 foundly needs both. 
 
 “T will endeavour,” he says, “to establish two 
 propositions. First, that women naturally prefer the 
 deductive method to the inductive. Secondly, that 
 women, by encouraging in men deductive habits of 
 thought, have rendered an immense though uncon- 
 scious service to the progress of science, by prevent- 
 ing scientific investigators from being as exclusively 
 inductive as they would otherwise be.” 
 
 Then he shows that the most important scientific 
 discoveries of modern times—as of the laws of gravi- 
 tation by Newton, the law of the forms of crystals 
 
 ¢ 
 
18 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 by Haiiy, and the metamorphosis of plants by Goethe 
 —were all essentially the results of that @ priorvz or 
 deductive method, “ which, during the last two centu- 
 ries, Englishmen have unwisely despised.” They were 
 all the work, in a manner, of the imagination,—of 
 the intuitive or womanly quality of mind. And 
 nothing can be finer or truer than the words in which 
 Buckle predicts the benefits that are to come from the 
 intellectual union of the sexes for the work of the 
 future. ‘In that field which we and our posterity 
 have yet to traverse, I firmly believe that the imagina- 
 tion will effect quite as much as the understanding. 
 Our poetry will have to re-enforce our logic, and we 
 must feel quite as much as we must argue. Let us, 
 then, hope that the imaginative and emotional minds 
 of one sex will continue to accelerate the great pro- 
 gress by acting upon and improving the colder and 
 harder minds of the other sex. By this coalition, by 
 this union of different faculties, different tastes, and 
 different methods, we shall go on our way with the 
 
 greater ease.” 
 
Which ts the Stronger ? 19 
 
 IEAY. 
 WHICH IS THE STRONGER? 
 
 WHAT is strength,—the brute hardness of iron, or 
 the more delicate strength of steel? Which is the 
 stronger,—the physical frame that can strike the 
 harder blow, or that which can endure the greater 
 strain and yet last longer? “Man can lift a heavier 
 weight,” says a writer on physiology, “but woman 
 can watch more enduringly at the bedside of her sick 
 child.” The strain upon the system of all women 
 who have borne and reared children is as great in its 
 way as that upon the system of the carpenter or the 
 wood-chopper ; and the power to endure it is as 
 properly to be called strength. 
 
 Again, which is the stronger in the domain of will, 
 —the man who carries his points by energy and 
 command, or the woman who carries hers by patience 
 and persuasion ? the man in the household who leads 
 and decides, or the woman who foresees, guards, 
 manages? the mother of the family, who puts the 
 commas and semicolons in her children’s lives, as 
 Jean Paul Richter says, or the father who puts in the 
 colons and periods? It may be hard to say which 
 
 Cz 
 
20 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 type of strength is the more to be admired, but it is 
 clear that they are both genuine types. 
 
 One grows tired of hearing young men who can do 
 nothing but row, or swing dumb-bells, and are thrown 
 wholly “off their training” by the loss of a night’s 
 sleep, speak contemptuously of the physical weakness 
 of a woman who can watch with a sick person half a 
 dozen nights together. It is absurd to hear a man 
 who is prostrated by a single reverse in business 
 speak of being “encumbered ” with a wife who can 
 perhaps alter the habits of a lifetime more easily than 
 he can abandon his half-dollar cigars. It is amusing 
 to read the criticisms of languid and graceful mas-_ 
 culine essayists, on the want of vigorous intellect in 
 the sex that wrote “Aurora Leigh” and “ Middle- 
 march” and “ Consuelo.” 
 
 It may be that a man’s strength is not a woman’s, 
 or a woman’s strength that of a man. Iam arguing 
 for equivalence, not identity. The greater part 
 played in the phenomena of a woman’s strength by 
 sensibility and impulse and variations and tears— 
 this does not affect the matter. What I have never 
 been able to see is, that woman as such is, in the 
 long-run and tried by all the tests, a weaker being 
 than man. And it would seem that any man, in 
 
 proportion as he lives longer and sees more of life, 
 
Which ts the Stronger ? 21 
 
 must have the conceit taken out of him by actual 
 contact with some woman—be she mother, sister, 
 wife, daughter, or friend—who is not only as strong 
 as himself in all substantial regards, but it may be, 
 
 on the whole, a little stronger. 
 
 LV; 
 THE SPIRIT OFFSMALL, TYRANNY. 
 
 WHEN Mr. John Smauker and the Bath footmen 
 invited Sam Weller to their “swarry,” consisting of 
 a boiled leg of mutton, each guest had some expres- 
 sion of contempt and wrath for the humble little 
 greengrocer who served them,—‘‘in the true spirit,” 
 Dickens says, “of the very smallest tyranny.” The 
 very fact that they were subject to being ordered 
 about in their own persons gave them a peculiar 
 delight in issuing tyrannical orders to others: just as 
 sophomores in college torment freshmen because 
 other sophomores once teased the present tormentors 
 themselves ; and Irishmen denounce the Chinese for 
 underbidding them in the labour market, precisely 
 
 as they were themselves denounced by native-born 
 
22 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 Americans thirty years ago. So it has sometimes 
 seemed to me that the men whose own positions and 
 claims are really least commanding are those who 
 hold most resolutely that women should be kept in 
 their proper place of subordination. 
 
 A friend of mine maintains the theory that men 
 large and strong in person are constitutionally inclined 
 to do justice to women, as fearing no competition 
 from them in the way of bodily strength ; but that 
 small and weak men are apt to be vehemently 
 opposed to anything like equality in the sexes. He 
 quotes in defence of his theory the big soldier in 
 London who justified himself for allowing his little 
 wife to chastise him, on the ground that it pleased 
 her and did not hurt him; and, on the other hand, 
 cites the extreme domestic tyranny of the dwarf 
 Quilp. He declares that in any difficult excursion 
 among woods and mountains, the guides and the 
 able-bodied men are often willing to have women 
 join the party, while it is sure to be opposed by those 
 who doubt their own strength or are reluctant to 
 display their weakness. It is not necessary to go so 
 faras my friend goes ; but many will remember some 
 fact of this kind, making such theories appear not 
 quite so absurd as at first. 
 
 Thus’ it seems, from the: “ Life and- Letters” of 
 
Lhe Spirit of Small Tyranny. 23 
 
 Sydney Dobell, that he was opposed both to woman 
 suffrage and woman authorship, believing the move- 
 ment for the former to be a “blundering on to the 
 perdition of womanhood.” It appears that against 
 all authorship by women his convictions yearly grew 
 stronger, he regarding it as “an error and an 
 anomaly.” It seems quite in accordance with my 
 friend’s theory to hear, after this, that Sydney Dobell 
 was slight in person and a lifelong invalid; nor is it 
 surprising, on the same theory, that his poetry took 
 no deep root, and that it will not be likely to survive 
 long, except, perhaps, in his weird ballad of “ Ravel- 
 ston.” But he represents a large class of masculine 
 intellects, of secondary and mediocre quality, whose 
 opinions on this subject are not so much opinions as 
 instinctive prejudices against a competitor who may 
 turn out their superior. Whether they know it, or 
 not, their aversion to the authorship of women is very 
 much like the conviction of a weak pedestrian, that 
 women are not naturally fitted to take long walks ; 
 or the opinion of a man whose own accounts are in 
 a muddle, that his wife is constitutionally unfitted to 
 understand business. 
 
 It is a pity to praise either sex at the expense of 
 the other. The social inequality of the sexes was 
 
 not produced so much by the voluntary tyranny of 
 
ou. Conimon Sense about Women. 
 
 man as by his great practical advantage at the 
 outset ; human history necessarily beginning with a 
 period when physical strength was sole ruler. It is 
 unnecessary, too, to consider in how many cases 
 women may have justified this distrust; and may 
 have made themselves as obnoxious as Horace 
 Walpole’s maids of honour, whose coachman left his 
 savings to his son on condition that he should never 
 marry a maid of honour. But it is safe to say that 
 on the whole the feeling of contempt for women, and 
 the love to exercise arbitrary power over them, is the 
 survival of a crude impulse which the world is out- 
 growing, and which is in general least obvious in the 
 manliest men. That clear and able writer, Walter 
 Bagehot, well describes “the contempt for physical 
 weakness and for women which marks early society. 
 The non-combatant population is sure to fare ill 
 during the ages of combat. But these defects, too, 
 are cured or lessened ; women have now marvellous 
 means of winning their way in the world; and mind 
 without muscle has far greater force than muscle 
 
 without mind,” * 
 
 # “Physics *and! Politics; -p. 70. 
 
“ The Nobdle Sex.” 
 
 to 
 Gt 
 
 V. 
 TT Ew NODE SEX... 
 
 A HIGHLY educated American woman of my ac- 
 quaintance once employed a French tutor in Paris to 
 assist her in teaching Latin to her little grandson. 
 The Frenchman brought with him a Latin grammar, 
 written in his own language, with which my friend 
 was quite pleased, until she came to a passage 
 relating to the masculine gender in nouns, and 
 claiming grammatical precedence for it on the 
 ground that the male sex is the noble sex,—“ le sexe 
 oleae = ll) ponethatipeshe said;. ie burst: forth in 
 indignation, and the poor teacher soon retired. But 
 I dosnot believe,” she added, “that the Frenchman 
 has the slightest conception up to this moment, of 
 what I could find in that phrase to displease me.” 
 
 I do not suppose he could. From the time when 
 the Salic Law set French women aside from the 
 royal succession, on the ground that the kingdom of 
 France was “too noble to be ruled by a woman,” the 
 claim of nobility has been all on one side. The 
 
 State has strengthened the Church in this theory, the 
 
26 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 Church has strengthened the State ; and the result 
 of all is, that French grammarians follow both 
 these high authorities. When even the good Pere 
 Hyacinthe teaches that the husband is to direct 
 the conscience of his wife, precisely as the father 
 directs that of his child, what higher philosophy can 
 you expect of any Frenchman than to maintain the 
 claims of “/e sexe noble” ? 
 
 We see the consequence, even among the most 
 heterodox Frenchmen. Rejecting all other prece- 
 dents and authorities, the poor Communists still held 
 to this. Consider, for instance, this translation of a 
 marriage contract under the Commune, which lately 
 came to light in atrial reported in the Gazette des 
 Tribunaux -— 
 
 FRENCH REPUBLIC. 
 
 The citizen Anet, son of Jean Louis Anet, and the czZoyenne 
 Maria Saint; she engaged to follow the said citizen everywhere 
 and to love him always.—ANET. MARIA SAINT. 
 
 Witnessed by the under-mentioned citizen and cétoyenne.— 
 FOURIER. LAROCHE. 
 
 PaRIs, April 22, 1871, 
 
 What a comfortable arrangement is this! Poor 
 citoyenne Maria Saint, even when all human laws 
 have suspended their action, still holds by her 
 srammar, still must annex herself to 4% sexe noble. 
 
 She still must follow citizen Anet as the feminine 
 
“The Noble Sex.” B27 
 
 pronoun follows the masculine, or as a verb agrees 
 with its nominative case in number and in person. 
 But with what a lordly freedom from all obligation 
 does citizen Anet, representative of this nobility of 
 Seamecccepe thes alleciance fas Lhe citizeness. may 
 “follow him,” certainly,—so long as she is not in the 
 way,—and she must “love him always ;” but he is 
 not bound. Why should he be? It would be quite 
 ungrammatical. 
 
 Yet, after all is said and done, there is a brutal 
 honesty in this frank subordination of the woman 
 according to the grammar. It has the_same merit 
 with the old Russian marriage consecration: “ Here, 
 wolf, take thy lamb,” which at least put the thing 
 clearly, and made no nonsense about it. I do not 
 know that anywhere in France the wedding ritual is 
 now so severely simple as that, but I know that in 
 some rural villages of that country the bride is still 
 married in a mourning gown. I should think she 
 
 would be. 
 
 SS Se 
 
 we 
 
28 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 Wak 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF SEX. 
 
 ARE there any inevitable limitations of sex ? 
 
 Some reformers, apparently, think that there are 
 not, and that the best way to help woman is to deny 
 the fact of limitations. But I think the great ma- 
 jority of reformers would take a diffierent ground, and 
 would say that the two sexes are mutually limited 
 by nature. They would doubtless add that this 
 very fact is an argument for the enfranchisement of 
 woman: for, if woman is a mere duplicate of man, man 
 can represent her; but if she has traits of her own, 
 absolutely distinct from his, then he cannot represent 
 her, and she must havea voice anda vote of her own. 
 
 To this last body of believers I belong. I think 
 
 hat all legal or conventional obstacles should be 
 removed, which d@bar woman from determining for 
 herself, as freely as man determines, what the real 
 limitations of sex are, and what the merely conven- 
 tional restriction. But, when all is said and done, 
 there is no doubt that plenty of limitations will 
 
 remain on both sides. 
 
The Limitations of Sex. 29 
 
 That man has his limitations, is clear. No matter 
 how finely organized a man may be, how sympathetic, 
 how tender, how loving, there is yet a barrier, never 
 to be passed, that separates the most precious part o 
 the woman’s kingdom from him. All the wondrous 
 world of motherhood, with its unspeakable delights, 
 its holy of holies, remains forever unknown by him ; 
 he may gaze, but never enter. That halo of pure 
 devotion, which makes a Madonna out of so many a 
 poor and ignorant woman, can never touch his brow. 
 Many a man loves children more than many a woman : 
 but, after all, it is not he who has borne them ; to 
 that peculiar sacredness of experience he can never 
 arrive. But never mind whether the loss be a great 
 one or a small one: it is distinctly a limitation ; and 
 to every loving mother it is a limitation so important 
 that she would be unable to weigh all the privileges 
 and powers of manhood against this peculiar posses- 
 sion of her child. 
 
 Now, if this be true, and if men be thus distinctly 
 limited by the mere fact of sex, can the woman 
 complain that she also should have some natural 
 limitations? Grant that she should have no unneces- 
 sary restrictions ; and that the course of human pro- 
 gress is constantly setting aside, as needless, point 
 
 after point that was once he'd e3sential. Still, if she 
 
30 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 finds—as she undoubtedly will find—that natural 
 barriers and hindrances remain at last, and that she 
 can no more do man’s whole work in the world than 
 he can do hers, why should she complain? If he 
 can accept his limitations, she must be prepared also 
 tofaccept hers: 
 
 Some of our physiological reformers declare that a 
 girl will be perfectly healthy if she can only be sen- 
 sibly dressed, and can “have just as much out-door 
 exercise as the boys, and of the same sort, if she 
 choose it.” But I have observed that matter a good 
 deal, and have watched the effect of boyish exercise 
 on a good many girls; and I am satisfied that so far 
 from being safely turned loose, as boys can be, they 
 need, for physical health, the constant supervision of 
 wise mothers. Otherwise the very exposure that only 
 hardens the boy may make the girl an invalid for life. 
 The danger comes from a greater sensitiveness of 
 structure,—not weakness, properly so called, since it 
 gives, in certain ways, more power of endurance,—a 
 greater sensitiveness which runs through all a woman’s 
 career, and is the expensive price she pays for the 
 divine destiny of motherhood. It is another natural 
 limitation. 
 
 No wise person believes in any “ reform against 
 Nature,” or that we can get beyond the laws of Na- 
 
The Limitations of Sex. 31 
 
 ture. If I believed the limitations of sex to be incon- 
 sistent with woman suffrage, for instance, I should 
 oppose this ; but I do not see why a woman cannot 
 form political opinions by her baby’s cradle, as well 
 as her husband in his workshop, while her very love 
 for the child commits her to an interest in good 
 government. Our duty is to remove all the artificial 
 restrictions we can. That done, it will not be hard 
 for man or woman to acquiesce in the natural limi- 
 
 tations. 
 
B2 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 UTNE eA re Ne 
 
 *Avdpos Kal yuvatkds 7 adty apetn.—ANTISTHENES in Diogenes 
 
 Yaertius, vi. 1, 5. 
 
 © Virtue in man and woman ts the same.” 
 
 VIE 
 THE INVISIBLE LADY. 
 
 TUE Invisible Lady, as advertised in all our cities a 
 good many years ago, was a mysterious individual 
 who remained unseen, and had apparently no human 
 organs except a brain and a tongue. You asked 
 questions of her, and she made intelligent answers ; 
 but where she was, you could no more discover than 
 you could find the man inside the Automaton Chess- 
 Player. Was she intended as a satire on woman- 
 kind, or as a sincere representation of what woman- 
 kind should be? To many men, doubtless, she 
 would have seemed the ideal of her sex, could only 
 her brain and tongue have disappeared like the rest 
 of her faculties. Such men would have liked her 
 
 almost as well as that other mysterious personage 
 
+ so | 
 | The Invisible Lady. a3 
 
 on the London sign-board, labelled “The Good 
 Woman,” and represented by a female figure without 
 a head. 
 
 It is not that any considerable portion of mankind 
 actually wishes to abolish woman from the universe. 
 But the opinion dies hard that she is best off when 
 least visible. These appeals which still meet us: for 
 “the sacred privacy of woman” are only the Invisi- 
 ble Lady on a larger scale. In ancient Bceotia, 
 brides were carried home in vehicles whose wheels 
 were burned at the door in token that they would 
 never again be needed. In ancient Rome, it was a 
 queen’s epitaph, “She stayed at home, and spun,’— 
 Domum servavit, lanum fectt. In Turkey, not even 
 the officers of justice can enter the apartments of a 
 woman without her lord’s consent. In Spain and 
 Spanish America, the veil replaces the four walls of 
 the house, and is a portable seclusion. To be visible 
 is at best a sign of peasant blood and occupations ; 
 to be high-bred is to be invisible. 
 
 In the Azores I found that each peasant family 
 endeavoured to secure for one or more of its 
 daughters the pride and glory of living unseen. The 
 
 ther sisters, secure in innocence, tended cattle on 
 lonely mountain-sides, or toiled bare-legged up the 
 steep ascents, their heads crowned with orange- 
 
 D 
 
34 Comnion Sense about Women. 
 
 baskets. The chosen sister was taught to read, to 
 embroider, and to dwell indoors; if she went out it 
 was only under escort, and with her face buried in 
 a hood of almost incredible size, affording only a 
 elimpse of the poor pale cheeks, so unlike the rosy 
 vigour of the damsels on the mountain-side. The 
 girls, I was told, did not covet this privilege of seclu- 
 sion ; but let us be genteel, or die. 
 
 Now all that is left of the Invisible Lady among 
 ourselves is only the remnant of this absurd tradi- 
 tion. In the seaside town where I write, ladies 
 usually go veiled in the streets, and so general is the 
 practice that little girls often veil their dolls. They 
 all suppose it to be done for complexion or for orna- 
 ment ; just as people still hang straps on the backs 
 of their carriages, not knowing that it is a relic of 
 the days when footmen stood there and held on. 
 But the veil represents a tradition of seclusion, 
 whether we know it or not; and the dread of hear- 
 ing a woman speak in public, or of seeing a woman 
 vote, represents precisely the same tradition. It is 
 entitled to no less respect, and no more. 
 
 Like all traditions, it finds something in human 
 nature to which to attach itself. Early girlhood, like 
 early boyhood, needs to be guarded and sheltered, 
 
 that it may mature unharmed. It is monstrous to 
 
 = 
 
The Invisible Lady. a5 
 
 make this an excuse for keeping a woman, any more 
 than a man, in a condition of perpetual subordina- 
 tion and seclusion. The young lover wishes to lock 
 up his angel in a little world of her own, where none 
 may intrude. The harem and the seraglio are simply 
 the embodiment of this desire. But the maturer 
 man, and the maturer race, have found that the be- 
 loved being should be something more. 
 
 After this discovery is made, the theory of the In- 
 visible Lady disappears. It is less of a shock to an 
 American to hear a woman speak in public than it is 
 to an Oriental to see her show her face in public at 
 all. Once open the door of the harem, and she has 
 the freedom of the house: the house includes the 
 front door, and the street is but a prolonged door- 
 step. With the freedom of the street comes inevit- 
 ably a free access to the platform, the tribunal, and 
 the pulpit. You might as well try to stop the air in 
 its escape from a punctured balloon, as to try, when 
 woman is once out of the harem, to put her back 
 there. Ceasing to be an Invisible Lady, she must 
 become a visible force: there is no middle ground. 
 There is no danger that she will not be anchored to 
 the cradle, when cradle there is ; but it will be by an 
 elastic cable, that will leave her as free to think and 
 vote as to pray. No woman is less a mother be- 
 
 LEZ 
 
36 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 cause she cares for all the concerns of the world into 
 which her child is born. It was John Quincy Adams 
 who said, defending the political petitions of the 
 women of Plymouth, that “women are not only jus- 
 tified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they 
 do depart from the domestic circle, and enter on the 
 
 concerns of their country, of humanity, and of their 
 God.” 
 
 VLU 
 SACRED OBSCURITY. 
 
 IN the preface to that ill-named but delightful book, 
 the “ Remains of the late Mrs. Richard Trench,” there 
 is a singular remark by the editor, her son. He 
 says that “the adage is certainly true in regard to 
 the British matron, Bene virtt gue bene latuit,” the 
 meaning of this adage being, “She has livec well 
 who has kept herself well out of sight.” Applying 
 this to his beloved mother, he further expresses a 
 regret at disturbing her “sacred obscurity.” Then 
 he goes on to disturb it pretty effectually by print- 
 ing a thick octavo volume of her most private letters. 
 
 It is a great source of strength and advantage to 
 
 reformers, that there are always men preserved to be 
 
Sacred Obscurity. 37 
 
 o 
 
 living examples of this good old Oriental doctrine of 
 “sacred obscurity.” Just as Mr. Darwin needs for 
 the demonstration of his theory that the lower orders 
 of creation should still be present in visible form for 
 purposes of comparison, so every reformer needs 
 to fortify his position by showing examples of the 
 original attitude from which society has _ been 
 cradually emerging. If there had been no Oriental 
 seclusion, many things in the present position of 
 woman would be inexplicable. But when we point 
 to that ; when we show that even in the more en- 
 lightened Eastern countries it is still held indecorous 
 to allude to the feminine members of a man’s family ; 
 when we see among the Christian nations of Southern 
 Europe many lingering traits of this same habit 
 of seclusion; and when we find an archdeacon of 
 the English Church still clinging to the theory, 
 even while exhibiting his mother’s family letters to 
 the whole world—we more easily understand the 
 course of development. 
 
 These re-assertions of the Oriental theory are 
 simply reversions, as a naturalist would say, to 
 the original type. They are instances of “ atavism,”’ 
 like the occasional appearance of six fingers on 
 one hand in a family where the great-great-grand- 
 
 father happened to possess that ornament. Such 
 
38 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 instances can always be found, when one takes the 
 pains to look for them. Thus a critic, discussing 
 in the Atlantic Monthly Mr. Mahaffy’s book on 
 “Social . Life. ina Greece,’ ods! surprised Mhatmthis 
 writer should quote, in proof of the degradation of 
 woman in Athens, the remark attributed to Pericles, 
 “That woman is best who is teast spoken of among 
 men, whether jfor igoodor ‘for Jevili’n 9 CIinMour 
 opinion,” adds the reviewer, “that remark was wise 
 then, and is wise now.” The Oriental theory is not 
 then, it seems, extinct ; and we are spared the pains 
 of proving that it ever existed. 
 
 If this theory be true, how falsely has the admira- 
 tion of mankind been given! If the most obscure 
 woman is best, the most conspicuous must un- 
 doubtedly be worst. Tried by this standard, how 
 unworthy must have been Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
 ing, how reprehensible must be Dorothea Dix, what 
 a model of all that is discreditable is Rosa Bonheur, 
 what a crowning instance of human depravity is 
 Florence Nightingale! Yet how consoling the 
 thought, that, while these disreputable persons were 
 thus wasting theif substance in the riotous per- 
 formance of what the world weakly styled good 
 deeds, there were always women who saw the folly 
 of such efforts, women who by steady devotion to 
 
Sacred Obscurity. 39 
 
 eating, drinking, and sleeping continued to keep them- 
 selves in sacred obscurity, and to prove themselves 
 the ornaments of their sex, inasmuch as no human 
 being ever had occasion to mention their names ! 
 
 But alas for human inconsistency! As for this in- 
 verse-ratio theory,—this theory of virtue so exalted 
 that it has never been known or felt or mentioned 
 among men,—it is to be observed that those who hold 
 it are the first to desert it when stirred by an immedi- 
 ate occasion. Just asa slaveholder, in the old times, 
 after demonstrating to you that freedom was a curse 
 to the negro, would instantly turn round, and inflict 
 this greatest of all curses on some slave who had 
 saved his life ; so, I fear, would one of these philo- 
 sophers, if he were profoundly impressed with any 
 ereat action done bya woman, give the lie to all his 
 theories, and celebrate her fame. In spite of all his 
 fine principles, if he happened to be rescued from 
 drowning by Grace Darling, he would put her name 
 in the newspaper ; if he were tended in hospital by 
 Clara Barton, he would sound her praise; and, if 
 his mother wrote as good letters as did Mrs, Trench, 
 he would probably print them to the extent of five 
 hundred pages, as the archdeacon did, and all his 
 gospel of silence would exhale itself in a single sigh 
 of regret in the preface. 
 
40 ~Conmon Sense about Women. 
 
 IX. 
 OUR GIRLS. 
 
 AN American newspaper remarked some time since 
 that Mrs. Livermore had just delivered in Newport 
 her celebrated lecture, “What shall we do with our 
 Trials?” It was, I suppose, one of those felicitous 
 misprints, by which compositors build better than 
 they know. The real title of the lecture was, “ What 
 shall we do with our Girls?” Perhaps it was the 
 unconscious witticism of some poetic young type- 
 setter, to whom damsels were as yet only pleasing 
 pains ; or of some premature cynic of the printing- 
 office, who was in the habit of regarding himself as 
 a Blighted Being. 
 
 Yet to how many is this morose phrase “ humanly 
 adaptive,” as Mrs Browning abstrusely says! Anx- 
 ious mothers, for instance, will accept it, the mothers 
 of the thousands of surplus maidens—or whatever 
 the statistics say—in Massachusetts. Frederica 
 Bremer inserts in one of her novels an “Extra Leaf 
 on Daughter-full Houses ;” an extra that should have 
 
 a large circulation in many towns of New England. 
 
© 
 
 Our Girds. | Al 
 
 The most heroic and unflinching remedy for this 
 class of trials, so far as my knowledge goes, was that 
 announced by a small relative of my own, aged three, 
 who sitting on the floor thus soliloquized to her doll : 
 “If I had too many daughters, I'd take ’em into the 
 woods and lose ’em—I’d take ’em to the sea and 
 push ’em in: I wouldn’t have too many daughters!” 
 She is now a happy wife and mother; but Fate, 
 warned in time by such exceeding plainness of 
 speech, has judiciously endowed her chiefly with 
 sons, 
 
 Most of the serious assertion that women are trials 
 comes from masculine wisdom. One hears a good 
 deal of it in summer, at the seaside, from the mar- 
 riageable youth of some of our chief cities. Aftera 
 languid hour’s chat upon tailors or boots or the pro- 
 per appointments of a harness,—or of the groom, so 
 perfectly costumed that he seems but a part of the 
 harness,—how often they fall to lamenting the 
 extravagance, the exactions, the general unmarriage- 
 ableness, of the young women of the present day! 
 Some wit once said that the Pilgrim Mothers had 
 much more to bear than the Pilgrim Fathers, since 
 the Mothers had not only to endure the cold and the 
 hunger, but to endure the Fathers beside. In hear- 
 ing these remarks I have sometimes thought that 
 
42 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 these young ladies must be extravagant indeed, if, in 
 addition to their own expenses, they take to them- 
 selves so very costly a luxury as a fashionable hus- 
 band. 
 
 And I think that wiser critics than these youths 
 are sometimes tempted into treating these lovely and 
 lovable “trials” in too severely hopeless a way. 
 There is folly enough on the surface, no doubt, and 
 something of it below the surface: yet who does not 
 remember how, in time of need, all these follies 
 proved themselves, during our civil war, but super- 
 ficial things? The very maidens over whom we had 
 shaken our anxious heads were suddenly those who 
 with pale cheeks bade their lovers leave them, or who 
 changed their gorgeous array for the plain garments 
 of the hospital. So far as I can judge, there is not a 
 young girl within the range of my knowledge who can 
 confidently be insured against marrying a poor artist 
 or a poorer army officer to-morrow, should she once 
 fall thoroughly in love. And, once married, she will 
 very probably develop a power of self-denial, of 
 economy, and of dressing herself and baby grace- 
 fully out of the cast-off clothes of her genteel rela- 
 tions,—in a way to put her critics to shame. I 
 think we ought all patiently to endure “ trials” that 
 turn to such blessings in the end. 
 
Our Girls. 43 
 
 For one, I can truly say, with charming Mrs. 
 Trench in her letters written in 1816, “I do believe 
 the girls of the present day have not lost the power 
 of blushing; and, though I have no grown-up 
 daughters, I enjoy the friendship of some who might 
 be my daughters, in whom the greatest delicacy and 
 modesty are united with perfect ease of manner, and 
 habitual intercourse with the world.” And if this is 
 the case,— and I think we shall all own it to be so,— 
 we may as well have the typographical error corrected, 
 
 after all, and hereafter say—for “trials” read “girls.” 
 
 DG 
 VIRTUES IN COMMON. 
 
 A YOUNG friend of mine, who was educated at one 
 of the very best schools for girls in New York City, 
 told me that one day her teacher requested the older 
 girls to write out a list of virtues. suitable to manly 
 character, which they did. A month or more later, 
 when this occurrence was well forgotten, the same 
 
 teacher bade them write out a list of womanly virtues, 
 
44 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 she making no reference to the other list. Then she 
 made each girl compare her lists ; and they all found 
 with surprise that there was no substantial difference 
 between them. The only variation, in most cases, 
 was, that they had put in a rather vague special virtue 
 of “manliness” in the one case and “womanliness” 
 in the other ; a sort of miscellaneous department or 
 “odd drawer,” apparently, in which to group all traits 
 not easily analyzed. 
 
 The moral is, that, as tested by the common-sense 
 of these young people, duty is duty, and the differ- 
 ence between ethics for men and ethics for women lies 
 simply in practical applications, not in principles. 
 
 Who can deny that the philosopher Antisthenes 
 was right when he said, “ The virtues of the man and 
 the woman are the same’? Not the Christian, 
 certainly ; for he accepts as his highest standard the 
 being who in all history best united the highest 
 qualities of both sexes. Not the metaphysician ; for 
 his analysis deals with the human mind as such, not 
 with the mind of either sex. Not the evolutionist ; 
 for he is accustomed to trace back qualities to their 
 source, and cannot deny that there is in each sex at 
 least a “survival” of every good and every bad trait. 
 We may say that these qualities are, or may be, or 
 ought to be, distributed unequally between the sexes ; 
 
Virtues w Common. 45 
 
 but we cannot reasonably deny that each sex 
 possesses a share of every quality, and that what is 
 good in one sex is also good in the other. Man may 
 be the braver, and yet courage ina woman may be 
 nobler than cowardice. Woman may be the purer, 
 and yet purity may be noble in a man. 
 
 So clear is this, that some of the very coarsest 
 writers in all literature, and those who have been 
 severest upon women, have yet been obliged to 
 acknowledge it. Take, for instance, Dean Swift, who 
 writes :— 
 
 “I am ignorant of any one quality that is amiable in a 
 woman, which is not equally so in a man. I do not except 
 
 even modesty and gentleness of nature; nor do I know one 
 vice or folly which is not équally detestable in both.” 
 
 Mrs. Jameson, in her delightful “ Commonplace 
 Book,” illustrates this admirably by one or two test 
 cases. She takes, for instance, from one of Hum- 
 boldt’s letters a much-admired passage on manly 
 character :— 
 
 “Masculine independence of mind I hold to be in reality 
 the first requisite for the formation of a charaeter of real 
 manly worth. The man who allows himself to be deceived 
 and carried away by his own weakness, may be a very amiable 
 person in other respects, but cannot be called a good man ; 
 such beings should not find favour in the eyes of a woman, 
 for a truly beautiful and purely feminine nature should be 
 
46 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 attracted only by what is highest and noblest in the character 
 of man.” 
 
 “Take now this same bit of moral philosophy,” she 
 says, “and apply it to the feminine character, and it 
 
 reads quite as well :— 
 
 “¢ Feminine independence of mind I hold to be in reality the 
 first requisite for the formation of a character of real feminine 
 worth. The woman who allows herself to be deceived and 
 carried away by her own weakness, may be a very amiable 
 person in other respects, but cannot be called a good woman ; 
 such beings should not find favour in the eyes of a man, for a 
 truly beautiful and purely manly nature should be attracted only 
 by what is highest and noblest in the character of woman.’” 
 
 I have never been able to perceive that there was 
 a quality or grace of character which really belonged 
 exclusively to either sex, or which failed to win 
 honour when wisely exercised by either. It is not 
 thought necessary to have separate editions of books 
 on ethical science, the one for man, the other for 
 woman, like almanacs calculated for different latitudes. 
 The books that vary are not the scientific works, but 
 little manuals of practical application—“ Duties of 
 Men,” “ Duties of Women.” These vary with times 
 and places: where women do not know how to read, 
 no advice on reading will be found in the women’s 
 manuals ; where it is held wrong for women to 
 
 uncover the face, it will be laid down in these 
 
Virtues tn Conemon. Av 
 
 manuals as a sin. But ethics are ethics: the great 
 principles of morals, as proclaimed either by science 
 or by religion, do not fluctuate for sex ; their basis is 
 in the very foundations of right itself. 
 
 This grows clearer when we remember that it is 
 equally true in mental science. There is not one 
 logic for men, and another for women; a separate 
 syllogism, a separate induction : the moment we begin 
 to state intellectual principles, that moment we go 
 beyond sex. We deal then with absolute truth. If 
 an observation is wrong, if a process of reasoning is 
 bad, it makes no difference who brings it forward. 
 Any list of mental processes, any inventory of the 
 contents of the mind, would be identical, so far as sex 
 goes, whether compiled bya woman ora man. These 
 things, like the circulation of the blood or the diges- 
 tion of food, belong clearly to the ground held in 
 
 common. The London Sfectator well said lately,— 
 
 “ After all, knowledge is knowledge; and there is no more 
 a specifically feminine way of describing correctly the origin of 
 the Lollard movement, or the character of Spenser’s poetry, 
 than there is a specifically feminine way of solving a quadratic 
 equation, or of proving the forty-seventh problem of Euclid’s 
 first book.” 
 
 All we can say in modification of this is, that there 
 is, after all, a foundation for the rather vague item 
 
 of “ manliness” and “womanliness” in these school- 
 
z% 
 
 48 Common Sense about Woneen. 
 
 girl lists of duties. There is a difference, after all is 
 said and done; but it is something that eludes 
 analysis, like the differing perfume of two flowers of 
 the same genus and even of the same species. The 
 method of thought must be essentially the same in 
 both sexes ; and yet an average woman will put more 
 flavour of something we call instinct into her mental 
 action, and the average man something more of what 
 we call logic into his. Whipple tells us that not a 
 man guessed the plot of Dickens’s “Great Expecta- 
 tions,” while many women did; and this certainly 
 indicates some average difference of quality or 
 method. So the average cpinions of a hundred 
 ‘women, on some question of ethics, might very 
 probably differ from the average of a hundred men, 
 while yet it remains true that “the virtues of the man 
 
 and the woman are the same.” 
 
 Sl. 
 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. 
 
 BLACKBURN, in his entertaining book, “ Artists and 
 Arabs,” draws a contrast between Frith’s painting of 
 the “Derby Day” and Rosa Bonheur’s “ Horse 
 
[Individual Differences. AQ 
 
 Fair,”—“the former pleasing the eye by its clever- 
 ness and prettiness, the latter impressing the spec- 
 tator by its power and its truthful rendering of 
 animal life. The difference between the two painters 
 is probably more one of education than of natural 
 cifts. But, whilst the style of the former is grafted 
 on a fashion, the latter is founded on a rock,—the 
 result of a close study of nature, chastened by classic 
 feeling and a remembrance, it may be, of the friezes 
 of the Parthenon.” 
 
 Now, it is to be observed that this description runs 
 precisely counter to the popular impression as to the 
 work of the two sexes. Novelists like Charles Reade, 
 for instance, who have apparently seen precisely one 
 woman in their lives, and hardly more than one man, 
 and who keep on sketching these two figures most 
 felicitously and brilliantly thenceforward, would be 
 apt to assign these qualities of the artist very differ- 
 ently. Their typical man would do the truthful and 
 powerful work, and everybody would say, “How 
 
 d) 
 
 manly!” Their woman would please by cleverness 
 and prettiness, and everybody would say, “ How 
 womanly!” Yet Blackburn shows us that these 
 qualities are individual, not sexual; that they result 
 from temperament, or, he thinks, still more from 
 training. If Rosa Bonheur does better work than 
 
 E 
 
 grt 
 
50 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 Frith, it is not because she is a woman, nor is it in 
 spite of that ; but because, setting sex aside, she is 
 a better artist. 
 
 This is not denying the distinctions of sex, but 
 only asserting that they are not so exclusive and 
 all-absorbing as is supposed. It is easy to name other 
 grounds of difference which entirely ignore those of 
 sex, striking directly across them, and rendering a 
 different classification necessary. It is thus with 
 distinctions of race or colour, for instance. An 
 Indian man and woman are at many points more 
 like to one another than is either to a white person 
 of the same sex. A black-haired man and woman, 
 or a fair-haired man and woman, are to be classified 
 together in these physiological aspects. So of differ- 
 ences of genius: a man and woman of musical tem- 
 perament and training have more in common than 
 has either with a person who is of the same sex, but 
 who cannot tell one note from another. So two 
 persons of ardent or imaginative temperament are 
 thus far alike, though the gulf of sex divides them ; 
 and so are two persons of cold or prosaic tempera- 
 ment. In a mixed school the teacher cannot class 
 together intellectually the boys as such, and the girls 
 as such: bright boys take hold of a lesson very much 
 
 as bright girls do, and slow girls like slow boys. 
 
Individual Differences. 51 
 
 Nature is too rich, too full, too varied, to be content 
 with a single basis of classification: she has a hun- 
 dred systems of grouping, according to sex, age, 
 race, temperament, training, and so on; and we get 
 but a narrow view of life when we limit our theories 
 to one set of distinctions. 
 
 As a matter of social philosophy, this train of 
 thought logically leads to co-education, impartial 
 suffrage, and free co-operation in all the affairs of 
 life. As a matter of individual duty, it teaches the 
 old moral to “act well your part.” No wise person 
 will ever trouble himself or herself much about the 
 limitations of sex in intellectual labour. Rosa Bon- 
 heur was not trying to work like a woman, or like a 
 man, or unlike either, but to do her work thoroughly 
 and well. He or she who works in this spirit works 
 nobly, and gives an example which will pass beyond 
 the bounds of sex, and help all. The Abbé Liszt, 
 the most gifted of living pianists, told a friend of 
 mine, his pupil, that he had learned more of music 
 from hearing Madame Malibran sing than from any- 
 
 thing else whatever. 
 
 LN a ITY 
 
52 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 oT). 
 ANGELIC SUPERIORITY. 
 
 IT is better not to base any plea for woman on the 
 ground of her angelic superiority. The argument 
 proves too much. If she is already so perfect, there 
 is every inducement to let well alone. It suggests 
 the expediency of conforming man’s condition to 
 hers, instead of conforming hers to man’s. If she is 
 a winged creature, and man can only crawl, it is his 
 condition that needs mending. 
 
 Besides, one may well be a little incredulous of 
 these vast claims. Granting some average advantage 
 to woman, it is not of such completeness as to base 
 much argument upon it. The minister looking on 
 his congregation, rarely sees an unmixed angel, either 
 at the head or at the foot of any pew. The domestic 
 servant rarely has the felicity of waiting on an 
 absolute saint at either end of the dinner-table. The 
 lady’s-maid has to compare her little observations of 
 human infirmity with those of the valet-de-chambre. 
 The lover worships the beloved, whether man or 
 
 woman; but marriage bears rather hard on the ideal 
 
Angelic Superiority. 53 
 
 in either case. And those who pray out of the same 
 book, “ Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners,” are 
 not supposed to be offering up petitions for each 
 other only. 
 
 We all know many women whose lives are 
 made wretched by the sins and follies of their hus- 
 bands. There are also many men whose lives are 
 turned to long wretchedness by the selfishness, the 
 worldliness, or the bad temper of their wives. 
 Domestic tyranny belongs to neither sex by mono- 
 poly. If man tortures or depresses woman, she also 
 has a fearful power to corrupt and deprave man. 
 On the other hand, to quote old Antisthenes once 
 more, “the virtues of the man and woman are the 
 same.’ A refined man is more refined than a coarse 
 woman. A child-loving man is infinitely tenderer 
 and sweeter toward children than a hard and un- 
 sympathetic woman. The very qualities that are 
 claimed as distinctively feminine are possessed more 
 abundantly by many men than by many of what is 
 called the softer sex. 
 
 Why is it necessary to say all this? Because there 
 is always danger that we who believe in the equality 
 of the sexes should be led into over-statements, 
 which will re-act against ourselves. It is not safe to 
 say that the ballot-box would be reformed if intrusted 
 
54 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 to feminine votes alone. Had the voters of the 
 South been all women, it would have plunged earlier 
 into the gulf of secession, dived deeper, and come up 
 even more reluctantly. Were the women of Spain 
 to rule its destinies unchecked, the Pope would be its 
 master, and the Inquisition might be re-established. 
 For all that we can see, the rule of women alone 
 would be as bad as the rule of men alone. It would 
 be as unsafe to give woman the absolute control of 
 man as to make man the master of woman. 
 
 Let us be a shade more cautious in our reasonings. 
 Woman needs equal rights, not because she is man’s 
 better half, but because she is his other half. She 
 needs them, not as an angel, but as a fraction of 
 humanity. Her political education will not merely 
 help man, but it will help herself. She will some- 
 times be right in her opinions, and sometimes be 
 altogether wrong ; but she will learn, as man learns, 
 by her own blunders. The demand in her behalf is, 
 that she shall have the opportunity to make mistakes, 
 since it is by that means she must become wise. 
 
 In all our towns there is a tendency toward 
 “mixed schools.” We rarely hear of the sexes being 
 separated in a school after being once united ; but 
 we constantly hear of their being brought together 
 
 after separation. This is commonly, but mistakenly, 
 
Angelic Superiority. 55 
 
 recommended as an advantage to the boysalone. I 
 once heard an accomplished teacher remonstrate 
 against this change, when thus urged. “Why should 
 my girls be sacrificed,” she said, “to improve your 
 boys?” Six months after, she had learned by ex- 
 perience Wily, she asked,” ‘did you’ rest the 
 argument on so narrow a ground? Since my school 
 consisted half of boys, I find with surprise that the 
 change has improved both sexes. My girls are more 
 ambitious, more obedient, and more ladylike. I 
 shall never distrust the policy of mixed schools 
 again.” 
 
 What is true of the school is true of the family and 
 of the state. It is not good for man, or for woman, 
 to be alone. Granting the woman to be, on the 
 whole, the more spiritually minded, it is still true that 
 each sex needs the other. When the rivet falls from 
 a pair of scissors, we do not have them mended 
 because either half can claim angelic superiority 
 over the other half, but because it takes two halves 
 
 to make a whole. 
 
 — SO 
 
56 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 XIII. 
 VICARIOUS HONOURS. 
 
 THERE is a story in circulation—possibly without 
 authority—to the effect that a certain young lady 
 has ascended so many Alps that she would have 
 been chosen a member of the English Alpine Club, 
 but for her »misfortune;in respect to sex. Aswa 
 matter of personal recognition, however, and, as it 
 were, of approximate courtesy, her dog, who has 
 accompanied her in all her trips, and is not debased 
 Dy sex, has been elected into the club. She has 
 therefore an opportunity for exercising in behalf of 
 her dog that beautiful self-abnegation which is said 
 to be a part of woman’s nature, impelling her always 
 to prefer that her laurels should be worn by some- 
 body else. 
 
 The dog probably made no objection to these 
 vicarious honours ; nor is any objection made by the 
 young gentlemen who reply eloquently to the toast, 
 “The. Ladies,” at publicadinners, orVwho kinch, 
 consent to be educated at masculine colleges on 
 
 d 
 
 “scholarships” founded by women. At Harvard 
 
Vicarious flonours. 57 
 
 University alone there are ten such scholarships,— 
 their income amounting annually to $2,340 in all. 
 Those who receive the emoluments of these funds 
 must reflect within themselves, occasionally, how 
 grand a thing is this power of substitution given to 
 women, and how pleasant are its occasional results 
 to the substitute. It is doubtless more blessed to 
 give than to receive, but to receive without giving 
 has also its pleasures. Very likely the holder of the 
 scholarship, and the orator who rises with his hand 
 on his heart to “reply in behalf of the ladies,’ may 
 do their appointed work well; and so did the Alpine 
 dog. Yet, after all, but for the work done by his 
 mistress, he would have won no more honour from 
 the Alpine Club than if he had been a chamois. 
 Nothing since Artemus Ward and his wife’s rela- 
 tions has been finer than the generous way in which 
 fathers and brothers disclaim all desire for profits or 
 honours on the part of their feminine relatives. In a 
 certain system of schools once known to me, the boys 
 had prizes of money on certain occasions, but the 
 successful girls at those times received simply a tes- 
 timonial of honour for each ; “the Committee being 
 convinced,” it was said, “that this was more conso- 
 nant with the true delicacy and generosity of woman’s 
 
 nature.” Soin the new arrangements for opening 
 
 *, 
 Roe 
 
58 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 the University of Copenhagen to young women, 
 Karl Blind writes to the Mew York Evening Post, 
 that it is expressly provided that they shall not 
 “share in the academic benefices and stipends which 
 have been set apart for male students.” Half of 
 these charities may, for aught that appears, have 
 been established originally by women, like the ten 
 Harvard scholarships already named. Women, how- 
 ever, can avail themselves of them only by deputy, 
 as the Alp-climbing young lady is represented by her 
 dog. 
 
 It is all a beautiful tribute to the disinterestedness 
 of woman. The only pity is that this virtue, so 
 much admired, should not be reciprocated by show- 
 ing the like disinterestedness toward her. It does 
 not appear that the butchers and bakers of Copen- 
 hagen propose to reduce in the case of women stu- 
 dents “the benefices and stipends” which are to be 
 paid for daily food. Young ladies at the university 
 are only prohibited from receiving money, not from 
 needing it. Nor will any of the necessary fatigues 
 of Alpine climbing be relaxed for any young lady 
 because she isa woman. The fatigues will remain 
 in full force, though the laurels be denied. The 
 mountain passes will make small account of the 
 
 “tenderness and delicacy of her sex.” When the 
 
Vicarious Flonours. 59 
 
 toil is over she will be regarded as too delicate to be 
 thanked for it; but, by way of compensation, the 
 Alpine Club will allow her to be represented: by her 
 dog. 
 
 Ve 
 “CELERY AND CHERUBS.” 
 
 THERE was once a real or imaginary old lady who 
 had got the metaphor of Scylla and Charybdis a little 
 confused. Wishing to describe a perplexing situation 
 this lady said,— 
 
 “You see, my dear, she was between Celery on 
 one side and Cherubs on the other! You know 
 about Celery and Cherubs, don’t you? They was 
 two rocks somewhere; and if you didn’t hit one, 
 you was pretty sure to run smack on the other.” 
 
 This describes, as a clever writer in the Vew York 
 Tribune declares, the present condition of women 
 
 who “ agitate.” Their Celery and Cherubs are tears 
 and temper. 
 
 ~Itis a good hit, and we may well make a note of 
 it. It is the danger of all reformers, that they will 
 vibrate between discouragement and anger. When 
 
 things go wrong, what is it one’s impulse to do? To 
 
60 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 be cast down, or to be stirred up; to wring one’s 
 hands, or clench one’s fists,—in short, tears or 
 temper. 
 
 “ Mother,” said a resolute little girl of my acquain- 
 tance, “ if the dinner was all spoiled, I wouldn't sit 
 down and cry! I’d say, ‘Hang it!’” This cherub 
 preferred the alternative of temper, on days when 
 the celery turned out badly. Probably her mother 
 was addicted to the other practice, and exhibited the 
 tears. 
 
 But as this alternative is found to exist for both 
 sexes, and on all occasions, why charge it especially 
 on the woman-suffrage movement? Men are cer- 
 tainly as much given to ill temper as women ; and, 
 if they are less inclined to tears, they make it up in 
 sulks, which are just as bad. Nicholas Nickleby, 
 when the pump was frozen, was advised by Mr. 
 Squeers to “content himself with a dry polish ;” and 
 so there is a kind of dry despair into which men fall, 
 which is quite as forlorn as any tears of women. 
 How many a man has doubtless wished at such times 
 that the pump of his lachrymal glands could only 
 thaw out, and he could give his emotions something 
 more than a “dry polish”! The unspeakable com- 
 fort some women feel in sitting for ten minutes with 
 a handkerchief over their eyes! The freshness, the 
 
“Celery and Cherubs.” 61 
 
 heartiness, the new life visible in them, when the cry- 
 ing is done, and the handkerchief comes down 
 again ! 
 
 And, indeed, this simple statement brings us to 
 the real truth, which should have been more clearly 
 seen by the writer who tells this story. She is wrong 
 in saying, “It is urged that men and women stand 
 on an equality, are exactly alike.” Many of us urge 
 the equality “= very few of us urge the “exactly 
 alike.” An apple and an orange, a potato and a 
 tomato, a rose and a lily, the Episcopal and the 
 Presbyterian churches, Oxford and Cambridge, Yale 
 and Harvard,—we may surely grant equality in each 
 case, without being so exceedingly foolish as to go 
 on and say that they are exactly alike. 
 
 And precisely here is the weak point of the whole 
 case, as presented by this writer. Women give way 
 to tears more readily than men? Granted. Is their 
 sex any the weaker for it? Nota bit. It is simply a 
 difference of temperament: that is all. It involves no 
 inferiority. If you think that this habit necessarily 
 means weakness, wait and see! Who has not seen 
 women break down in tears during some domestic 
 calamity, while the “stronger sex” were calm; and 
 who has not seen those same women, that temporary 
 
 excitement being over, rise up and dry their eyes, and 
 
62 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 be thenceforth the support and stay of their house- 
 holds, and perhaps bear up the “stronger sex” as a 
 stream bears up a ship? I said once to an expe- 
 rienced physician, watching such a woman, “ That 
 woman is really great.’—“Of course she is,’ he 
 answered: “did you ever see a woman who was not 
 great, when the emergency required ?” 
 
 Now, will women carry this same quality of tem- 
 perament into their public career? Doubtless: other- 
 wise they would cease to be women. Will it be 
 betraying confidence if I own that I have seen two 
 of the very bravest women of my acquaintance— 
 women who have swayed great audiences—burst into 
 tears, during a committee-meeting, at a moment of 
 expected adversity for “the cause” ? How pitiable! 
 our critical observers would have thought. In five 
 minutes that April shower had passed, and those 
 women were as resolute and unconquerable as Queen 
 Elizabeth: they were again the natural leaders of 
 those around them ; and the cool and tearless men 
 who sat beside them were nothing—-men were “a 
 lost art,’ as some one says—compared with the in- 
 exhaustible moral vitality of those two women. 
 
 No: the dangers of “Celery and Cherubs” are 
 exaggerated. For temper, women are as good as 
 men, and no better. As for tears, long may they 
 
“Celery and Cherubs.” 63 
 
 flow! They are symbols of that mighty distinction 
 of sex which is as ineffaceable and as essential as the 
 
 difference between land and sea. 
 
 ———. 9 = 
 
 Pe Ve 
 
 ‘“ ALLURES TO BRIGHTER WORLDS AND LEADS THE 
 WAY.” 
 
 WHEN the Massachusetts House of Representatives 
 had “School Suffrage” under consideration, the 
 other day, the suggestion was made by one of the 
 pithiest and quaintest of the speakers, that men were 
 always better for the society of women, and there- 
 fore ought to vote in theircompany. “If all of us,” 
 he said, “ would stay away from all places where we 
 cannot take our wives and daughters with us, we 
 should keep better company than we now do.” This 
 expresses a feeling which grows more and more com- 
 mon among the better class of men, and which is the 
 key to much progress in the condition of women. 
 There can be no doubt that the increased association 
 of the sexes in society, in school, in literature, tends 
 
 to purify these several spheres of action. Yet, when 
 
64 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 we come to philosophize on this, there occur some 
 perplexities on the way. | 
 
 For instance, the exclusion of woman from all 
 these spheres was in ancient Greece almost complete ; 
 yet the leading Greek poets, as Homer and the trage- 
 dians, are exceedingly chaste in tone, and in this 
 respect beyond most of the great poets of modern 
 nations. Again, no European nation has quite so 
 far sequestered and subordinated women as has 
 Spain; and yet the whole tone of Spanish literature 
 is conspicuously grave and decorous. This plainly 
 indicates that race has much to do with the matter, 
 and that the mere admission or exclusion of women 
 is but one among several factors. In short, it is easy 
 to make out a case bya rhetorical use of the facts 
 on-one side; but,.if we look at all the facts, the 
 matter presents greater difficulties. 
 
 Again, it is to be noted that in several countries 
 the first women who have taken prominent part in 
 literature have been as bad as the men; as, for in- 
 stance, Marguerite of Navarre and Mrs. Aphra Behn. 
 This might indeed be explained by supposing that 
 they had to gain entrance into literature by accept- 
 ing the dissolute standards which they found pre- 
 vailing. But it would probably be more correct to 
 say that these standards themselves were variable, 
 
“ Allures to Brighter Worlds.” 65 
 
 and that their variation affected, at certain periods, 
 women as well as men. Marguerite of Navarre wrote 
 religious books as well as merry stories; and we 
 know from Lockhart’s Life of Scott, that ladies of 
 high character in Edinburgh used to read Mrs. 
 Behn’s tales and plays aloud, at one time, with de- 
 light,—although one of the same ladies found, in her 
 old age, that she could not read them to herself with- 
 out blushing. Shakspeare puts coarse repartees into 
 the mouths of women of stainless virtue. George 
 Sand is not considered an unexceptionable writer ; but 
 she tells us in her autobiography that she found 
 among her grandmother’s papers, poems and satires 
 so indecent that she could not read them through, 
 and yet they bore the names of abdés and gentlemen 
 whom she remembered in her childhood as models of 
 dignity and honour. Voltaire inscribes to ladies of 
 high rank, who doubtless regarded it as a great com- 
 pliment, verses such as not even a poet of the 
 English “ fleshly school” would now print at all. In 
 “Poems by Eminent Ladies,”’—published in 1755 
 and reprinted in 1774, there are one or two poems 
 as gross and disgusting as anything in Swift; yet 
 their authors were thought reputable women. Allan 
 Ramsay’s ‘‘ Tea-Table Miscellany ’’—a collection of 
 English and Scottish songs—was first published in 
 F 
 
66 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 1724; and in his preface to the sixteenth edition the 
 editor attributes its great success, especially among 
 the ladies, to the fact that he has carefully excluded 
 all erossness, “that the modest voice and ear of the 
 fair singer might meet with no affront;” and adds, 
 “the chief bent of all my studies being to attain 
 their good graces.” There is no doubt of the great 
 popularity enjoyed by the book in all circles; yet it 
 contains a few songs which the most licentious 
 newspaper would not now publish. The inference 
 is irresistible, from this and many other similar 
 facts, that the whole tone of manners and decency 
 has very greatly improved among the European 
 races within a century and a half. 
 
 I suspect the truth to be, that, besides the visible 
 influence of race and religion, there has been an 
 insensible and almost unconscious improvement in 
 each sex, with respect to these matters, as time has 
 passed on; and that the mutual desire to please has 
 enabled each sex to help the other,—the sex which 
 is naturally the more refined taking the lead. But 
 I should lay more stress on this mutual influence, 
 and less on mere feminine superiority, than would 
 be laid by many. It is often claimed by teachers 
 that co-education helps not only boys, but also girls, 
 
 to develop greater propriety of manners. When the 
 
“ Allures to Brighter Worlds.” 67 
 
 sexes are wholly separate, or associate on terms of 
 entire inequality, no such good influence occurs ; 
 the more equal the association, the better for both 
 parties. After all, the Divine model is to be found 
 
 in the family ; and the best ingenuity cannot improve 
 much upon it. 
 
68 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 el eset 8) Vie ee 
 
 ** In respect to the powers and rights of married women, the law is by 
 720 means abreast of the spirit of the age. Here are seen the old fossil 
 footprints of feudalism. The law relating to woman tends to make 
 every family a barony or a monarchy or a despotism, of which the hus- 
 band ts the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the dependant, serf, or 
 slave. That this is not always the fact, is not due to the law, but to the 
 enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow limits of its rules. The 
 progress of civilization has changed the family from a barony to a 
 republic ; but the law has not kept pace with the advance of ideas, man- 
 ners, and customs.” —W. W. SToRy’s Treatise on Contracts not under 
 Seal, § 84, third edition, p. 89. 
 
 XVI. 
 WANTED—HOMES. 
 
 WE see advertisements, occasionally, of ““ Homes for 
 Aged Women, ” and more rarely ‘‘ Homes for Aged 
 Men.” The question sometimes suggests itself, 
 whether it would not be better to begin the provision 
 earlier and see that homes are also provided, in 
 some form, for the middle-aged, and even the young. 
 The trouble is, I suppose, that as it takes two to 
 make a bargain, so it takes at least two to make 
 
 a home; and unluckily it takes only one to spoil it. 
 
Wanted—Flomes. 69 
 
 Madame Roland once defined marriage as an 
 institution where one person undertakes to provide 
 happiness for two ; and many failures are accounted 
 for, no doubt, by this false basis. Sometimes it is 
 the man, more often the woman, of whom this 
 extravagant demand is made. There are marriages 
 which have proved a wreck almost wholly through 
 the’ fault of the wife. Nor -is ‘this confined -to 
 wedded homes alone. I have known a son who 
 lived alone, patiently and uncomplainingly, with 
 that saddest of all conceivable companions, a drunken 
 mother. I have known another young man who sup- 
 ported in his own home a mother and sister, both 
 habitual drunkards. All these were American-born, 
 and all of respectable social position. A home 
 shadowed by such misery is not a home, though it 
 might have been a home but for the sins of women. 
 Such instances are, however, rare and occasional com- 
 pared with the cases where the same offence in the 
 husband makes ruin of the home. 
 
 Then there are the cases where indolence, or 
 selfishness, or vanity, or the love of social excitement, 
 in the woman, unfits her for home life. Here we 
 come upon ground where perhaps woman is the 
 greater sinner. It must be remembered, however, 
 
 that against this must be balanced the neglect 
 
70 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 produced by club-life, or by the life of society- 
 membership, in a man. A brilliant young married 
 belle in London once told me that she was glad 
 her husband was so fond of his club, for it amused 
 him every night while she went to balls. “ Married 
 
 d 
 
 men do not go much into society here,” she said, 
 “unless they are regular flirts,—which I do not think 
 my husband would ever be, for he is very fond of 
 me,—so he goes every night to his club and gets 
 home about the same time that I do. It is a very 
 nice arrangement.” It was apparently spoken in 
 all the fearlessness of innocence, but I believe that it 
 has since ended in a “ separation.” 
 
 It is common to denounce club-life in our large 
 cities as destructive of the home. The modern club 
 is simply a more refined substitute for the old- 
 fashioned tavern, and is on the whole an advance in 
 morals as well as manners. In our large cities a 
 man in a certain social coterie belongs to a club if he 
 can afford it, as a means of contact with his fellows, 
 and to have various conveniences which he cannot so 
 economically obtain at home. A few haunt them 
 constantly ; the many use them occasionally. More 
 absorbing than clubs, perhaps, are the secret societies 
 which have so revived among us since the war, 
 
 and which consume time so fearfully. There was 
 
Wanted—FHomes. 71 
 
 a case mentioned in the newspapers lately, of a 
 man who belonged to some twenty of these 
 associations; and when he died, and each wished 
 to conduct his funeral, great was the strife. In 
 the small city where I write, there are seventeen 
 secret societies down in the directory, and I sur- 
 pose as many more not so conspicuous. I meet men 
 who assure me that they habitually attend a society- 
 meeting every evening of the week except Sunday, 
 and sschurch meeting then: “Lhese jareyrarely men 
 of leisure: they are usually mechanics, or business 
 men of some kind, who are hard at work all day, 
 and never, seéytheir. families. except at» -meal- 
 times. Their case is far worse, so far as. absence 
 ‘from home is concerned, than that of the “ club- 
 men” of large cities; for these are often men of 
 leisure, who, if married, at least make home one 
 of their lounging-places, which the secret-society 
 men do not. 
 
 I honestly believe that this melancholy desertion 
 of the home is largely due to the traditional separa- 
 tion between the alleged spheres of the sexes. The 
 theory still prevails largely, that home is the peculiar 
 province of the woman, that she has almost no duties 
 out of it; and hence, naturally enough, that the hus- 
 
 ‘band has almost no duties in it. If he is amused 
 
72 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 there, let him stay there; but, as it is not his recog- 
 nized sphere of duty, he is not actually violating any 
 duty by absenting himself. This theory even per- 
 vades our manuals of morals, of metaphysics, and of 
 popular science ; and it is not every public teacher 
 who has the manliness, having once stated it, to 
 modify his statement, as did the venerable President 
 Hopkins of Williams College, when lecturing to the 
 young ladies of Vassar. 
 
 ‘‘I would,” ‘he said, “at this point correctsimy 
 teachino’in “The Law of Love’ to the efiecrmiia 
 home is peculiarly the sphere of woman, and civil 
 government that of man. J/ now regard the home as 
 the joint sphere of man and woman, and the sphere of 
 civil government more of an open question as between 
 the two. It is, however, to be lamented that the pre- 
 sent agitation concerning the rights of woman is so 
 much a matter of ‘rights’ rather than of ‘duties,’ 
 as the reform of the latter would involve the 
 former.” 
 
 If our instructors in moral philosophy will only 
 base their theory of ethics as broadly as this, we shall 
 no longer need to advertise “ Homes Wanted ;” for 
 the joint efforts of men and women will soon provide 
 
 them. 
 
The Origin of Civilization. 73 
 
 XVII. 
 THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 NOTHING throws more light on the whole history of 
 woman than the first illustration in Sir John Lubbock’s 
 “Origin of Civilization.” A young girl, almost 
 naked, is being dragged furiously along the ground 
 by a party of naked savages, armed literally to the 
 teeth, while those of another band grasp her by the 
 arm, and almost tear her asunder in the effort to hold 
 her back. These last are her brothers and her friends ; 
 the others are—her enemies? As you please to 
 call them. ‘They are her future husband and his 
 kinsmen, who have come to aid him in his wooing. 
 This was the primitive rite of marriage. Vestiges 
 of it still remain among savage nations. And all the 
 romance and grace of the most refined modern mar- 
 riage—the orange-blossoms, the bridal veil, the 
 church service, the wedding-feast—these are only the 
 “bright consummate flower” reared by civilization 
 from that rough seed. All the brutal encounter is 
 softened into this. Nothing remains of the bar- 
 barism except the one word “obey,” and even that 
 
 is going. 
 
7A Conimon Sense about Women. 
 
 Now, to say that a thing is going, is to say that it 
 will presently be gone. To say that any thing is 
 changed, is to say that it is to change further. If it 
 never has been altered, perhaps it will not be; but a 
 proved alteration of an inch in a year opens the way 
 to an indefinite modification. The study of the 
 glaciers, for instance, began with the discovery that 
 they had moved; and from that moment no one 
 doubted that they were moving all the time. It is 
 the same with the position of woman. Once open 
 your eyes to the fact that it has changed, and who is 
 to predict where the matter shall end? It is sheer 
 folly to say, “ Her relative position will always be 
 what it has been,’ when one glance at Sir John 
 Lubbock’s picture shows that there is no fixed 
 “has been,” but that her original position was long 
 since altered and revised. Those who still use this 
 argument are like those who laughed at the lines of 
 stakes which Agassiz planted across the Aar glacier 
 in 1840. But the stakes settled the question, and 
 proved the motion. Pero st muove: “ But it moves.” 
 
 The motion once proved, the whole range of pos- 
 sible progress is before us. The amazement of that 
 formerly “heathen Chinee” in Boston when he saw 
 a woman addressing a missionary meeting ; the 
 
 astonishment of all English visitors when young 
 
The Origin of Civilization. re 
 
 ladies hear classes in geometry and Latin, in our 
 high schools ; the surprise of foreigners at seeing the 
 rough throng in the Cooper Institute reading-room 
 submit to the sway of one young woman with a 
 crochet-needle—all these simply testify to the fact 
 that the stakes have moved. That they have yet 
 been carried half-way to the end, who knows ? 
 What a step from the horrible nuptials of those 
 savage days to the poetic marriage of Robert Brown- 
 ing and Elizabeth Barrett—the “Sonnets from the 
 Portuguese” on one side, the “One Word More” 
 on the other! But who can say that the whole re- 
 lation between man and woman reached its climax 
 there, and that where the past has brought changes 
 so vast the future is to add nothing? Who knows 
 that, when “the world’s great bridals come,” people 
 may not look back with pity, even on this era of the 
 Brownings? Probably even Elizabeth Barrett pro- 
 mised to obey! 
 
 At any rate, it is safe to say that each step concedes 
 the probability of another. Even from the naked 
 barbarian to the veiled Oriental, from the savage hut 
 to the carefully enshrined harem, is a step forward. 
 It is another step in the spiral line of progress to the 
 unveiled face and comparatively free movements of 
 
 the modern English or American woman. From the 
 
76 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 kitchen to the public lecture-room, from that to the 
 lecture-platform, and from that again to the ballot- 
 box,—these are far slighter steps than those which 
 ‘have already lifted the savage girl of Sir John 
 Lubbock’s picture into the possession of the alphabet 
 and the dignity of a home. So easy are these future 
 changes beside those of the past, that to doubt their 
 possibility is as if Agassiz, after tracing year by year 
 the motion of his Alpine glacier, should deny its 
 power to move one inch farther into the sunny valley, 
 
 and there to melt harmlessly away. 
 
 VIE 
 THE LOW-WATER MARK. 
 
 WE constantly see it assumed, in arguments against 
 any step in the elevation of woman, that her position 
 is a thing fixed permanently by nature, so that there 
 can. be in it novgreat) orvessential change: Siweny 
 successive modification is resisted as “a _ reform 
 
 ” 
 
 against nature ;” and this argument from permanence 
 is always that appealing most strongly to conser- 
 
 vative minds. Let us see how the facts confirm it. 
 
The Low-Water Mark. iy 
 
 4 
 
 A story is going the rounds of the newspapers in 
 regard to a Russian peasant and his wife. For some 
 act of disobedience the peasant took the law into his 
 own hands; and his mode of discipline was to tie the 
 poor creature naked to a post in the street, and to call 
 on every passer-by to strike herablow. Not satisfied 
 with this, he placed her on the ground, and tied heavy 
 weights on her limbs until one arm was broken. 
 When finally released, she made a complaint against 
 him in court. The court discharged him on the 
 eround that he had not exceeded the legal authority 
 of a husband. Encouraged by this, he caused her to 
 be arrested in return; and the same court sentenced 
 her to another public whipping for disobedience. 
 
 No authority was given for this story in the news- 
 paper where I saw it; but it certainly did not first 
 appear in a woman-suffrage newspaper, and cannot 
 therefore be’ at manufactured’ outrage’. 1 ‘use it 
 simply to illustrate the low-water mark at which the 
 position of woman may rest, in the largest Christian 
 nation of the world. All the refinements, all the 
 education, all the comparative justice, of modern 
 society, have been gradually upheaved from some 
 such depth as this. When the gipsies described by 
 Leland treat even the ground trodden upon by a 
 
 woman asimpure, they simply illustrate the low plane 
 
78 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 from which all the elevation of woman has begun. 
 All these things show that the position of that sex in 
 society, so far from being a thing in itself permanent, 
 has been in reality the most variable of all factors in 
 the social problem. And this inevitably suggests 
 the question, Are we any more sure that her present 
 position is finally and absolutely fixed than were 
 those who observed it at any previous time in the 
 world’s history? Granting that her condition was 
 once at low-water mark, who is authorized to say 
 that it has yet reached high-tide ? 
 
 It is very possible that this Russian wife, once 
 scourged back to submission, ended her days in the 
 conviction, and taught to her daughters, that such 
 was a woman’s rightful place. When an American 
 woman of to-day says, “I have all the rights I want,” 
 is sheonanysurerground? Grant that the difference 
 is vast between the two. How do we know that even 
 the later condition is final, or that anything is final 
 but entire equality before the laws? It is not many 
 years since William Story—in a legal work inspired 
 and revised by his father, the greatest of American 
 jurists—wrote this indignant protest against the in- 
 
 justice of the old common law :— 
 
 “In respect to the powers and rights of married women 
 the law is by no means abreast of the spirit of the age. Here 
 
The Low-Water Mark. 79 
 
 are seen the old fossil footprints of feudalism. The law relating 
 to woman tends to make every family a barony or a monarchy 
 or a despotism, of which the husband is the baron, king, or 
 despot, and the wife the dependant, serf or slave. That this 
 is not always the fact, is not due to the law, but to the en- 
 larged humanity which spurns the narrow limits of its rules. 
 The progress of civilization has changed the family from a 
 barony to a republic ; but the law has not kept pace with the 
 advance of ideas, manners, and customs. And, although public 
 opinion is a check to legal rules on the subject, the rules are 
 feudal and stern. Yet the position of woman throughout his- 
 tory serves as the criterion of the freedom of the people or an 
 age. When man shall despise that right which is founded only 
 on might, woman will be free and stand on an equal level with 
 him—a friend and not a dependant.” 
 
 We know that the law is greatly changed and 
 ameliorated in many places since Story wrote this 
 statement ; but we also know how almost every one 
 of these changes was resisted : and who is authorized 
 to say that the final and equitable fulfilment is yet 
 
 reached ? 
 
 oa ceed 
 
 DO LXe 
 SOBEVS: 
 
 AFTER witnessing the marriage ceremony of the 
 Episcopal Church, the other day, I walked down the 
 aisle with the young rector who had officiated. It was 
 
80 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 natural to speak of the beauty of the Church service 
 on an occasion like that ; but, after doing this, I felt 
 compelled to protest against the unrighteous pledge 
 to obey. |) “hopes? 1 “saidpe te Vive tosseemenan 
 word expunged from the Episcopal service, as it has 
 been from that of the Methodists.” 
 
 “Why?” he asked. “Is it because you know that 
 they will not obey, whatever their promise ? ” 
 
 “ Because they ought not,” I said. 
 
 “Well,” said he, after a few moments’ reflection, 
 and looking up frankly, “I do not think they 
 ought!” 
 
 Here was a young clergyman of great earnestness 
 and self-devotion, who included it among the sacred 
 duties of his life to impose upon ignorant young girls 
 a solemn obligation, which he yet thought they ought 
 not to incur, and did not believe that they would 
 keep. There could hardly be a better illustration of 
 the confusion in the public mind, or the manner in 
 which “the subjection of woman” is being out- 
 crown, or the subtile way in which this subjection 
 has been interwoven with sacred ties, and baptized 
 pachiits: « 
 
 The advocates of woman suffrage are constantly 
 
 ) 
 
 reproved for using the terms “subjection,” “oppres- 
 
 sion,” and “slavery,” as applied to woman. They 
 
“ Obey.” 81 
 
 simply commit the same sin as that committed by the 
 original abolitionists. They are “as harsh as truth, 
 as uncompromising as justice.” Of course they talk 
 about oppression and emancipation. It is the word 
 obey that constitutes the one, and shows the need of 
 the other. Whoever is pledged to obey is technically 
 and literally a slave, no matter how many roses sur- 
 round the chains. All the more so if the slavery is 
 self-imposed, and surrounded by all the prescriptions 
 of religion. Make the marriage-tie as close asChurch 
 or State can make it; but let it be equal, impartial. 
 That it may be so, the word obey must be abandoned, 
 or made reciprocal. Where invariable obedience is 
 promised, equality is gone. 
 
 That there may be no doubt about the meaning of 
 this word in the marriage-covenant, the usages of 
 nations often add symbolic explanations. These are 
 generally simple and brutal enough to be understood. 
 The Hebrew ceremony, when the bridegroom took 
 off his slipper and struck the bride on the neck as 
 she crossed his threshold, was unmistakable. As my 
 black sergeant said, when a white prisoner questioned 
 his authority, and he pointed to the chevrons on his 
 sleeve—* Dat mean guvment.’ All these forms 
 mean simply government also. The ceremony of the 
 slipper has now no recognition, except when people 
 
 G 
 
82 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 fling an old shoe after the bride, which is held by 
 antiquarians to be the same observance. But it is all 
 preserved and concentrated into a single word, when 
 the bride promises to obey. 
 
 The deepest wretchedness that has ever been put 
 into human language, or that has exceeded it, has 
 grown out of that pledge. There is no misery on 
 earth like that of a pure and refined woman who 
 finds herself owned, body and soul, by a drunken, 
 licentious, brutal man. The very fact that she is 
 held to obedience by a spiritual tie makes it worse. 
 Chattel-slavery was not so bad ; for, though the mas- 
 ter might pervert religion for his own satisfaction, he 
 could not impose upon the slave. Never yet did I 
 see a negro slave who thought it a duty to obey his 
 master; and therefore there was always some dream 
 of release. But who has not heard of some delicate 
 and refined woman, one day of whose torture was 
 equivalent to years of that possible to an obtuser 
 frame,—who had the door of escape ready at hand 
 for years, and yet died a lingering death rather than 
 pass through it ; and this because she had promised 
 to obey ! 
 
 It is said of one of the most gifted women who 
 ever trod American soil,—she being of English 
 birth,—that before she obtained the divorce which 
 
“Obey.” 83 
 
 separated her from her profligate husband, she once 
 went for counsel to the wife of her pastor. She un- 
 rolled before her the long catalogue of merciless 
 outrages to which she had been subject, endangering 
 finally her health, her life, and that of her children 
 born and to be born. When she turned at last for 
 advice to her confessor, with the agonized inquiry, 
 “What is it my duty to do ?’”—“ Do 2” said the stern 
 adviser: “lie down onthe floor, and let your husband 
 trample on you if he will. That is a woman’s duty.” 
 
 The woman who gave this advice was not naturally 
 inhuman nor heartless: she had simply been trained 
 in the school of obedience. The Jesuit doctrine, 
 that a priest should be as a corpse, perinde ac cadaver, 
 in the hands of a superior priest, is not worse. Woman 
 has no right to delegate, nor man to assume, a 
 responsibility so awful. Just in proportion as it is 
 consistently carried out, it trains men from boyhood 
 into self-indulgent tyrants ; and, while some women 
 are transformed by it to saints, others are crushed 
 into deceitful slaves. That this was the result of 
 chattel-slavery, this nation has at length learned. 
 We learn more slowly the profounder and more 
 subtile moral evil that follows from the unrighteous 
 
 promise to obey. 
 
84 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 XX, 
 WOMAN IN THE CHRYSALIS. 
 
 WHEN the bride receives the ring upon her finger, 
 and utters—if she utters it—the unnatural promise 
 to obey, she fancies a poetic beauty in the rite. 
 Turning of her own free will from her maiden liberty, 
 she voluntarily takes the yoke of service upon her. 
 This is her view ; but is this the historic fact in regard 
 to marriage? Not atall. The pledge of obedience 
 —the whole theory of inequality in marriage—is 
 simply what is left to us of a former state of society, 
 in which every woman, old or young, must obey 
 somebody. ‘The state of tutelage, implied in such a 
 marriage, is merely what is left of the old theory of 
 the “Perpetual Tutelase “of “Women,” under aime 
 Roman law, 
 
 Roman law, from which our civil law is derived, 
 has its foundation evidently in patriarchal tradition. 
 It recognized at first the family only, and that family 
 was held together by parental power (fatria potestas). 
 If the father died, his powers passed to the son or 
 
 grandson, as the possible head of a new family ; but 
 
Woman in the Chrysalts. 85 
 
 these powers never could pass to a woman, and every 
 woman, of whatever age, must be under somebody’s 
 legal control. Her father dying, she was still subject 
 through life to her nearest male relations, or to her 
 father’s nominees, as her guardians. She was under 
 perpetual guardianship, both as to person or property. 
 No years, no experience, could make her anything 
 but a child before the law. 
 
 In Oriental countries the system was still more 
 complete. ‘‘A man,” says the Gentoo Code of Laws, 
 “must keep his wife so much in subjection that she 
 by no means be mistress of her own action. If the 
 wife have her own free will, notwithstanding she be 
 of a superior caste, she will behave amiss.” But this 
 authority, which still exists in India, is not merely 
 conjugal. The husband exerts it simply as being the 
 wife’s legal guardian. If the woman be unmarried or 
 a widow, she must be as rigorously held under some 
 other guardianship. It is no uncommon thing for a 
 woman in India to be the ward of her own son. 
 Lucretia Mott or Florence Nightingale would there 
 be in personal subjection to somebody. Any man of 
 legal age would be recognized as a fit custodian for 
 them, but there must be a man. 
 
 With some variation of details at different periods, 
 
 the same system prevailed essentially at Rome, down 
 
86 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 to the time when Rome became Christian. Those 
 who wish for particulars will find them in an admir- 
 able chapter (the fifth) of Maine’s “ Ancient Law.” 
 At one time the husband was held to possess the 
 patria potestas, or parental power, in its full force. 
 _ By law “the woman passed zz manum virt, that is, 
 she became the daughter of her husband.” All she 
 had became his, and after his death she was retained 
 in the same strict tutelage by any guardians his will 
 might appoint. Afterwards, to soften this rigid bond, 
 the woman was regarded in law as being temporarily 
 deposited by her family with her husband ; the family 
 appointed guardians over her: and thus, between the 
 two tyrannies, she won a sort of independence. Then 
 came Christianity, and swept away the parental 
 authority for married women, concentrating all upon 
 the husband. Hence our legislation bears the mark 
 of a double origin, and woman is half recognized as 
 an equal and half as a slave. 
 
 It is necessary to remember, therefore, that all the 
 relation of subjection in marriage is merely the residue 
 of an unnatural system, of which all else is long 
 since outgrown. It would haveseemed to an ancient 
 Roman a matter of course that a woman should, all 
 her life long, obey the guardians set over her person. 
 
 It still seems to many people a matter of course that 
 
Woman in the Chrysalts. 87 
 
 she should obey her husband. To others among us, 
 on the contrary, both these theories of obedience 
 seem barbarous, and the one is merely a relic of the 
 other. 
 
 We cannot disregard the history of the Theory of 
 Tutelage. If we could believe that a chrysalis is 
 always a chrysalis, and a butterfly always a butterfly, 
 we could easily leave each to its appropriate sphere ; 
 but when we see the chrysalis open, and the butterfly 
 come half out of it, we know that sooner or later it 
 must spread wings and fly. The theory of tutelage 
 is the chrysalis. Woman is the butterfly. Sooner 
 or later she will be wholly out. 
 
 XXI. 
 TWO AND TWO. 
 
 A YOUNG man of very good brains was telling me, 
 the other day, his dreams of his future wife. Rattling 
 on, more in joke than in earnest, he said, “She must 
 be perfectly ignorant, and a bigot: she must know 
 nothing, and believe everything. I should wish to 
 have her call to me from the adjoining room, ‘My 
 dear, what do two and two make?’” 
 
88 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 It did not seem to me that his demand would be 
 so very hard to fill, since bigotry and ignorance are 
 to be had almost anywhere for the asking; and, as 
 for two and two, I should say that it had always been 
 the habit of women to ask that question of some 
 man, and to rest easily satisfied with the answer. 
 They have generally called, as my friend wished, 
 from some other room, saying, “ My dear, what do 
 two and two make ?” and the husband or father or 
 brother has answered and said, “ My dear, they make 
 four for a man and three for a woman.” 
 
 At any given period in the history of woman, she 
 has adopted man’s whim as the measure of her rights ; 
 has claimed nothing ; has sweetly accepted any thing: 
 the law of two-and-two itself should be at his dis- 
 cretion, At any given moment, so well was his 
 interpretation received, that it stood for absolute 
 right. In Rome a woman, married or single, could 
 not testify in court ; in the middle ages, and down to 
 quite modern times, she could not hold real estate; 
 ten years ago she could not, in New England, obtain 
 a collegiate education ; even now she cannot vote. 
 
 The first principles of republican government are so 
 rehearsed and re-rehearsed, that one would think they 
 must become “as plain as that two and two make 
 
 four.” But we find throughout, that, as Emerson said 
 
Two and Two. 89 
 
 of another class of reasoners, ‘‘ Their two is not the 
 real two; their four is not the real four.” We find 
 different numerals and diverse arithmetical rules for 
 the two sexes ; as, in some Oriental countries, men 
 and women speak different dialects of the same 
 language. 
 
 In novels the hero often begins by dreaming, like 
 my friend, of an ideal wife, who shall be ignorant 
 of everything, and have only brains enough to be 
 bigoted. Instead of sighing, like Falstaff, “Oh fora 
 fine young thief, of the age of two-and-twenty or there- 
 about !”’ the hero sighs for a fine young idiot of simi- 
 lar age. When the hero is successful in his search and 
 wooing, the novelist sometimes mercifully removes 
 the young woman early, like David Copperfield’s 
 Dora, she bequeathing the bereaved husband, on her 
 death-bed, toa woman of sense. In real life these 
 convenient interruptions do not commonly occur, and 
 the foolish youth regrets through many years that he 
 did not select an Agnes instead. 
 
 The acute observer Stendhal says,— 
 
 “In Paris, the highest praise for a marriageable girl is to 
 say, ‘She has great sweetness of character and the disposition 
 of a lamb.’ Nothing produces more impression on fools who 
 are looking out for wives. I think I see the interesting couple, 
 
 two years after, breakfasting together on a dull day, with three 
 tall lackeys waiting upon them !” 
 
90 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 And he adds, still speaking in the interest of men,— 
 
 “Most men have a period in their career when they might 
 do something great, a period when nothing seems impossible. 
 The ignorance of women spoils for the human race this mag- 
 nificent opportunity ; and love, at the utmost, in these days, 
 only inspires a young man to learn to ride well, or to make a 
 judicious selection of a tailor.” * 
 
 Society, however, discovers by degrees that there 
 are conveniences in every woman’s knowing the four 
 rules of arithmetic for herself. Two and two come to 
 the same amount ona butcher’s bill, whether the order 
 be given by a man or a woman; and it is the same in 
 all affairs or investments, financial or moral. We shall 
 one day learn that with laws, customs, and public 
 affairs it is even so. Once get it rooted in a woman’s 
 mind, that, for her, two and two make three only, and 
 sooner or later the accounts of the whole human race 
 fail to balance. 
 
 XXIT. 
 
 A MODEL HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 THERE is an African bird called the hornbill, whose 
 habits are in some respects a model. The female 
 
 * De L’Amour, par de Stendhal (Henri Beyle). Paris, 1868 
 [written in 1822], pp. 182, 198. 
 
A Model Household. QI 
 
 builds her nest in a hollow tree, lays her eggs, and 
 broods on them. So far, so good. Then the male 
 feels that he must also contribute some service ; so he 
 walls up the hole closely, giving only room for the 
 point of the female’s bill to protrude. Until the eggs 
 are hatched, she is thenceforth confined to her nest, 
 and is in the meantime fed assiduously by her mate, 
 who devotes himself entirely to this object. 
 Dr. Livingstone has seen these nests in Africa, 
 Layard and others in Asia, and Wallace in Su- 
 matra. 
 
 Personally I have never seen a hornbill’s nest. The 
 nearest approach I ever made to it was when in Fayal 
 I used to pass near a gloomy mansion, of which the 
 front windows were walled up, and only one high win- 
 dow was visible in the rear, beyond the reach of eyes 
 from any neighbouring house. In this cheerful abode, 
 I was assured, a Portuguese lady had been for many 
 years confined by her jealous husband. It was long 
 since any neighbour had caught a glimpse of her, but 
 it was supposed that she was alive. There is no 
 reason to doubt that her husband fed her well. It 
 was simply a case of human hornbill, with the im- 
 prisonment made perpetual. 
 
 I have more than once asked lawyers whether, in 
 
 communities where the old common law prevailed, 
 
92 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 there was any thing to prevent such an imprisonment 
 of a married woman ; and they have always answered, 
 “Nothing but public opinion.” Where the husband 
 has the legal custody of the wife’s person, no habeas 
 corpus can avail against him. The hornbill household 
 is based on a strict application of the old common 
 law. A Hindoo household was a hornbill household : 
 ‘“a woman, of whatsoever age, should never be mis- 
 tress of her own actions,” said the Code of Menu. An 
 Athenian household was a hornbill’s nest, and great 
 was the outcry when some Aspasia broke out of it. 
 When Mrs. Sherman petitions Congress against the 
 emancipation of woman, we seem to hear the twit- 
 tering of the hornbill mother, imploring to be left 
 inside. 
 
 Under some forms, the hornbill theory becomes re- 
 spectable. There are many peaceful families, innocent 
 though torpid, where the only dream of existence is 
 to have plenty of quiet, plenty of food, and plenty of 
 well-fed children. For them this African household 
 is a sufficient model. The wife is “a home body.” 
 The husband is “a good provider.” These are honest 
 people, and have a right to speak. The hornbill 
 theory is only dishonest when it comes—as it often 
 comes—from women who lead the life, not of good 
 
 stay-at-home fowls, but of paroquets and humming- 
 
A Model Household. 93 
 
 birds,—who sorrowfully bemoan the active habits of 
 
 enlightened women, while they themselves 
 
 “ Bear about the mockery of woe 
 To midnight dances and the public show.” 
 
 {t is from these women, in Washington, New York, 
 and elsewhere, that the loudest appeal for the horn- 
 bill standard of domesticity proceeds. Put them to 
 the test, and give them their chicken-salad and cham- 
 pagne through a hole in the wall only, and see how 
 they like it. 
 
 But even the most honest and peaceful conserva- 
 tives will one day admit that the hornbill is not the 
 highest model. Plato thought that “the soul of our 
 grandame might haply inhabit the body of a bird ;” 
 but Nature has kindly provided various types of bird- 
 households to suit all varieties of taste. The bright 
 orioles, filling the summer boughs with colour and 
 with song, are as truly domestic in the freedom of 
 their airy nest as the poor hornbills who ignorantly 
 make home into a dungeon. And certainly each 
 new generation of orioles, spreading their free wings 
 from that pendent cradle, area happier illustration of 
 judicious nurture than are the uncouth little offspring 
 of the hornbills, whom Wallace describes as “so 
 
 flabby and semi-transparent as to resemble a bladder 
 
94 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 of jelly, furnished with head, legs, and rudimentary 
 wings, but with not a sign of a feather, except a few 
 
 lines of points indicating where they would come.” 
 
 XXITI. 
 A SAFEGUARD FOR THE FAMILY. 
 
 MANY German-Americans are warm friends of woman 
 suffrage ; but the editors of “Puck,” it seems, are 
 not. Ina late number of that comic journal, it had 
 an unfavourable cartoon on this reform; and in a 
 following number,—the number, by the way, which 
 contains that amusing illustration of the vast seaside 
 hotels of the future, with the cheering announcement, 
 “Only one mile to the barber’s shop,” and ‘“ Take 
 the cars to the dining-room,’—a lady comes to 
 the rescue, and bravely defends woman suffrage. It 
 seems that the original cartoon depicted in the 
 corner a pretty family scene, representing father, 
 mother, and children seated happily together, with 
 the melancholy motto, ‘“ Nevermore, nevermore !” 
 And when the correspondent, Mrs. Blake, very 
 naturally asks what this touching picture has to do 
 
A Safeguard for the Famtly. 95 
 
 with woman suffrage, Puck says, “ If the husband in 
 our ‘pretty family scene’ should propose to vote for 
 the candidate who was obnoxious to his wife, would 
 this ‘pretty family scene’ continue to be a domestic 
 paradise, or would it remind the spectator of the 
 region in which Dante spent his ‘fortnight off’ ?” 
 
 It is beautiful to see how much anxiety there is to 
 preserve the family. Every step in the modification 
 of the old common law, whereby the wife was, in 
 Baron Alderson’s phrase, “the servant of her hus- 
 band,” was resisted as tending to endanger the family. 
 That the wife should control her own earnings, so that 
 her husband should not have the right to collect them 
 in order to pay his gambling-debts, was declared by 
 English advocates, in the celebrated case of the Hon. 
 Mrs. Norton, the poetess, to imperil all the future 
 peace of British households. Even the liberal-minded 
 “Punch,” about the time Girton College was founded 
 in England, expressed grave doubts whether the har- 
 mony of wedded unions would not receive a blow, 
 from the time when wives should be liable to know 
 more Greek than their husbands, Yet the marriage 
 relation has withstood these innovations. It has not 
 been impaired, either by separate rights, private earn- 
 ings, or independent Greek: can it be possible that a 
 
 little voting will overthrow it ? 
 
96 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 The very ground on which woman suffrage is op- 
 posed by its enemies might assuage these fears. If, 
 as we are told, women will not take the pains to vote 
 except upon the strongest inducements, who has so 
 good an opportunity as the husband to bring those 
 inducements to bear? and, if so, what is the separa- 
 tion? Or if, as we are told, women will merely reflect 
 their husbands’ political opinions, why should they 
 dispute about them? The mere suggestion of a dif- 
 ference deep enough to quarrel for, implies a real dif- 
 ference of convictions or interests, and indicates that 
 there ought to be an independent representation of 
 each ; unless we fall back, once for all, on the com- 
 mon-law tradition that man and wife are one, and 
 that one is the husband. Either the antagonisms 
 which occur in politics are comparatively super- 
 ficial, in which case they would do no harm; 
 or else they touch matters of real interest and 
 principle, in which case every human being has 
 a right to independent expression, even at a good 
 deal of risk. In either case, the objection falls to 
 the ground. 
 
 We have fortunately a means of testing, with some 
 fairness of estimate, the probable amount of this peril. 
 [t is generally admitted,—and certainly no German- 
 
 American will deny,—that the most fruitful sources 
 
A Safeguard for the Famtly. 97 
 
 of hostility and war in all times have been religious, 
 not political. All merely political antagonism, cer- 
 tainly all which is possible ina republic, fades into 
 insignificance before this more powerful dividing in- 
 fluence. Yet we leave all this great explosive force 
 in unimpeded operation,—at any moment it may be 
 set in action, in any one of those “ pretty family 
 scenes” which “Puck” depicts,—while we are 
 solemnly warned against admitting the comparatively 
 mild peril of a political difference! It is like caution- 
 ing a manufacturer of dynamite against the danger 
 of meddling with mere edge-tools. Even with all 
 the intensity of feeling on religious matters, few 
 families are seriously divided by them ; and the in- 
 fluence of political differences would be still more 
 insignificant. 
 
 The simple fact is, that there is no better basis for 
 union than mutual respect for each other’s opinions ; 
 and this can never be obtained without an intelligent 
 independence. “I would rather have a thorn in my 
 side than an echo,” said Emerson of friendship ; and 
 the same is true of married life. It is the echoes, the 
 nonentities, of whom men grow tired ; it is the women 
 with some flavour of individuality who keep the hearts 
 of their husbands. This is only applying in a higher 
 sense what Shakspeare’s Cleopatra saw. When her 
 
 H 
 
98 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 handmaidens are questioning how to hold a lover, and 
 
 one says,— 
 “ Give way to him in all: cross him in nothing,”— 
 
 Cleopatra, from the depth of an unequalled experience, 
 
 retorts,— 
 “ Thou speakest like a fool : the way to lose him !” 
 
 And what “the serpent of old Nile” said, the wives 
 of the future, who are to be wise as serpents and harm- 
 less as doves, may well ponder. It takes two things 
 different to make a union ; and part of that difference 
 
 may as well lie in matters political as anywhere else. 
 
 XXIV. 
 WOMEN AS ECONOMISTS. 
 
 AN able lawyer of Boston, arguing the other day 
 before a legislative committee in favour of giving to 
 the city council a check upon the expenditures of the 
 school committee, gave as one reason that this body 
 would probably include more women henceforward, . 
 and that women were ordinarily more lavish than men 
 
 in their useof money. The truth of this assumption 
 
Women as Economists. 99 
 
 was questioned at the time; and, the more I think 
 of it, the more contrary it is to my whole experience. 
 I should say that women, from the very habit of their 
 lives, are led to be more particular about details, and 
 more careful as to small economies. The very fact 
 that they handle less money tends to this. When 
 they are told to spend money, as they often are by 
 loving or ambitious husbands, they no doubt do it 
 freely : they have naturally more taste than men, and 
 quite as much love of luxury. In some instances in this. 
 country theyspend money recklesslyand wickedly, like 
 the heroines of French novels ; but as, even in brilliant 
 Paris, the women of the middle classes are notorious- 
 ly better managers than the men, so we often see, in 
 our scheming America, the same relative superiority. 
 Often have I heard young men say, “I never knew 
 how to economize until after my marriage;” and 
 who has not seen multitudes of instances where 
 women accustomed to luxury, have accepted poverty 
 without a murmur for the sake of those whom they 
 loved ? | 
 
 I remember a young girl, accustomed to the gayest 
 society of New York, who engaged herself to a 
 young naval officer, against the advice of the friends 
 of both. One of her near relatives said to me, “ Of 
 all the young girls I have ever known, she is the least 
 
 ee we 
 
TOO Common Sense about Women. 
 
 fitted for a poor man’s wife.” Yet from the very mo- 
 ment of her marriage she brought their joint expenses 
 within his scanty pay, and even saved a little money 
 from it. Everybody knows such instances. We 
 hear men denounce the extravagance of women, 
 while those very men spend on wine and cigars, on 
 clubs and horses twice what their wives spend on 
 their toilet. If the wives are economical, the hus- 
 bands perhaps urge them on to greater lavishness. 
 “Why do you not dress like Mrs. So-and-so ?”—* I 
 can‘t'atiord sit’ —“ Buty can; atiordit 7 wancden a. 
 when the bills come in, the talk of extravagance 
 recommences. At one time in Newport that lady 
 among the summer visitors who was reported to be 
 Worth’s best customer was also well known to be 
 quite indifferent to society, and to go into it mainly 
 to please her husband, whose social ambition was 
 notorious. 
 
 It has often happened to me to serve in organiza- 
 tions where both sexes were represented, and where 
 expenditures were to be made for business or pleasure. 
 Tn these I have found, as a rule, that the women were 
 more careful, or perhaps I should say more timid, 
 than the men, less willing to risk any thing: the 
 bolder financial experiments came from the men, as 
 
 one might expect. In talking the other day with 
 
Women as Fconomists. IOI 
 
 the secretary of an important educational enterprise, 
 conducted by women, I was surprised to find that it 
 was cramped for money, though large subscriptions 
 were said to have been made to it. On inquiry it 
 appeared that these ladies, having pledged themselves 
 for four years, had divided the amount received into 
 four parts, and were resolutely limiting themselves, 
 for the first year, to one-quarter part of what had 
 been subscribed. No board of men would have done 
 so. Any board of men would have allowed far more 
 than a quarter of the sum for the first year’s expen- 
 diture, justly reasoning that if the enterprise began 
 well it would command public confidence, and bring 
 in additional subscriptions as time went on. I would 
 appeal to any one whose experience has been in joint 
 associations of men and women, whether this is not 
 a fair statement of the difference between their ways 
 of working. It does not prove that women are more 
 honest than men, but that their education or their 
 nature makes them more cautious in expenditure. 
 The habits of society make the dress of a fashion- 
 able woman far more expensive than that of a man 
 of fashion. Formerly it was not so; and, so long as 
 it was not so, the extravagance of men in this re- 
 spect quite equalled that of women. It now takes 
 
 other forms, but the habit is the same. There is not 
 
102 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 a club-house in Boston furnished with such absence 
 of luxury as the Women’s Club rooms on Park 
 Street : the contrast was at first so great as to seem 
 almost absurd. The waiters at any fashionable res- 
 taurant will tell you that what is a cheap dinner for 
 aman would be a dear dinner for a woman. Yet 
 after all the test is not in any particular class of 
 expenditures, but in the business-like habit. Men 
 are of course more business-like in large combinations, 
 for they are more used to them; but for the small 
 details of daily economy women are more watchful. 
 The cases where women ruin their husbands by ex- 
 travagance are exceptional. Asarule, the men are 
 the bread-winners ; but the careful saving and man- 
 
 aging and contriving come from the women. 
 
 XXV. 
 GREATER INCLUDES LESS. 
 
 I WAS once at a little musical party in New York, 
 where several accomplished amateur singers were 
 present, and with them the eminent professional, 
 
 Miss Adelaide Phillips. The amateurs were first 
 
Greater includes Less. 103 
 
 called on. Each chose some difficult operatic pas- 
 sage, and sang her best. When it came to the great 
 opera-singer’s turn, instead of exhibiting her ability 
 to eclipse those rivals on her own ground, she simply 
 seated herself at the piano, and sang “ Kathleen 
 Mavourneen” with such thrilling sweetness, that the 
 young Irish girl who was setting the supper-table in 
 the next room forgot all her plates and teaspoons, 
 threw herself into a chair, put her apron over her 
 face, and sobbed as if her heart would break. All 
 the training of Adelaide Phillips—her magnificent 
 voice, her stage experience, her skill in effect, her 
 power of expression—went into the performance of 
 that simple song. The greater included the less. 
 And thus all the intellectual and practical training 
 that any woman can have, all her public action and 
 her vactive career,.-will make her, ifishe be aitrue 
 woman, more admirable as a wife, a mother, and a 
 friend. The greater includes the less for her also. 
 Of course this is a statement of general facts and 
 tendencies. There must be among women, as among 
 men, an endless variety of individual temperaments. 
 There will always be plenty whose career will illus- 
 trate the infirmities of genius, and whom no training 
 can convince that two and two make four. But the 
 
 general fact is sure. As no sensible man would 
 
1O4 Common Sense about Wonen. 
 
 seriously prefer for a wife a Hindoo or Tahitian 
 woman rather than one bred in England or America ; 
 so every further advantage of education or oppor- 
 tunity will only improve, not impair, the true womanly 
 type. 
 
 Lucy Stone once said, ‘“‘Woman’s nature was 
 stamped and sealed by the Almighty, and there is 
 no danger of her unsexing herself while his eye 
 
 ) 
 
 watches her.’”’ Margaret Fuller said, “One hour of 
 love will teach a woman more of her true relations 
 than all your philosophizing.” These were the testi- 
 mony of women who had studied Greek, and were 
 only the more womanly for the study. They are 
 worth the opinions of a million half-developed beings 
 like the Duchess de Fontanges, who was described 
 as being as “beautiful as an angel and as silly asa 
 goose.” The greater includes the less. Your view 
 from the mountain-side may be very pretty, but she 
 who has taken one step higher commands your view 
 and her own also. It was no dreamy recluse, but 
 the accomplished and experienced Stendhal, who 
 wrote, “The joys of the gay world do not count for 
 
 much with happy women.” * 
 
 * De Amour, par de Stendhal (Henri Beyle) : ‘‘ Les plaisirs 
 du grand monde n’en sont pas pour les femmes heureuses ” 
 
 p- 189. 
 
el 
 
 Greater includes Less. 105 
 
 If a highly educated man is incapable and unprac- 
 tical, we do not say that he is educated too well, but 
 not well enough. He ought to know what he knows, 
 and other things also. Never yet did I see a woman 
 too well educated to be a wife and a mother; but I 
 know multitudes who deplore, or have reason to 
 deplore, every day of their lives, the untrained and 
 unfurnished minds that are so ill-prepared for these 
 sacred duties. Every step towards equalizing the 
 opportunities of men and women meets with resist- 
 ance, of course; but every step, as it is accomplished, 
 leaves men still men, and women still women. And 
 as we who heard Adelaide Phillips felt that she 
 had never had a better tribute to her musical genius 
 than that young Irish girl’s tears; so the true woman 
 will feel that all her college training for instance, if 
 she has it, may have been well invested, even for 
 the sake of the baby on her knee. And it is to be 
 remembered, after all, that each human being lives 
 to unfold his or her own powers, and do his or 
 her own duties first, and that neither woman nor 
 man has the right to accept a merely secondary and 
 subordinate life. A noble woman must be a noble 
 human being; and the most sacred special duties, 
 as of wife or mother, are all included in this, as the 
 
 greater includes the less. 
 
106 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 XXVI. 
 A CO-PARTNERSHIP. 
 
 MARRIAGE, considered merely in its financial and 
 business relations, may be regarded as a permanent 
 co-partnership. 
 
 Now, in an ordinary co-partnership, there is very 
 often a complete division of labour among the 
 partners. If they manufacture locomotive-engines 
 for instance, one partner perhaps superintends the 
 works, another attends to mechanical inventions and 
 improvements, another travels for orders, another 
 conducts the correspondence, another receives and 
 pays out the money. The latter is not necessarily 
 the head of the firm. Perhaps his place could be 
 more easily filled than some of the other posts. 
 Nevertheless, more money passes through his hands 
 than through those of all the others put together. 
 Now, should he, at the year’s end, call together 
 the inventor and the superintendent and the traveller 
 and the correspondent, and say to them, “I have 
 earned all this money this year, but I will generously 
 
 give you some of it, ”"—he would be considered simply 
 
A Co-Partnershtrp. 107 
 
 impertinent, and would hardly have a chance to 
 repeat the offence the year after. 
 
 Yet precisely what would be called folly in this 
 business partnership is constantly done by men in 
 the co-partnership of marriage, and is there called 
 “common-sense,” and “social science,’ and “ political 
 economy. ” 
 
 For instance, a farmer works himself half to death 
 in the hay-field, and his wife meanwhile is working 
 herself wholly to death in the dairy. The neighbours 
 come in to sympathize after her demise; and, during 
 the few months’ interval before his second marriage, 
 they say approvingly, “He was always a generous 
 man to his folks! Hewas a good provider!” But 
 where was the room for generosity, any more than 
 the member of any other firm isto be called generous 
 when he keeps the books, receipts the bills, and 
 divides the money ? 
 
 In case of the farming business, the share of the 
 wife is so direct and unmistakable that it can 
 hardly be evaded. If any thing is earned by the 
 farm, she does her distinct and important share of 
 the earning. But it is not necessary that she should 
 do even that to make her, by all the rules of justice, 
 an equal partner, entitled to her full share of the 
 
 financial proceeds. 
 
108 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 Let us suppose an ordinary case. Two young 
 people are married, and begin life together. Let us 
 suppose them equally poor, equally capable, equally 
 conscientious, equally healthy. They have children. 
 Those children must be supported by the earning of 
 money abrcead, by attendance and care at home. If 
 it requires patience and labour to do the outside work, 
 no less is required inside. The duties of the house- 
 hold are as hard as the duties of the shop or office. 
 If the wife took her husband’s work for a day, she 
 would probably be glad to return to her own. So 
 would the husband if he undertook hers. Their duties 
 are ordinarily as distinct and as equal as those of two 
 partners in any other co-partnership. It so happens 
 that the outdoor partner has the handling of the 
 money ; but does that give him a right to claim it as 
 his exclusive earnings? No more than in any other 
 business operation. 
 
 He earned the money for the children and the 
 household. She disbursed it for the children and 
 the household. The very laws of nature, by giving 
 her the children to bear and rear, absolve her from 
 the duty of their support, as long as he is alive 
 who was left free by nature for that purpose. Her 
 task on the average is as hard as his: nay, a 
 
 portion of it is so cspecially hard that it is distin- 
 
A Co-Partnership. 109 
 
 guished from all others by the name “labour.” If 
 it does not earn money, it is because it is not to 
 be measured in money, while it exists—nor to be 
 replaced by money, if lost. If a business man loses 
 his partner, he can obtain another; and a man, 
 no doubt, may take a second wife; but he cannot 
 procure for his children a second mother. Indeed, it 
 is a palpable insult to the whole relation of husband 
 and wife when one compares it, even in a financial 
 light, to that of business partners. It is only because 
 a constant effort is made to degrade the practical 
 position of woman below even this standard of 
 comparison, that it becomes her duty to claim for 
 herself at least as much as this. 
 
 There was a tradition in a town where I once lived, 
 that a certain Quaker, who had married a fortune, 
 was once heard to repel his wife, who had asked him 
 for money in a public place, with the response, 
 “Rachel, where is that ninepence I gave thee yester- 
 day?” When I read in Scribner’s Monthly an article 
 deriding the right to representation of the Massa- 
 chusetts women, who pay two millions of tax on 
 one hundred and thirty-two million dollars of 
 property,—asserting that they produced nothing of 
 it; that it was only “men who produed wealth, 
 
 and bestowed it upon these women;” that it was 
 
110 Common Sense about Women. ' 
 
 “all drawn from land and sea by the hands of men 
 whose largess testifies alike of their love and their 
 munificence,”—I must say that I am reminded of 
 
 Rachel’s ninepence. 
 
 AN VII 
 “ONE RESPONSIBLE HEAD.” 
 
 WHEN we look through any business directory, there 
 seem to be almost as many co-partnerships as single 
 dealers ; and three-quarters of these co-partnerships 
 appear to consist of precisely two persons, no more, 
 noless. These partners are, in the eye of the law, 
 equal. It isnot found necessary under the law, to 
 make a general provision that in each case one part- 
 ner should be supreme and the other subordinate. 
 In many cases, by the terms of the co-partnership 
 there are limitations on one side and special privi- 
 leges on the other,—marriage settlements as it were ; 
 but the general law of co-partnership is based on the 
 presumption of equality. It would be considered 
 infinitely absurd to require, that, as the general rule, 
 
 one party or the other should be in a state of cover- 
 
“One Responsible Head.” III 
 
 ture, during which the very being and existence of 
 the one should be suspended, or entirely merged and 
 incorporated into that of the other. 
 
 And yet this requirement, which would be an ad- 
 mitted absurdity in the case of two business partners, 
 is precisely that which the English common law still 
 lays down in case of husband and wife. The words 
 which I employed to describe it, in the preceding 
 sentence, are the very phrases in which Blackstone 
 describes the legal position of women. And though 
 the English common law has been, in this respect, 
 greatly modified and superseded by statute law ; 
 yet, when it comes to an argument on woman suffrage, 
 it is constantly this same tradition to which men and 
 even women habitually appeal,—the necessity of a 
 single head to the domestic partnership, and the 
 necessity that the husband should be that head. 
 This is especially true of English men and women ; 
 but it is true of Americans as well. Nobody has 
 stated it more tersely than Fitzjames Stephen, in his 
 “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” (p. 216), when 
 arguing against Mr. Mill’s view of the equality of 
 the sexes. 
 
 “Marriage is a contract, one of the principal objects in 
 which is the government of a family. 
 
 “This government must be vested, either by law or by con- 
 tract, in the hands of one of the two married persons.” 
 
112 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 [Then follow some collateral points, not bearing 
 on the present question.] _ 
 “ Therefore, if marriage is to be permanent, the government 
 
 of the family must be put by law and by morals into the hands 
 of the husband, for no one proposes to give it to the wife.” 
 
 This argument he calls “ as clear as that of a pro- 
 position in Euclid.” He thinks that the business of 
 life can be carried on by no other method. How is 
 it, then, that when we come to what is called techni- 
 cally and especially the “ business”’ of every day, this 
 whole fine-spun theory is disregarded, and men come 
 together in partnership on the basis of equality? 
 
 Nobody is farther than I from regarding marriage 
 as a mere business partnership. But it is to be ob- 
 served that the points wherein it differs from a merely 
 mercantile connection are points that should make 
 equality more easy, not more difficult. The tie be- 
 tween two ordinary business partners is merely one 
 of interest: itis based on no sentiments, sealed by 
 no solemn pledge, enriched by no home associations, 
 cemented by no new generation of young life. Ifa 
 relation like this is found to work well on terms of 
 equality,—so well that a large part of the business of 
 the world is done by it,—is it not absurd to suppose 
 that the same equal relation cannot existinthe married 
 
 partnership of husband and wife? And if law, cus- 
 
“One Responsible Head.” Tie 
 
 tom, society, all recognize this fact of equality in the 
 one case, why, in the name of common-sense, should 
 they not equally recognize it in the other? 
 
 And, again, it must be far easier to assign a sphere 
 to each partner in marriage than in business; and 
 therefore the double headship of a family will involve 
 less need of collision. In nine cases out of ten, the 
 external support of the family can devolve upon the 
 husband, unquestioned by the wife ; and its internal 
 economy upon the wife, unquestioned by the hus- 
 band. No voluntary distribution of powers and 
 duties between business partners can work so natur- 
 ally, on the whole, as this simple and easy demar- 
 cation, with which the claim of suffrage makes no 
 necessary interference. It may require angry discus- 
 sion to decide which of two business partners shall 
 buy, and which shall sell ; which shall keep the 
 books, and which do the active work, and so on ; but 
 all this is usually settled in married life by the nat- 
 ural order of things. Even in regard to the manage- 
 ment of children, where collision is likely to come, if 
 anywhere, it can commonly be settled by that happy 
 formula of Jean Paul’s, that the mother usually 
 supplies the commas and the semicolons in the 
 child’s book of life, and the father the colons and 
 
 periods. And as to matters in general, the simple 
 E 
 
114 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 and practical rule, that each question that arises 
 should be decided by that partner who has personally 
 most at stake in it, will, in ninty-nine times out of a 
 hundred, carry the domestic partnership through 
 without shipwreck. Those who cannot meet the 
 hundredth case by mutual forbearance are in a con- 
 
 dition of shipwreck already. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 ASKING FOR MONEY. 
 
 ONE of the very best wives and mothers I have ever 
 known once said to me, that, whenever her daughters 
 should be married, she should stipulate in their behalf 
 with their husbands for a regular sum of money to be 
 paid them, at certain intervals, for their personal 
 expenditures. Whether this sum was to be larger or 
 smaller, was a matter of secondary importance—that 
 must depend on the income, and the style of living; 
 but the essential thing was, that it.should come to 
 the wife regularly, so that she should no more have 
 to make a special request for it than her husband 
 
 would have to ask her for a dinner. This lady’s own 
 
Asking for Money. 115 
 
 husband was, as I happened to know, of a most 
 generous disposition, was devotedly attached to her, 
 and denied her nothing. She herself was a most 
 accurate and careful manager. There was everything 
 in the household to make the financial arrangements 
 flow smoothly. Yet she said to me, “I suppose no 
 man can possibly understand how a sensitive woman 
 shrinks from asking for money. If I can prevent it, 
 my daughters shall never have to ask for it. If they 
 do their duty as wives and mothers they have a right 
 to their share of the joint income, within reasonable 
 limits ; for certainly no money could buy the services 
 they render. Moreover, they have a right to a share 
 in determining what those reasonable limits are.” 
 Now, it so happened that I had myself gone 
 through an experience which enabled me perfectly 
 to comprehend this feeling. In early life I was for 
 a time in the employ of one of my relatives, who 
 paid me a fair salary but at no definite periods: I 
 was at liberty to ask him for money up to a certain 
 amount whenever I needed it. This seemed to me, 
 in advance, a most agreeable arrangement; but I 
 found it quite otherwise. It proved to be very dis- 
 agreeable to ask for money: it made every dollar 
 seem a special favour; it brought up all kinds of 
 misgivings, as to whether he could spare it without 
 I 2 
 
116 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 inconvenience, whether he really thought my services 
 worth it, and soon. Myemployer was a thoroughly 
 upright and noble man, and I was much attached to 
 him. I donot know that he ever refused or demurred 
 when I asked for money. The annoyance was simply 
 in the process of asking ; and this became so great, 
 that I often underwent serious inconvenience rather 
 than ask. Finally, at the year’s end, I surprised my 
 relative very much by saying that I would accept, if 
 necessary, a lower salary, on condition that it should 
 be paid on regular days, and as a matter of business. 
 The wish was at once granted, without the reduction; 
 and he probably never knew what a relief it was 
 LOsnic: 
 
 Now, if a young man is liable to feel this pride and 
 reluctance toward an employer, even if a kinsman, it 
 is easy to understand how many women may feel the 
 same, even in regard to a husband. And I fancy 
 that those who feel it most are often the most con- 
 scientious and high-minded women. It is unreason- 
 able to say of such persons, “Too sensitive! Too 
 fastidious!” For it is just this quality of finer 
 sensitiveness which men affect to prize in a woman, 
 and wish to protect at all hazards. The very fact 
 that a husband is generous; the very fact that his 
 
 income is limited—these may bring in conscience and 
 
Asking for Money. L17 
 
 gratitude to increase the restraining influence of 
 pride, and make the wife less willing to ask money 
 of such a husband than if he were a rich man or a 
 mean one. The only dignified position in which a 
 man can place his wife is to treat her at least as well 
 as he would treat a housekeeper, and give her the 
 comfort of a perfectly clear and definite arrangement 
 as to money matters. She will not then be under 
 the necessity of nerving herself to solicit from him 
 as a favour what she really needs and has a right to 
 spend. Nor will she be torturing herself, on the 
 other side, with the secret fear lest she has asked too 
 much, and more than they can really spare. She 
 will, in short, be in the position of a woman and a 
 wife, not of a child or a toy. 
 
 I have carefully avoided using the word “allow- 
 ance’’ in what has been said, because that word seems 
 to imply the untrue and mean assumption that the 
 money is all the husband’s to give or withhold as he 
 will. Yet I have heard this sort of phrase from men 
 who were living ona wife’s property or a wife’s earn- 
 ings ; from men who nominally kept boarding-houses, 
 working a little, while their wives worked hard—or 
 from farmers, who worked hard, and made their wives 
 work harder. Even in cases where the wife has no 
 
 direct part in the money-making, the indirect part 
 
ieee) Common Sense about Women. 
 
 she performs, if she takes faithful charge of her 
 household, is so essential, so beyond all compensation 
 in money, that it is an utter shame and impertinence 
 in the husband when he speaks of “giving” money 
 to his wife as if it were an act of favour. It is no 
 more an act of favour than when the business 
 manager of a firm pays out money to the unseen 
 partner who directs the indoor business or runs the 
 machinery. Be the joint income more or less, the 
 wife has a claim to her honourable share, and that as 
 a matter of right, without the daily ignominy of 
 
 sending in a petition for it. 
 
 XXIX. 
 WOMANHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD. 
 
 I ALWAYS groan in spirit when any advocate of 
 woman suffrage, carried away by zeal, says anything 
 disrespectable about the nursery. It is contrary to 
 the general tone of feeling among us, I am sure, to 
 speak of this priceless institution as a trivial or 
 degrading sphere, unworthy of the emancipated 
 
 woman. It is rarely that anybody speaks in this 
 
Womanhood and Motherhood. 11g 
 
 way ; but a single such utterance hurts us more than 
 any arguments of the enemy. For every thoughtful 
 person sees that the cares of motherhood, though not 
 the whole duty of woman, are an essential part of 
 that duty, wherever they occur; and that no theory 
 of womanly life is good for anything which under- 
 takes to leave out the cradle. Even her school- 
 education is based on this fact, were it only on 
 Stendhal’s theory that the sons of a woman who 
 reads Gibbon and Schiller will be more likely to 
 show talent than those of one who only tells her 
 beads and reads Mme. de Genlis. And so clearly is 
 this understood among us, that, when we ask for 
 suffrage for women, it is almost always claimed 
 that she needs it for the sake of her children. To 
 secure her in her right to them; to give her a voice 
 in their education ; to give her a vote in the govern- 
 ment beneath which they are to live,—these points 
 are seldom omitted in our statement of her claims. 
 Anything else would be an error. 
 
 But there is an error at the other extreme, which 
 is still greater. A woman should no more merge 
 herself in her child than in her husband. Yet we 
 often hear that she should do just this. What is 
 all the public sphere of woman, it is said,—what 
 
 good can she do by all her speaking, and writing, 
 
- -* 
 
 120 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 and actionn—compared with that she does by 
 properly training the soul of one child? It is not 
 easy to see the logic of this claim. | 
 
 For of what service is that child to be in the uni- 
 verse, except that he, too, may write and speak and 
 act for that which is good and true? And if the 
 mother foregoes all this that the child, in growing up, 
 may simply do what the mother has left undone, the 
 world gains nothing. In sacrificing her own work to 
 her child’s, moreover, she exchanges a present good 
 for a prospective and merely possible one. If she 
 does this through overwhelming love, we can hardly 
 blame her; but she cannot justify it before reason 
 and: truth, Ter child’may die, «and thezseryicemto 
 mankind be done by neither. Her child may grow 
 up with talents unlike hers, or with none at all; as 
 the son of Howard was selfish, the son of Chester- 
 field was a boor, and the son of Wordsworth in the 
 last degree prosaic. 
 
 Or the special occasion when she might have done 
 great good may have passed before her boy or girl 
 grows up to doit. If Mrs. Child had refused to write 
 ‘‘An Appeal for that Class of Americans called A fri- 
 cans,” or Mrs. Stowe had laid aside “Uncle Tom’s 
 Cabin,” or Florence Nightingale had declined to go to 
 the Crimea, on the ground that a woman’s true work 
 
Womanhood and Motherhood. [21 
 
 Se eee 
 
 was through the nursery, and they must all wait for 
 that, the consequence would be that these things 
 would have remained undone. The brave acts of the 
 world must be done when occasion offers, by the first 
 brave soul who feels moved to do them, man or 
 woman. If all the children in all the nurseries are 
 thereby helped to do other brave deeds when their 
 turn comes, so much the better. But when a great 
 opportunity offers for direct aid to the world, we 
 have no right to transfer that work to other hands 
 -—not even to the hands of our own children. We 
 must do the work, and train the children besides. 
 
 I am willing to admit, therefore, that the work of 
 education, in any form, is as great as any other work ; 
 but I fail to see why it should be greater. Usefulness 
 is usefulness: there is no reason why it should be 
 postponed from generation to generation, or why it 
 is better to rear a serviceable human being than to 
 be one in person. Carry the theory consistently 
 out: each mother must simply rear her daughter 
 that she in turn may rear somebody else; from 
 each generation the work will devolve upon a suc- 
 ceeding generation, so that it will be only the last 
 woman who will personally do any service, except 
 that of motherhood; and when her time comes it 
 
 will be too late for any service at all. 
 
122 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 If it be said, “But some of these children will 
 be men, who are necessarily of more use than 
 women,’ I deny the necessity. If it be said, “The 
 children may be many, and the mother, who is but 
 one, may well be sacrificed,” it might be replied, 
 that, as one great act may be worth many smaller 
 ones, so all the numerous children and erand- 
 children of a woman like Lucretia Mott may not 
 collectively equal the usefulness of herself alone. If 
 she, like many women, had held it her duty to re- 
 nounce all other duties and interests from the time 
 her motherhood began, I think that the world, and 
 even her children, would have lost more than ever 
 could have been gained by her more complete ab- 
 sorption in the nursery. 
 
 The true theory seems a very simple one. The 
 very tact that during one-half the years of a 
 woman’s average life she is made incapable of 
 child-bearing, shows that there are, even for the most 
 prolific and devoted mothers, duties other than the 
 maternal. Even during the most absorbing years 
 of motherhood, the wisest women still try to keep 
 up their interest in society, in literature, in the 
 world’s affairs—were it only for their children’s 
 sake. Muititudes of women will never be mothers ; 
 
 and those more fortunate may find even the use- 
 
Womanhood and Motherhood. 123 
 
 fulness of their motherhood surpassed by what they 
 do in other ways. If maternal duties interfere in 
 some degree with all other functions, the same is 
 true, though in a far less degree, of those of a 
 father. But there are those who combine both 
 spheres. The German poet Wieland claimed to be 
 the parent of fourteen children and forty books ; 
 and who knows by which parentage he served the 
 world the best ? 
 
 XXX. 
 CHILDLESS WOMEN. 
 
 It has not always been regarded as a thing credit- 
 able to woman, that she was the mother of the 
 human race. On the contrary, the fact was often 
 mentioned, in the Middle Ages, as a distinct proof 
 of inferiority. The question was discussed in the 
 medieval Council of Macon, and the position taken 
 that woman was no more entitled to rank as human, 
 because she brought forth men, than the garden- 
 earth could take rank with the fruit and flowers it 
 bore. The same view was revived by a Latin 
 writer of 1595, on the thesis “ Wuleres non homtines 
 
124 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 essé,”’a French translation of which essay was printed 
 under the title of “Paradoxe sur les femmes,’ in 
 1766. Napoleon Bonaparte used the same image, 
 carrying it almost as far :— 
 
 #.““ Woman is given to man that she may bear chil- 
 dren. Woman is our property; we are not hers: 
 because she. produces children for us; we do not 
 yield any to her: she is therefore our possession, as 
 the fruit-tree is that of the gardener.” 
 
 Even the fact of parentage, therefore, has been 
 adroitly converted into a ground of inferiority for 
 women; and this is ostensibly the reason why 
 lineage has been reckoned, almost everywhere, 
 through the male line only, ignoring the female ; 
 just as, in tracing the seed of some rare fruit, the 
 gardener takes no genealogical account of the 
 garden where it grew. The view is now seldom 
 expressed in. full force: the.remnant of 1t 1s}tague 
 found in the lingering impression, that, at any rate, 
 a woman who is not a mother is of no account; as 
 worthless as a fruitless garden or a barren fruit-tree. 
 Created only fora certain object, she is of course 
 valueless unless that object be fulfilled. 
 
 But the race must have fathers as well as mothers ; 
 and, if we look for evidence of public service in great 
 
 men, it certainly does not always lie in leaving chil- 
 
Childless Women. 125 
 
 dren to the republic. On the contrary, the rule has 
 rather seemed to be, that the most eminent men 
 have left their bequest of service in any form rather 
 than in that of a great family. Recent inquiries into 
 the matter have brought out some remarkable facts 
 in this regard. 
 
 As a rule, there exist no living descendants 
 in the male line from the great authors, artists, 
 statesmen, soldiers, of England. It is stated that 
 there is not one such descendant of Chaucer, Shake- 
 Speare Spenser, Butlers Dryden; <Popey.: Cowper; 
 Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, or Moore; not one of 
 Drake, Cromwell, Monk, Marlborough, Peterborough, 
 or Nelson ; not one of Strafford, Ormond, or Claren- 
 don ; not one of Addison, Swift, or Johnson ; not one 
 of Walpole, Bolingbroke, Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Burke, 
 Grattan, or Canning; not one of Bacon, Locke, New- 
 ton, or Davy ; not one of Hume, Gibbon, or Macau- 
 lay ; not one of Hogarth or Reynolds; not one of 
 Garrick, John Kemble, or Edmund Kean. It would 
 be easy to make a similar American list, beginning 
 with Washington, of whom it was said that “ Provi- 
 dence made him childless that his country might call 
 him Father.” 
 
 Now, however we may regret that these great 
 
 men have left little or no posterity, it does not occur 
 
 ¥ 
 
126 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 to any one as affording any serious drawback upon 
 their service to their nation. Certainly it does not 
 occur to us that they would have been more useful 
 had they left children to the world, but rendered it 
 no other service. Lord Bacon says that “He that 
 hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; 
 for they are impediments to great enterprises, either 
 of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and 
 of greatest merit to the public, have proceeded from 
 unmarried or childless men ; which, both in affection 
 and means, have married and endowed the public.” 
 And this is the view generally accepted—that the 
 public is in such cases rather the gainer than the 
 loser, and has no right to complain. 
 
 Since, therefore, every child must have a father 
 and a mother both, and neither will alone suffice, 
 why should we thus heap gratitude on men who from 
 preference or from necessity have remained childless, 
 and yet habitually treat women as if they could ren- 
 der no service to their country except by giving it 
 children? If it be folly and shame, as I think, to 
 belittle and decry the dignity and worth of mother- 
 hood, as some are said to do, it is no less folly, and 
 shame quite as great, to deny the grand and patriotic 
 service of many women who have died and left no 
 
 children-‘among their mourners. Plato puts into the 
 
Childless Women. 127 
 
 mouth of a woman,—the eloquent Diotima, in the 
 “ Banquet, ’—that, after all, we are more grateful to 
 Homer and Hesiod for the children of their brain 
 
 than if they had left human offspring. 
 
 SSS 
 a 
 + 
 q 
 os 
 be 
 
4 
 
 nal Hx. 
 
 128 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 5) Gl baie 
 
 ** Place the sexes wn right relations of mutual respect, and a severe 
 morality gives that essential charm to woman which educates all that ts 
 delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and learning, conver- 
 sation and wit, in her rough mate; so that I have thought a sufficient 
 measure of civilization ts the influence of good women.—EMERSON : 
 
 Society and Solitude, p. 21. 
 
 DOT 
 THE EMPIRE OF MANNERS. 
 
 I WAS present at a lively discourse, administered by 
 a young lady just from Europe to a veteran politi- 
 cian. “It is of very little consequence,” shear 
 “what kind of men you send out as foreign ministers. 
 The thing of real importance is that they should 
 have the right kind of wives. Any man can sign a 
 treaty, I suppose, if you tell him what kind of treaty 
 it must be. But all his social relations with the 
 nation to which you send him will depend on his 
 wife.” There was some truth, certainly, in this auda- 
 cious conclusion. It reminded me of the saying of 
 a modern thinker, “ The only empire freely conceded 
 
 to women is that of manners—but it is worth all the 
 
 rest put together.” 
 
- shy Stn 
 
 Lhe Empire of Manners. 129 
 
 Every one instinctively feels that the graces and 
 amenities of life must be largely under the direction 
 of women. ‘The fact that this feeling has been car- 
 ried too far, and has led to the dwarfing of women’s 
 intellect, must not lead toa rejection of this important 
 socialsphere. It is too stronga power to be ignored. 
 George Eliot says well, that “the commonest man, 
 who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious 
 of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman, 
 and a coarse one. Evena dog feels a difference in 
 their presence.” At a summer resort, for instance, 
 one sees women who may be intellectually very igno- 
 rant and narrow, yet whose mere manners give them 
 a social power which the highest intellects might 
 envy. To lend joy and grace to all one’s little world 
 of friendship; to make one’s house a place which 
 every guest enters with eagerness and leaves with 
 reluctance ; to lend encouragement to the timid, and 
 ease to the awkward; to repress violence, restrain 
 egotism, and make even controversy courteous—these 
 belong to the empire of woman. It is a sphere so 
 important and so beautiful, that even courage and 
 self-devotion seem not quite enough, without the 
 addition of this supremest charm. 
 
 This courtesy is so far from implying falsehood, that 
 its very best basis is perfect simplicity. Given a natu- 
 
 K 
 
130 Commnion Sense about Women. 
 
 rally sensitive organization, a loving spirit, and the 
 early influence of a refined home, and the foundation 
 of fine manners is secured, A person so favoured 
 may be reared in a log hut, and may pass easily into 
 a palace; the few needful conventionalities are ‘so 
 readily acquired. But I think it is a mistake to tell 
 children, as we sometimes do, that simplicity and a 
 kind heart are absolutely all that are needful in the 
 way of manners. There are persons in whom sim- 
 plicity and kindness are inborn, and who yet never 
 attain to good manners for want of refined percep- 
 tions. And it is astonishing how much refinement 
 alone can do, even if it is not very genuine or very 
 full of heart, to smooth the paths and make social 
 life attractive. 
 
 All the acute observers have recognized the differ- 
 ence between the highest standard, which is nature’s, 
 and that next to the highest, which is art’s. George 
 Eliot speaks of that fine polish which is “the expen- 
 sive substitute for simplicity,’ and Tennyson says of 
 
 manners— 
 
 “ Kind nature’s are the best : those next to best 
 That fit us like a nature second-hand ; 
 Which are indeed the manners of the great.” 
 In our own national history, we have learned to 
 
 recognize that the personal demeanour of women may 
 
Lhe Limpire of Manners. 131 
 
 be a social and political force. The slave-power 
 owed much of its prolonged control at Washington, 
 and the larger part of its favour in Europe, to the 
 fact that the manners of Southern women had been 
 more sedulously trained than those of Northern 
 women. Even at this moment, one may see at any 
 watering-place that the relative social influence of 
 different cities does not depend upon the intellectual 
 training of their women, so muchas on the manners. 
 And, even if this is very unreasonable, the remedy 
 would seem to be, not to go about lecturing on the 
 intrinsic superiority of the Muses to the Graces, but 
 to pay due homage at all the shrines, 
 
 It isa great deal to ask of reformers, especially, 
 that they should be ornamental as well as useful; 
 and I would by no means indorse the views of a 
 lady who once told me that she was ready to adopt 
 the most radical views of the women-reformers, if 
 she could see one well-dressed woman who accepted 
 them.- The place where we should draw the line 
 between independence and deference, between 
 essentials and non-essentials, between great 
 ideas and little courtesies, will probably never be 
 determined—except by actual examples. Yet it 
 is safe to fall back on Miss Edgeworth’s maxim in 
 “Helen,” that “Every one who makes goodness 
 
 on ae 
 
132 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 disagreeable commits high treason against virtue.” 
 And it is not a pleasant result of our good deeds, 
 that others should be immediately driven into bad 
 
 deeds by the burning desire to be unlike us. 
 
 DOP Ble 
 ARE WOMEN NATURAL ARISTOCRATS ? 
 
 A CLERGYMAN’S wife in England has lately set on 
 foot a reform movement in respect to dress; and, 
 like many English reformers, she aims chiefly to 
 elevate the morals and manners of the lower classes, 
 without much reference to her own social equals. 
 She proposes that “no servant, under pain of dis- 
 missal, shall wear flowers, feathers, brooches, buckles, 
 or clasps, earrings, lockets, neck-ribbons, velvets, kid 
 gloves, parasols, sashes, jackets, or trimming of any 
 kind on dresses, and, above all, no crinoline; no 
 pads to be worn, or frisettes, or chzgnons, or hair- 
 ribbons. The dress is to be gored and made just to 
 touch the ground, and the hair to be drawn closely 
 to the head, under a round white cap, without 
 
 trimming of any kind. The same system of dress 
 
Are Women Natural Aristocrats? 133 
 
 is recommended for Sunday-school girls, school-mis- 
 tresses, church singers, and the lower orders gen- 
 erally.” | 
 
 The remark is obvious, that in this country such 
 a course of discipline would involve the mistress, 
 not the maid, in the “pain of dismissal.” The 
 American clergyman and clergyman’s wife who 
 should even “recommend” such a costume to a 
 school-mistress, church singer, or Sunday-school girl, 
 —to say nothing of the rest of the “lower orders,’ — 
 would soon find themselves without teachers, without 
 pupils, without a choir, and probably without a parish. 
 It is a comfort to think that even in older countries 
 there is less and less of this impertinent interference : 
 the costume of different ranks is being more and mcre 
 assimilated ; and the incidental episode of a few 
 liveries in our cities is not enough to interfere with 
 the general current. Never yet, to my knowledge, 
 have I seen even a livery worn by a white native 
 American; and to restrain the Sunday bonnets of 
 her handmaidens, what lady has attempted ? 
 
 This is as it should be. The Sunday bonnet of the 
 Irish damsel is only the symbol of a very proper 
 effort to obtain her share of all social advantages. 
 Long may those ribbons wave! Meanwhile I think 
 
 the fact that it is easier for the gentleman of the house 
 
 at 
 
134 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 to control the dress of his groom than for the lady 
 to dictate that of her waiting-maid,—this must count 
 against the theory that it is women who are the 
 natural aristocrats. 
 
 Women are no doubt more sensitive than men 
 upon matters of taste and breeding. This is partly 
 from a greater average fineness of natural per- 
 ception, and partly because their more secluded 
 lives give them less of miscellaneous contact with 
 the world. If Maud Miller and her husband had 
 gone to board at the same boarding-house with the 
 Judge and his wife, that lady might have held aloof 
 from the rustic bride, simply from inexperience in 
 life, and not knowing just how to approach her. 
 But the Judge, who might have been talking politics 
 = real estate with the young farmer on the doorsteps 
 that morning, would certainly find it easier to deal 
 with him as a man and a brother at the dinner- 
 table. From these different causes women get the 
 credit or discredit of being more aristocratic than 
 men are; so that in England the Tory supporters of 
 female suffrage base it on the ground that these new 
 voters at least will be conservative. | 
 
 But, on the other hand, it is women, even more 
 than men, who are attracted by those strong qualities 
 
 of personal character which are always the antidote 
 
Are Women Natural Aristocrats? 135 
 
 to aristocracy. No bold revolutionist ever defied the 
 established conventionalisms of his times without 
 drawing his strongest support from women. Poet 
 and novelist love to depict the princess as won by the 
 outlaw, the gipsy, the peasant. Women have a way 
 of turning from the insipidities and proprieties of life 
 to the wooer who has the stronger hand ; from the 
 silken Darnley to the rude Bothwell. This impulse 
 is the natural corrective to the aristocratic instincts 
 of womanhood; and though men feel it less, it is 
 still, even among them, one of the supports of re- 
 publican institutions. We need to keep always bal- 
 anced between the two influences of refined culture 
 and of native force. The patrician class, wherever 
 there is one, is pretty sure to be the more refined ; 
 the plebeian class, the more energetic. That woman 
 is able to appreciate both elements, is proof that she 
 is quite capable of doing her share in social and polli- 
 tical life. This English clergyman’s wife, who devotes 
 her soul to the trimmings and gored skirts of the 
 lower orders, is no more entitled to represent her sex 
 than are those ladies who give their whole attention 
 to the “ novel and intricate bonnets ” advertised this 
 
 season on Broadway. 
 
136 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 SOND ET: 
 MRS. BLANK’S DAUGHTERS. 
 
 Mrs. BLANK, of Far West—let us not draw her from 
 the “sacred privacy of woman” by giving the name 
 or place too precisely—has an insurmountable objec- 
 tion to woman’s voting. So the newspapers say: and 
 this objection is, that she does not wish her daughters 
 to encounter disreputable characters at the polls. 
 
 It isa laudable desire, to keep one’s daughters from 
 the slightest contact with such persons. But how 
 does Mrs. Blank precisely mean to accomplish this ? 
 Will she shut up the maidens in a harem? When 
 they go out, will she send messengers through the 
 streets to bid people hide their faces, as when an 
 Oriental queen is passing ? Will she send them travel- 
 ling on camels, veiled by yashmaks ? Will she pro- 
 hibit them from being so much as seen by a man, 
 except when a physician must be called for their ail- 
 ments, and Miss Blank puts her arm through a cur- 
 tain, in order that he may feel her pulseand know no 
 more? 
 
 Who is Mrs. Blank, and how does she bring up her 
 
Mrs. Blank’s Daughters. 137 
 
 daughters? Does she send them to the post-office ? 
 If so, they may wait a half-hour ata time for the mail 
 
 to open, and be elbowed by the most disreputable 
 characters, waiting at their side. If it does the young 
 ladies no harm to encounter this for the sake of get- 
 
 ting their letters out, will it harm them to do it in 
 
 order to get their ballots in? If they go to hear 
 Gough lecture, they may be kept half an hour at the 
 door, elbowed by saint and sinner indiscriminately. 
 
 If it is worth going through this to hear about tem- 
 perance, why not to vote about it? If they go to 
 Washington to the President’s inauguration, they may 
 stand two hours with Mary Magdalen on one side of 
 them and Judas Iscariot on the other. If this con- 
 tact is rendered harmless by the fact that they are 
 receiving political information, will it hurt them to 
 stay five minutes longer in order to act upon the 
 
 knowledge they have received ? 
 
 This is on the supposition that the household of 
 Blank ‘are plain, practical women, unversed in the 
 vanities of the world. If they belong to fashionable 
 circles, how much harder to keep them wholly clear 
 of disreputable contact! Should they, for instance, 
 visit Newport, they may possibly be seen at the Casino, 
 looking very happy as they revolve rapidly in the 
 
 arms of some very disreputable characters ; they will 
 
138 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 be seen in the surf, attired in the most scanty and 
 clinging drapery, and kindly aided to preserve their 
 balance by the devoted attentions of the same com- 
 panions. Mrs. Blank, meanwhile, will look compla- 
 cently on, with the other matrons: they are not sup- 
 posed to know the current reputation of those whom 
 
 ’) 
 
 their daughters meet “in society ;’ and, so long as 
 there is no actual harm done, why should they care ? 
 Very well; but why, then, should they care if they 
 encounter those same disreputable characters when 
 they go to drop a ballot in the ballot-box ? It willbe a 
 more guarded and distant meeting. It is not usual 
 to dance round-dances at the ward-room, so far as I 
 know, or to bathe in clinging drapery at that rather 
 dry and dusty resort. If such very close intimacies 
 are all right under the gas-light or at the beach, why 
 should there be poison in merely passing a disrepu- 
 table character at the City Hall? 
 
 On the whole, the prospects of Mrs. Blank are not 
 encouraging. Should she consult a physician for her 
 daughters, he may be secretly or openly disreputable ; 
 should she call in a clergyman, he may, though a 
 bishop, have carnal rather than spiritual eyes. If Miss 
 Blank be caught in a shower, she may take refuge 
 under the umbrella of an undesirable acquaintance: 
 
 should she fall on the ice, the woman who helps to 
 
Mrs. Blank’s Daughters. 139 
 
 re) 
 
 raise her may have sinned. There is not a spot in any 
 known land where a woman can live in absolute seclu- 
 sion from all contact with evil. Should the Misses 
 Blank even turn Roman Catholics, and take to a con- 
 vent, their very confessor may be secretly a scoundrel ; 
 and they may be glad to flee for refuge to the busy, 
 buying, selling, dancing, voting world outside. 
 
 No: Mrs. Blank’s prayers for absolute protection 
 will never be answered, in respect to her daughters. 
 Why not, then, find a better model for prayer in that 
 made by Jesus for his disciples: “I pray Thee, not 
 that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but 
 that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil.” <A 
 woman was made for something nobler in the world, 
 Mrs. Blank, than to bea fragile toy, to be put behind a 
 glass case, and protected from contact. It is not her 
 mission to be hidden away from all life’s evil, but 
 
 bravely to work that the world may be reformed. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 THE EUROPEAN PLAN, 
 
 EVERY mishap among American women brings out 
 renewed suggestions of what may be called the 
 
 “European plan” in the training of young girls,— 
 
140 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 the plan, that is, of extreme seclusion and helpless- 
 ness. It is usually forgotten, in these suggestions, 
 that not much protection is really given anywhere 
 to this particular class as a whole. Everywhere in 
 Europe the :restrictions are of ‘caste, not @orgse. 
 Even in Turkey, travellers tell us, women of the 
 humbler vocations are not much secluded. It is not 
 the object of the “European plan,” in any form, to 
 protect the virtue of young women, as such, but 
 only of young ladies; and the protection is pretty 
 effectually limited to that order. Among the Portu- 
 cuese, in the island of Fayal, I found it to be the 
 ambition of each humble family to bring up one 
 daughter in a sort of lady-like seclusion: she never 
 went into the street alone, or without a hood which 
 was equivalent to a veil; she was taught indoor 
 industries only ; she was constantly under the eye of 
 her mother. But, in order that one daughter might 
 be thus protected, all the other daughters were 
 allowed to go alone, day or evening, bareheaded or 
 barefooted, by the loneliest mountain-paths, to bring 
 “oranges or firewood, or whatever their work may be 
 —heedless of protection. The safeguard was for a 
 class: the average exposure of young womanhood 
 was far greater than with us. So in London, while 
 
 you rarely see a young lady alone in the streets, the 
 
Lhe European Plan. I4I 
 
 housemaid is sent on errands at any hour of the 
 evening with a freedom at which our city domestics 
 would quite rebel; and one has to stay but a short 
 time in Paris to see how entirely limited to a class is 
 the alleged restraint under which young French girls 
 are said to be kept. 
 
 Again, it is to be remembered that the whole 
 “ European plan,” so far as it is applied on the Con- 
 tinent of Europe, is a plan based upon utter distrust 
 and suspicion, not only as to chastity, but as to all 
 other virtues. It is applied among the higher classes 
 almost as consistently to boys as to girls. In every 
 school under Church auspices, it is the French theory 
 that boys are never to be left unwatched for a 
 moment ; and it is as steadily assumed that girls will 
 be untruthful if left to themselves, as that they will 
 do every other wrong. This to the Anglo-Saxon 
 race seems very demoralizing. “ Suspicion,” said Sir 
 Philip Sidney, “is the way to lose that which we fear 
 to lose.” Readers of the Bronté novels will remem- 
 ber the disgust of the English pupils and teachers 
 in French schools at the constant espionage around 
 them ; and I have more than once.heard young girls 
 who had been trained at such institutions say, that it 
 was a wonder if they had any truthfulness left, so 
 
 invariable was the assumption that it was the nature 
 
142 Connon Sense about Women. 
 
 of young girls to lie. I cannot imagine any thing 
 less likely to create upright and noble character, in 
 man or woman, than the systematic application of 
 the “ European plan.” 
 
 And that it produces just the results that might 
 be feared, the whole tone of European literature 
 proves. Foreigners, no doubt, do habitual injustice 
 to the morality of French households; but it is 
 impossible that fiction can utterly misrepresent the 
 community which produces and reads it. When one 
 thinks of the utter lightness of tone with which 
 breaches, both of truth and chastity, are treated, even 
 in the better class of French novels and plays, it 
 seems absurd to deny the correctness of the picture. 
 Besides, it is not merely a question of plays and 
 novels. Consider, for instance, the contempt with 
 which Taine treats Thackeray, for representing the 
 mother of Pendennis as suffering agonies when she 
 thinks that her son has seduced a young girl, 
 his social inferior. Thackeray is not really con- 
 sidered a model of elevated tone, as to such matters, 
 among English writers ; but the Frenchman is simply 
 amazed that the Englishman should describe even 
 the saintliest of mothers as attaching so much weight 
 to such a small affair. 
 
 An able newspaper writer praises the supposed 
 
The European Plan. 143 
 
 foreign method for the “habit of dependence and 
 deference” that it produces; and because it gives to 
 a young man a wife whose “habit of deference is 
 established.” But it must be remembered that, 
 where this theory is established, the habit of defer- 
 ence is logically carried much farther than mere 
 conjugal convenience would take it. Its natural 
 outcome is the authority of the priest, not of the 
 husband. That domination of the women of France 
 by the priesthood which forms to-day the chief peril 
 of the republic,—which is the strength of legitimism 
 and imperialism, and all other conspiracies against 
 the liberty of the French people,—is only the visible 
 and inevitable result of this dangerous docility. 
 
 One thing is certain, that the best preparation for 
 freedom is freedom ; and that no young girls are so 
 poorly prepared for American life as those. whose 
 early years are passed in Europe. The worst impru- 
 dences, the most unmaidenly and offensive actions, 
 that I have ever heard of in decent society, have 
 been on the part of young women educated in 
 Europe, who have been launched into American. life 
 without its. early training,—have been treated as 
 children until they suddenly awakened to the freedom 
 of women. On the other hand, I remember with 
 
 pleasure, that a cultivated French mother, whose 
 
e 
 
 144 Common Sense about Womei. 
 
 daughter's fine qualities were the best seal of her 
 motherhood, once told me that the models she had 
 chosen in her daughter's training were certain families 
 of American young ladies, of whom she had, through 
 
 peculiar circumstances, seen much in Paris. 
 
 DOXA 
 ‘““PEATHERSES.” 
 
 ONE of the most amusing letters ever quoted in 
 any book is that given in Curzon’s “ Monasteries 
 of the Levant,” as the production of a Turkish 
 
 Sultana who had just learned English. It is as 
 
 follows :— 
 
 NOTE FROM ADILE SULTANA, THE BETROTHED OF ABBAS 
 PASHA, TO HER ARMENIAN COMMISSIONER. 
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE, 1844. 
 
 My NoBLE FRIEND,—Here are the featherses sent my soul, 
 my noble friend, are there no other featherses leaved in the 
 shop beside these featherses? and these featherses remains, 
 and these featherses are ukly. They are very dear, who buyses 
 dheses? And my noble friend, we want a noat from yorself ; 
 those you brought last tim, those you sees were very beautiful ; 
 we had searched; my soul, I want featherses again, of those 
 
 featherses. In Kalada there is plenty of feather. Whatever 
 
“ Featherses.” 145 
 
 bees, I only want beautiful featherses ; I want featherses of 
 
 every desolation to-morrow. 
 (Signed) You KNow WHO. 
 
 The first steps in culture do not, then, it seems, re- 
 move from the feminine soul the love of finery. Nor 
 do the later steps wholly extinguish it; for did not 
 Grace Greenwood hear the learned Mary Somerville 
 conferring with the wise Harriet Martineau as to 
 whether a certain dress should be dyed to match a 
 certain shawl? Well! why not? Because women 
 learn the use of the quill, are they to ignore 
 “featherses” ? Because they learn science, must they 
 unlearn the arts, and above all the art of being beau- 
 tiful? If men have lost it, they have reason to regret 
 the loss. Let women hold to it, while yet within 
 their reach. 
 
 Mrs. Rachel Howland of New Bedford, much prized 
 and trusted as a public speaker among Friends, and 
 a model of taste and quiet beauty in costume, 
 delighted the young girls at a Newport Yearly 
 Meeting, a few years since, by boldly declaring that 
 she thought God meant women to make the world 
 beautiful, as much as flowers and butterflies, and 
 that there was no sin in tasteful dress, but only in 
 devoting to it too much money or too much time. 
 It is a blessed doctrine. The utmost extremes of 
 
 L 
 
146 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 dress, the love of colours, of fabrics, of jewels, of 
 “featherses,” are, after all, but an effort after the 
 beautiful. The reason why the beautiful is not 
 always the result, is because so many women are 
 ignorant or merely imitative. They have no sense 
 of fitness ; the short wear what belongs to the tall, 
 and brunettes sacrifice their natural beauty to look 
 like blondes. Or they have no adaptation ; and even 
 an emancipated woman may show a disregard for ap- 
 propriateness, as where a fine lady sweeps the streets, 
 or a fair orator the platform, with a silken or velvet 
 train which accords only with a carpet as luxurious 
 as itself. What is inappropriate is never beautiful. 
 What is merely in the fashion is never beautiful. 
 But who does not know some woman whose taste 
 and training are so perfect that fashion becomes to 
 her a means of grace instead of a despot, and the 
 worst excrescence that can be prescribed—a chignon, 
 a hoop, a panier—is softened into something so 
 becoming that even the Parisian bondage seems but 
 a chain of roses ? 
 
 In such hands, even “featherses” become a fine 
 art, nota matter of vanity. Are women so much 
 more vain than men? No doubt they talk more 
 about their dress, for there is much more to talk about ; 
 
 yet did you never hear the men of fashion discuss 
 
“ Featherses.” 147 
 
 boots and hats and the liveries of grooms? <A good 
 friend of mine, a shoemaker, who supplies very high 
 heels for a great many pretty feet on Fifth Avenue 
 in New York, declares that women are not so vain of 
 their feet as men. “A man who thinks he has a 
 handsome foot,’ quoth our fashionable Crispin, “is 
 apt to give us more trouble than any lady among our 
 customers. I have noticed this for twenty years.” 
 The testimony is consoling—to women. 
 
 And this naturally suggests the question, What is 
 to be the future of masculine costume? Is the 
 present formlessness and gracelessness and monotony 
 of hue to last forever, as suited to the rough needs of a 
 work-a-day world? It is to be remembered that the 
 difference in this respect between the dress of the 
 sexes is a very recent thing. Till within a century 
 or so, men dressed as picturesquely as women, and 
 paid as minute attention to their costume. Even the 
 fashions in armour varied as extensively as the 
 fashions in gowns. One-of Henry III.’s courtiers, — 
 Sir J. Arundel, had fifty-two complete suits of cloth 
 of gold. No satin, no velvet, was too elegant for 
 those who sat to Copley for their pictures. In Puritan 
 days the laws could hardly be made severe enough to 
 prevent men from wearing silver-lace and ‘broad 
 bone-lace,” and shoulder-bands of undue width, and 
 
 i 2 
 
148 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 double ruffs and “immoderate great breeches. ” 
 What seemed to the cavaliers the extreme of stupid 
 sobriety in dress, would pass now for the most fan- 
 tastic array. Fancy Samuel Pepys going to a wed- 
 ding of to-day in his “new coloured silk suit and coat 
 trimmed with gold buttons, and gold broad lace round 
 his hands, very rich and fine.” It would give to the 
 ceremony the aspect of a fancy ball; yet how much 
 prettier a sight is a fancy ball than the ordinary enter- 
 tainment of the period! 
 
 Within the last few years the rigour of masculine 
 costume is a little relaxed ; velvets are resuming their 
 picturesque sway ; and, instead of the customary suit 
 of solemn black, gentlemen are appearing in blue and 
 gold editions at evening parties. Let us hope that 
 good sense and taste may yet meet each other, for 
 both sexes; that men may borrow for their dress 
 some womanly taste, women some masculine sense ; 
 and society may again witness a graceful and appro- 
 priate costume, without being too much absorbed in 
 “featherses. ” 
 
Intellectual Cinderelias. 149 
 
 PDE A ETO@IN: 
 
 “4 great reverence for knowledge and the natural sense of justice 
 urge me to encourage in my own sex that which is most worthy the 
 aspirations of all, For, since wisdom ts so great an ornament of the 
 human race that tt should of right be extended (so far as practicable) to 
 cach and every one, I did not see why this fairest of ornaments should 
 aot be appropriate for the maiden, to whom we permit all diligence in 
 the decoration and adornment of herself”’—ANN&® MARIZ® A SCHUR- 
 MAN EPISTOLA. (1638.) 
 
 XXXVI. 
 INTELLECTUAL CINDERELLAS. 
 
 WHEN, some thirty years ago, the extraordinary 
 young mathematician, Truman Henry Safford, first 
 attracted the attention of New England by his rare 
 powers, I well remember the pains that were taken 
 to place him under instruction by the ablest Harvard 
 professors: the greater his abilities, the more need- 
 ful that he should have careful and symmetrical 
 training. The men of science did not say, ‘Stand 
 off! let him alone! let him strive patiently until he 
 has achieved something positively valuable, and he 
 
 may be sure of prompt and generous recognition— 
 
150 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 * 
 
 when he is fifty years old.” Ifsuch a course would 
 have been mistaken and ungenerous if applied to 
 Professor Safford, why is it not something to be re- 
 eretted that it was applied to Mrs. Somerville? In 
 her case, the mischief was done: she was, happily, 
 strong enough to bear it; but, as the English critics 
 say, we never shall know what science has lost by it. 
 We can do nothing for her now; but we could do 
 something for future women like her, by pointing 
 this obvious moral for their benefit, instead of being 
 content with a mere tardy recognition of success, 
 after a woman has expended half a century in 
 struggle. 
 
 It is commonly considered to be a step forward in 
 civilization, that whereas ancient and barbarous na- 
 tions exposed children to special hardships, in order 
 to kill off the weak and toughen the strong, modern 
 nations aim to rear all alike carefully, without either 
 sacrificing or enfeebling. If we apply this to muscle, 
 why not to mind ? and, if to men’s minds, why not to 
 women’s? Why use for men’s intellects, which are 
 claimed to be stronger, the forcing process,—offering, 
 for instance, many thousand dollars a year in gratu- 
 ities at Harvard College, that young men may be 
 induced to come and learn,—and only withhold 
 
 assistance from the weaker minds of women? A 
 
Intellectual Cindereltas. 151 
 
 little schoolgirl once told me that she did not object 
 to her teacher's showing partiality, but thought 
 she “ought to show partiality to all alike.” If all 
 our university systems are wrong, and the proper 
 diet for mathematical genius consists of fifty years’ 
 snubbing, let us ernploy it, by all means ; but let 
 it be applied to both sexes. 
 
 That it is the duty of women, even under dis- 
 advantageous circumstances, to prove their purpose 
 by labour, to “verify their credentials,” is true 
 enough ; but this moral is only part of the moral 
 of Mrs. Somerville’s book, and is cruelly incomplete 
 without the other half. What a garden of roses 
 was Mrs. Somerville’s life, according to some 
 comfortable critics! “All that for which too many 
 women now-a-days are content to sit and whine, or 
 fitfully and carelessly struggle, came naturally and 
 quietly to Mrs. Somerville. And the reason was, 
 that she never asked for any thing until she had 
 earned it; or, rather, she never asked at all, but 
 was content to earn.’ Naturally and quietly! You 
 might as well say that Garrison fought slavery 
 “quietly,” or that Frederick Douglass’s escape 
 came to him “naturally.” Turn to the book itself, 
 and see with what strong, though never bitter, feeling, 
 
 the author looks back upon her hard struggle. 
 
* 
 
 152 Comnon Sense about Women. 
 
 ‘““I was intensely ambitious to excel in something ; for I felt 
 in my own breast that women were capable of taking a higher 
 place in creation than that assigned them in my early days, 
 which was very low” (p. 60). “Nor... should ] have had 
 courage to ask any of them a question, for I should have been 
 laughed at. I was often very sad and forlorn; not a hand-held 
 cut to help me” (p. 47). “ My father came home for a short 
 time, and, somehow or other finding out what I was about, said 
 to my mother, ‘Peg, we must put a stop to this, or we shall 
 have Mary in a strait-jacket one of these days’” (p. 54). “I 
 continued my mathematical and other pursuits, but under 
 creat disadvantages ; for, although my husband did not prevent 
 me from studying, I met with no sympathy whatever from 
 him, as he had a very low opinion of the capacity of my sex, 
 and had neither knowledge of nor interest in science of any 
 kind” (p. 57). “ I was considered eccentric and foolish ; and 
 my conduct was highly disapproved of by many, especially by 
 some members of my own family” (p. 80). “A man can 
 always command his time under the plea of business: a 
 woman is not allowed any such excuse” (p. 164). And so on. 
 
 At last in 1831—Mrs. Somerville being then fifty- 
 one—her work on “The Mechanism of the Hea- 
 vens” appeared. Then came universal recognition, 
 generous if not prompt, a tardy acknowledgment. 
 “Our relations,” she says, “and others who had 
 so severely criticized and ridiculed me, astonished 
 at my success, were now loud in my praise.” No 
 doubt. So were, probably, Cinderella’s sisters loud 
 in her praise, when the prince at last took her from 
 
 the chimney-corner,-and married her. They had 
 
Intellectual Cinderellas. 153 
 
 kept for themselves, to be sure, as long as_ they 
 could the delights and opportunities of life; while 
 she had taken the place assigned her in her early 
 days, — “which was very low,” as Mrs. Somerville 
 says. But, for all that, they were very kind to her 
 in the days of her prosperity ; and no doubt packed 
 their little trunks, and cameto visit their dear sister 
 at the palace, as often as she could wish. And, 
 doubtless, the Fairyland Monthly of that day, when 
 it came to review Cinderella’s “ Personal Recollec- 
 tions,” pointed out, that, as soon as that distinguished 
 lady had “ achieved something positively valuable,” 
 
 she received “ prompt and generous recognition.” 
 
 XXXVIT. 
 FOREIGN EDUCATION. 
 
 THERE is a_ fashionable phrase which always 
 awakens my inward protest,—“the advantages of 
 foreign education.” Every summer brings within 
 my view a large class of people who have perhaps 
 spent their youth in Europe, and then have taken 
 Europe for their wedding-tour ; and then, after a 
 
 ie 
 
154 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 year or two at home, have found it an excellent 
 reason for going abroad again “to give the children 
 the advantage of foreign education, you know.” 
 And, as it is in regard to girls that this advantage is 
 especially claimed, it is in respect to them that I 
 wish to speak. 
 
 In some ways, undoubtedly, the early foreign 
 training offers an advantage. It is a thing of very 
 great convenience to have the easy colloquial com- 
 mand of one or two languages beside one’s own; 
 and this can no doubt be obtained far more readily 
 by a few years of early life abroad than by any 
 method employed in later years at home. There are 
 also some unquestionable advantages in respect to 
 music, art, and European geography and _ history. 
 The trouble is, that, when we have enumerated these 
 advantages, we have mentioned all. 
 
 And, as a further trouble, it comes abonterna: 
 these things, being all that are better learned in 
 Europe, are easily assumed, by what may be called 
 our Europeanized classes, to be all that are worth 
 learning, especially for girls. When, in such circles, 
 you hear of a young lady as “splendidly educated,” 
 it commonly turns out that she speaks several lan- 
 guages admirably, and plays well on the piano, or 
 sketches well. It is not needful for such an indorse- 
 
foreign Education. ii iy 
 
 ment that she should have the slightest knowledge 
 of mathematics, of logic, of rhetoric, of metaphysics, 
 of political economy, of physiology, of any branch 
 of natural science, or of any language, or literature, 
 or history, except those of modern Europe. All 
 these missing branches she would have been far 
 more likely to study, if she had never been abroad : 
 all these, or a sufficient number of them, she would 
 have been pretty sure to study at a first-class Ameri- 
 can “academy” or high school. But all these she 
 is almost sure to have missed in Europe,-—missed 
 them so thoroughly, indeed, that she is likely to re- 
 gard with suspicion any one who knows anything 
 about them, as being “awfully learned.” 
 
 Yet it needs no argument to show that the studies 
 thus omitted by girls taught in Europe are the studies 
 which train the intellect. That a girl should know 
 
 *her own powers of body and mind, should know how 
 to observe, how to combine, how to think; that she 
 should know the history and literature of the world 
 at large, and in particular of the country in which 
 she is to live,—this is certainly more important than 
 that she should be able to speak two or three lan- 
 guages as well as a European courier, and should 
 have nothing to say in any of them. 
 
 A very few persons I have known who contrived, 
 
156 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 while living abroad, to keep a home atmosphere 
 round their children, and who, by great personal 
 effort, succeeded in giving to their girls that solid 
 early training which is to be had in every high school 
 in this country, but is only to be obtained by personal 
 effort, and under great disadvantages, in Europe. 
 Wiser still, in my judgment, were those who trusted 
 America for the main training, but contrived early to 
 secure for their children the needful year or two of 
 foreign life, for the learning of languages alone. Per- 
 haps we exaggerate, too, the absolute necessity of 
 foreign study, even for modern languages. The 
 Russians, who are the best linguists in Europe, are 
 not in the habit of expatriating themselves for that 
 purpose ; and perhaps we have something to learn 
 from them in this direction, as well as in the line of 
 
 Professor Runkle’s machine-shops. : 
 
 XXXVITI. 
 TEACHING THE TEACHERS. 
 
 COTTON MATHER says of his father, Increase 
 Mather, that, when he became president of Harvard 
 
 College, it was from the desire to teach those who 
 
Teaching the Teachers. 157 
 
 were to teach others, or, as he expresses it, not to 
 shape the building but the builders,—won Japides 
 dolare sed architectos. It is curious to see that women 
 are admitted more readily to this higher work than 
 to the lower. Thus I know a lady who teaches elo- 
 cution professionally, and has clerical pupils among 
 others. One of these assures me that he finds his 
 power and influence in the pulpit much increased 
 through her instruction. Yet there is scarcely a 
 denomination which would admit her into the pul- 
 pit: she can direct the builders, but can take no 
 share in the building. 
 
 It sometimes occurred to me, when a member of 
 the legislature of Massachusetts, that the little I 
 knew of political economy was mainly due to the 
 assiduous feading, in childhood, of Miss Martineau’s 
 stories founded on that science. Yet it would have 
 been thought something very astounding were some 
 such woman to have a seat in that legislature. So I 
 have seen classes of young men and. maidens, in a 
 high school, reciting political economy out of Mrs. 
 Fawcett’s excellent text-book,—-and sometimes re- 
 citing it to a woman; and yet, should any one of 
 these boys ever become a member of “the Great and 
 General Court,’ as the legislature is called in Massa- 
 
 chusetts, he could not even invite this teacher, or 
 
158 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 Mrs. Fawcett herself, to sit beside him and aid him 
 with her advice. Can any one help seeing that this 
 distinction is a merely traditional thing, and one that 
 cannot last ? 
 
 At the last teachers’ convention which I attended, 
 I heard a lady, Mrs. Knox, give an address on the 
 best way of teaching English composition. There 
 was assembled a great body of teachers, some five or 
 six hundred ; the church was crowded ; and yet this 
 lady faced the audience for some three-quarters of 
 an hour—she being armed only with a piece of chalk 
 and a blackboard—and held it in close attention. 
 Without perceptible effort, and without a word or an 
 attitude that was otherwise than womanly and grace- 
 ful, she taught the teachers, men and women alike. I 
 do not see how it is possible that the alleged suprem- 
 acy of man can long withstand such influences. 
 
 It seems very appropriate to read from town after 
 town, in reference to the late school elections, “ The 
 first lady to deposit her ballot was Miss ——, a 
 teacher in the high school.” Who else should be 
 first ? I do not think that men generally comprehend 
 how absurd it is to an experienced teacher, who has 
 for years been putting into the brains of dull boys 
 all the activity they possess, to see those boys grow 
 
 up to be men and voters, and decide what to do with 
 
Leaching the Teachers. 159 
 
 the money she pays in taxes, while she is set aside as 
 “only a woman.” Her pupils cannot make a speech 
 in town-meeting, they cannot present a report on any 
 subject, they cannot show any capacity of leadership 
 without exhibiting the influence she has had over 
 them. Yet they are now as entirely beyond her 
 direct reach as if she were a hen who had hatched 
 ducklings, and had lived to see them swimming away. 
 But the teachers are worse off than the hens ; because 
 they have actually taught their ducklings to swim, 
 and could swim themselves if permitted. After. all, 
 Horace Mann builded better than he knew. Every 
 step in the training of women as teachers implies a 
 
 farther step. 
 
 BOO 
 
 “CUPIbD-AN.D=PSVYCHOLOCY?’ 
 
 THE learned Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 England, is frequently facetious ; and his jokes are 
 quoted with the deference due to the chief officer of 
 the chief college of that great university. Now it is 
 known that the Cambridge colleges, and Trinity 
 
 College in particular, are doing a great deal for the 
 
160 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 instruction of women. The young women of Girton 
 College and Newnham College—both of these being 
 institutions for women, in or near Cambridge—not 
 only enjoy the instruction of the university, but they 
 share it under a guaranty that it shall be of the best 
 quality ; because they attend, in many cases, the 
 very same lectures with the young men. Where this 
 is not done, they sometimes use the vacant lecture 
 rooms of the college ; and it was in connection with 
 an application for this privilege that the Master of 
 Trinity College made his last joke—the last, at any 
 rate, that has crossed the Atlantic. When told that 
 the lecture-room was needed for a class of young 
 women in psychology, he said, “ Psychology ? what 
 kind of psychology ? Cupid-and-Psychology, I sup- 
 pose.” 
 
 Cupid-and-Psychology is, after all, not so bad a 
 department of instruction. It may be taken as a 
 good enough symbol of that mingling of head and 
 heart which is the best result of all training. One 
 of the worst evils of the separate education of 
 the sexes has been the easy assumption that men 
 were to be made all head, and women all heart. It 
 was to correct the evils of this, that Ben Jonson pro- 
 posed for his ideal woman 
 
 “4 learned and a manly soul.” 
 
of 
 
 “ Cupid-and-Psychology.”’ 161 
 
 It was an implied recognition of it from the other 
 side when the great masculine intellect, Goethe, held 
 up as a guiding force in his Faust “the eternal wo- 
 manly” (das ewige Weibliche). After all, each sex 
 must teach the other, and impart to the other. It 
 will never do to have all the brains poured into one 
 human being, and christened “man;” and all the 
 affections decanted into another, and labelled “wo.- 
 man.’ Nature herself rejects this theory. Darwin 
 himself, the interpreter of nature, shows that there 
 is a perpetual effort going on, by unseen forces, to 
 equalize the sexes, since sons often inherit from the 
 mother, and daughters from the father. And we all 
 take pleasure in discovering in the noblest of each 
 sex something of the qualities of the other—the 
 tender affections in great men, the imperial intellect 
 in great women. 
 
 On the whole, there is no harm, but rather good, 
 in the new science of Cupid-and-Psychology. There 
 are combinations for which no single word can suffice. 
 The phrase belongs to the same class with Lowell’s 
 witty denunciation of a certain tiresome letter-writer, 
 as being, not his incubus, but his “ pen-and-inkubus.” 
 It is as well to admit it first as last: Cupid-and- 
 Psychology will be taught wherever young men and 
 women study together. Not in the direct and 
 
 M 
 
162 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 simple form of mutual love-making, perhaps; for 
 they tell the visitor, at universities which admit 
 both sexes, that the young men and maidens do 
 not fall in love with each other, but are apt to 
 seek their mates elsewhere. The new science has 
 a wider bearing, and suggests that the brain is incom- 
 plete, after all, without the affections ; and sosare the 
 affections without the brain. The very professorship 
 at Harvard University which Rev. Dr. Peabody is 
 just leaving, and which Rev. Phillips Brooks has been 
 invited to fill, was founded by a woman, Miss Plum- 
 mer; and the name proposed by her for it was “a 
 professorship of the heart,” though they after all 
 called it only a professorship of “Christian morals.” 
 We need the heart in our colleges, it seems, even if 
 we only get it under the ingenious title of Cupid- 
 
 and-Psychology. 
 
 MEDICAL..SCIENCE: FOR WOMEN, 
 
 IN reading, the other day, a speech on the Medical 
 Education of Women, it struck me that the most 
 important reason for this education was one which 
 
 the speaker had not mentioned,—the fact that the 
 
Medical Science for Women. 163 
 
 medical profession stands for science; and that 
 women peculiarly need science, since their natural 
 bent is supposed to be a little the other way. The 
 other professions represent tradition very generally : 
 the .lawyer must be bound by precedents; the 
 clergyman generally admits that he must go back to 
 his texts. But the physician claims, at least, to be 
 a man of science, and stands for that before the 
 world. Hence the sacredness with which his posi- 
 tion has always been surrounded. The Florida 
 Indians, according to the early voyagers, not only 
 took the physician’s medicine, but they took the 
 physician himself internally, after his death. All 
 Otaerm! mene werer-buried's.but-the sbody of. the 
 physician was burned, and his ashes mixed with 
 water, by way of a permanent prescription. 
 
 At any rate, the physician himself popularly 
 stands for science ; and, in this point of view, his 
 position is very noble. I have known physicians 
 whose professed materialism was more elevated than 
 most of what the world calls religion. To trace 
 that wondrous power called life, which takes these 
 particles of matter, and makes them think with 
 thought, or glow with passion, or put forth an 
 activity so intense as to be the parent of new life 
 from generation to generation,—this study is some- 
 
 M 2 
 
164 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 thing sublime. He who reverently ponders on this 
 may call himself theist or atheist, he is yet worthy 
 to be revered: if he can teach us he blesses us. “I 
 
 J 
 
 touch heaven,” said Novalis, “when I lay my hand 
 on a human body ;” and the popularity among 
 physicians of that fine engraving of Vesalius stand- 
 ing ready for his first dissection, shows that they 
 take a higher view of their vocation than the world 
 sometimes admits. 
 
 It seems to me peculiarly important that women 
 should have a sharé in these studies. They oiten 
 have time enough. It takes more time for a woman ~ 
 to make herself charming than to make herself 
 learned, Svdney Smith says ; and he thinks it a pity 
 that she should often hang up her brains on the wall 
 in poor pictures, or waft them into the air in poor 
 music, when they might be better employed. Yet a 
 great physician, Dr. Currie, says in his letters that 
 he always preferred to have an ignorant patient bring 
 his wife with him, because he could always get more 
 careful observation and quicker suggestions from the 
 woman. This point lies directly in the line of 
 medical education. 
 
 The study lies also directly in their path as 
 prospective wives and mothers, and this alone would 
 
 furnish a sufficient reason for ‘it. A woman of 
 
Medical Scrence for Women. 165 
 
 superior gifts, who had studied medicine, but never 
 adopted it as a profession, told me that the mere 
 domestic use of her knowledge had more than repaid 
 her for all the trouble it had cost. For a man who 
 should thus abandon the pursuit, it would be of 
 comparatively little service, apart from the general 
 training; but for a woman, if she fulfils the 
 commoner duties of a woman’s life, this early know- 
 ledge will always be a source of direct strength, 
 This applies in a degree to surgery also; and I have 
 always wondered, in view of the old proverb that a 
 surgeon should have “a lion’s heart and a lady’s 
 hand,’ why our professors do not oftener aim at 
 developing this heart, if need be, in those who have 
 
 the hand without training. 
 
 SCLIE 
 MENTAL HORTICULTURE. 
 
 THERE was once a public meeting held, at the 
 request of some excellent ladies, to consider the 
 question whether it might be possible for roses and 
 lilies to grow together in the same garden. Many 
 
 of the ladies were quite used to gardening, and had 
 
166 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 opinions of their own; but, as it was not proper 
 for them to open their lips before people, they of 
 course could not testify. So several respectable 
 gventlemen—clergymen and professors—were invited 
 to tell them all about it. Some of these gentlemen 
 had seen a rose, and some had seen a lily, but it 
 turned out that very few of them had ever happened 
 to see a garden. Still, as they were learned men, 
 they could give very valuable suggestions. One of 
 them explained, that, as roses ‘and lilies assimilated 
 very different juices from the soil, they could not 
 possibly grow in the same soil. Another pointed 
 out, that, as they needed different proportions of sun 
 and of air, they should have very different exposures, 
 and therefore must be kept apart. Another, more 
 daring, suggested, that, as God had put the two 
 species into the same world, it was quite possible 
 that they might grow in the same enclosure for a 
 time, perhaps for about fourteen years, but that, if 
 they were left longer together, they would certainly 
 blight and destroy each other. All this seemed very 
 conclusive ; and the meeting was about to vote that 
 roses and lilies should never be allowed to exist in 
 the same garden, unless with a brick wall twenty feet 
 high between. 
 
 But it so happened that a sensible gardener froma 
 
Mental Florticulture. 167 
 
 distant-State was present, and got up to say a word 
 before the debate closed. “Bless your souls, my 
 sood people, what are you talking about ?” said he. 
 “Roses and lilies are already growing together by 
 the thousand, all over the country, and ycu may as 
 well close your discussion.” Upon which the meet- 
 ing broke up in some confusion: the brick wall was 
 never built; but the clergyman went back to his 
 study, the professor to his lecture-room, the physician 
 to his patients, and all remained in the conviction 
 that the gardener was a good sort of man, but 
 strangely ignorant of scientific horticulture. 
 
 “Which things are an ailegory.’ The writer has 
 been reading the report, in the Bostcx Daily Adver- 
 tiser, of a recent debate on female education. 
 
 I suppose that those born and bred in New Eng- 
 land can never quite abandon the feeling that this 
 region should still lead the nation, as it once led, in 
 all educational matters. For one, I cannot help a 
 slight sense of mortification, when, in an assemblage 
 of Boston professors, undertaking to discuss a simple 
 practical matter, everybody begins in the clouds, 
 ignoring the facts before everybody’s eyes, and dis- 
 cussing as a question of theory only, what has long 
 since become a matter of common practice. The 
 
 mortification is not diminished when the common 
 
168 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 sense has to be at last imported from beyond the 
 borders of New England, in the shape of a college 
 president from Central New York. To him alone it 
 ~ seems to have occurred to remind these dwellers in 
 the clouds that what they persisted in treating as 
 theory had been a matter of daily experience in half 
 the large towns in New England for the last quarter 
 of a century. 
 
 What is the question at issue? Simply this: New 
 England is full of normal schools, high schools, and 
 endowed academies. In the majority of these, pupils 
 of both sexes, from fourteen to twenty-five or there- 
 abouts, study together and recite together, living 
 either at home or in boarding-houses, or in academic 
 dormitories, as the case may be. This has gone on 
 for many years, without cavil or scandal. As a 
 general rule, teachers have testified that they prefer 
 to teach these mixed schools; at any rate, the fact 
 is certain, that the sexes, once united in schools of 
 this grade, are very seldom separated again; while 
 we often hear of the separate schools as_ being 
 abandoned, and the sexes brought together. Certainly 
 the experiment of joint education has been very 
 extensively tried in all parts of New England; 
 indeed, for schools of this kind, in most regions, the 
 
 association of the sexes is the rule, their separation 
 
Mental Horticulture. 169 
 
 the exception. Now, the only remaining question is: 
 This being the case, will it make any essential differ- 
 ence if you widen the course of instruction a little, 
 and call the institution a college? 
 
 This is really the only problem left to be solved ; 
 and yet on this question, thus limited, not a speaker 
 at the above—except President White of Cornell 
 University—had apparently a word to say. Every 
 other speaker appeared to approach the general theme 
 in as profound and blissful an ignorance as if he had 
 lived all his life in Turkey or in France, or in some 
 other country where no young man had ever recited 
 algebra in the same room with a young woman since 
 
 the world began. 
 
170 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 EMPLOY Vern 
 
 “« The non-combatant population ts sure to fare ill during the ages of 
 combat. But these defects, too, are cured or lessened ; women have now 
 marvellous ways of winning their way in the world ; and mind with- 
 out muscle has far greater force than muscle without mind.” —BAGE- 
 HOT’s Physics and Politics, c. il. § 3. 
 
 XE 
 “SEXUAL DIFFERENCE OF EMPLOYMENT.” 
 
 I AM at a loss to understand an assertion made by 
 Rev. Dr. Hedge, at an educational meeting in Boston, 
 that “the course of civilization hitherto has tended 
 to develop and confirm sexual difference of employ- 
 ment,” He adds, according to the reporiyinmee. 
 Daily Advertiser, that, “the more civilized the 
 country, the more the vocations of men and women 
 divide: the more savage the nation, the more they 
 blend and coincide.” 
 
 With due respect for Dr. Hedge on many grounds, 
 and especially as having been the first man to demand 
 publicly in presence of the Harvard alumni the 
 admission of women to the university, I must yet 
 
 express great surprise at his taking what seems to me 
 
“Sexual Difference of Employment.” 171 
 
 so utterly untenable a position. ‘To me it seems, on 
 the contrary, that it is the savage period which is 
 remarkable for the industrial separation of the sexes ; 
 and that every epoch of advancing civilization—as 
 the present—blends them more and more. The fact 
 would have seemed to me so plain as hardly to need 
 
 more than simply to state it, but for the authority of 
 Dr. Hedge upon the other side. 
 
 As we trace society back to savage life, what are 
 the prevailing employments of the male sex? More 
 and more exclusively, warand the chase. From these 
 two vocations, monopolizing literally the whole active 
 life of the savage man, the savage woman is almost 
 absolutely excluded. Precisely at the point where 
 the man’s sphere leaves off, in each of these pursuits, 
 the woman’s sphere begins. Among American 
 Indians, the man takes the captive, the woman 
 tortures him. The man kills the deer, carries it till 
 within sight of his own village, and then throws it 
 down, that the squaw may go out and drag it in. 
 Much that seems cruel and selfish in Indian life is the 
 result, as Mrs. Jameson long since pointed out, of 
 this complete separation of functions. The reason 
 why the Indian woman carries the lodge-poles and 
 the provisions on the march is that the man’s limbs 
 
 may be left free and agile for the far severer labours 
 
172 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 of war and of the chase, from which she is excluded. 
 The reason why she finally brings the deer to the 
 camp is because he has had the more exhausting 
 labour of hunting and killing it. 
 
 Contrast now this absolute “sexual difference of 
 employment ” with the greater and greater blending 
 of civilized society—a blending, observe, which pro- 
 ceeds from both sides, and not from woman only. 
 It is hard to say which is more remarkable, within 
 the last half century—the way in which women have 
 encroached on men’s work, or the way in which men 
 have encroached on women’s. 
 
 In many mechanical and commercial pursuits—as 
 printing and book-keeping—once almost monopolized 
 by men, you now find a very large number of women. 
 In some pursuits, as in education, the women have 
 come to outnumber the men enormously, at least in 
 America ; in others, as telegraphy, they seem likely to 
 do the same. We constantly hear of new channels 
 opening. A friend of mine, the other day, just before 
 addressing an audience on woman suffrage, stepped 
 into a barber’s shop, and to his great amazement was 
 shaved by a woman. On inquiry, he learned for the 
 first time, that a good many of that sex, mostly 
 Germans, pursued this occupation in New York and 
 
 elsewhere. Thus do the vocations of men and women 
 
“Seaual Difference of Employment.” 173 
 
 now “blend and coincide.” On the other hand, the 
 leading dressmaker of the world is a man; our 
 bonnet-shops are largely conducted by men; the 
 eminent hotel cooks, whose salaries exceed any paid 
 by Harvard University, are men; and the lady who 
 goes to rest in a sleeping-car on our railroads has her 
 pillow smoothed and her curtains drawn, not by a 
 chambermaid, but by a chamberman. 
 
 These are the facts which séem to me, I must say, 
 quite fatal to Dr. Hedge’s theory. And there is one 
 thing worth noticing in the very different criticisms 
 passed on men and on women as to these invasions 
 of each other’s province. If you call attention to 
 the way in which men are everywhere taking part in 
 women’s work, people say approvingly, “To be sure ! 
 ereater energy, greater skill! they do even women’s 
 work better than women themselves can.” But if 
 you point out that, on the other hand, women are 
 also doing men’s work, and in some cases—as in 
 literature and lecturing—are actually obtaining higher 
 prices than most men can obtain, the same people 
 shake their heads disapprovingly, and say, “ Un- 
 sexed ; out of their sphere!” Now, if we lived in 
 an age of chivalrous protection of women, it would 
 be a different thing; but, as we live in an age of 
 
 political economy, there is no reason why men alone 
 
174 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 should have the benefit of its laws. If practical life 
 is to be regarded as a game of puss-in-the-corner, I 
 should recommend to each ejected puss to make for 
 the best corner she finds open, without much defer- 
 
 ence to the theories of the sages. 
 
 OCIS EE 
 MISS INGELOW’S PROBLEM. 
 
 IN a certain New England town I lived opposite 
 the house of a thriving mechanic. His wife, a 
 young and pretty woman, soon attracted the atten- 
 tion of my household by the grace and vivacity of 
 her bearing, and the peculiar tastefulness of her own 
 and her little boy’s costume. On further acquaint- 
 ance we found that she did every atom of her house- 
 “work, washing and all; that she cut and made every 
 garment for herself and her child ; and that, finding 
 her energies still unsatisfied, she took in sewing-work 
 from a tailors shop, and thus earned most of the 
 money for their wardrobe. It may be well to add, 
 to complete this story of New England social life, 
 
 that her husband was one of the very earliest volun- 
 
Miss Ingelow’s Problene. 1225 
 
 teers for the war of the Rebellion; that he went in 
 captain, came out brigadier-general, and now holds 
 an important government office. 
 
 There is nothing isolated or unexampled about 
 this instance. My pretty and ladylike neighbour 
 was only energetic, ready, capable, and ambitious, 
 or, to sum it all up in the New England vernacular, 
 “smart.” Whatever she saw in society or life that 
 was desirable for herself or her husband or her child, 
 that she aimed at and generally obtained. 
 
 ShesShadn’t a_lazy ‘bone inher body ;” andtshe 
 never will have, though she may wear that body out 
 prematurely by nervous tension. Wherever she goes, 
 she will carry the same restless, tireless energy ; and 
 should her husband ever go to Congress or to the 
 Court of St. James’s, she will carry herself with per- 
 fect fearlessness and ease. And in-all this she repre- 
 sents one great type of New England women. 
 
 When you ask of such a woman if she shrinks 
 from work, it is as if you asked, Does a deer shrink 
 from running, or a swallow from flying? She loves 
 the work : indeed, she loves it, in my opinion, far 
 too much, and sets a dangerous example. All 
 theories of the natural indolence of man—or woman 
 —fall defeated before the New England tempera- 
 
 ment, traditions, training, climate; before that “whip 
 
176 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 of the sky,” as a poet has sung, that urges us on. 
 If, therefore, “household work is thought degrading” 
 —and Miss Ingelow asserts too hastily that “nowhere 
 is this so much the case as in America’—it certainly 
 is not merely because it is work. 
 
 For myself, I doubt the fact, and demand the 
 evidence. So far as the free States of the Union 
 are concerned, it seems to me that household labour 
 is thought less degrading than in England, and that 
 the proportion of well-taught and ladylike women 
 who contentedly do their own work is far greater in 
 America, and keeps pace with the greater spread of 
 average education. There is not a city in the land, 
 I suppose—certainly not a village—where the house- 
 work in a large majority of the American-born 
 families is not done by Americans; for the large 
 majority are always mechanics and labourers, among 
 whom, as a rule, the work is done by the wives and 
 sisters and daughters. The wages of domestics are 
 so much higher in America than in England—being 
 almost double—that it is here a more serious expen- 
 diture to employ such aid. 
 
 I think, therefore, that we must be very cautious 
 before we say that housework, as such, is held 
 degrading in the free States. No doubt, American 
 
 women feel, as their husbands and brothers feel, 
 
Miss Ingelow’s Problent. 7 
 
 that all work should be done by machinery, as far as 
 possible, and that the washing-machine and the 
 carpet-sweeper are as legitimate as the patent reaper 
 or mower. They would be foolish if they did not. 
 They also feel, as American men feel, that, in this 
 great assemblage of all nations, the place for the 
 American is rather in posts of command than in the 
 ranks. In our ships you find men of all nations in 
 the forecastle, but Americans in the cabin. In the 
 regular army it is the officers, commissioned or non- 
 commissioned, who are Americans. Go as far west 
 as you please, you are surprised to find that the 
 railway officials, superintendents, conductors, bag- 
 gage-masters, are not merely American-born, but 
 often New-England-born. The better average edu- 
 cation tells. It is in the fitness of things that the 
 under-work of household life also should be done 
 by the under-class of foreign elements, and that it 
 should be Americans who do the direction and guid- 
 ance. Some such instinct as this is the explanation 
 of much that Miss Ingelow takes for a contempt of 
 household labour, An American woman does not 
 despise such labour, properly speaking, any more 
 than an American man despises mechanical labour. 
 Both aim, if they can, to rise to occupations more 
 
 lucrative and more intellectual. 
 N 
 
178 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 It is not the labour, it is not even the household 
 labour, to which objection is made. When you come 
 to household labour for other people, done in a 
 ‘capacity recognized as menial,—ay, there’s the rub! 
 There is a widespread feeling that domestic service 
 in other people’s families is menial. 
 
 For one I have publicly remonstrated against the 
 excess of this feeling, and think it is carried too far. 
 Women will never compete equally with men, until 
 they are willing, like men, to do any honest work 
 without sense of degradation. This is one point 
 where enfranchisement will help them. ‘So long asa 
 man bears in his hand the ballot, that symbol of 
 substantial equality, his self-respect is not easily 
 impaired by the humblest position. “A man’s a 
 man for a’ that,” he knows, before the law. But a 
 woman, not having this, has only the usages of 
 society to guide her; and, so long as society talks 
 about “master,” and “servant,” I do not blame the 
 American girl for refusing to accept such a position, 
 —just as I do not blame, but applaud, the American 
 man for refusing to wear livery. I only condemn 
 them, in either case, when the alternative is starvation 
 or sin. Then pride should yield. 
 
 But this is the conclusive proof that it is not the 
 
 housework which is held degrading: the fact that 
 
Miss Ingelow’s Problem. 179 
 
 there is no difficulty in securing any number of 
 American girls in our large country hotels, where 
 they associate with their employers as equals, and 
 call no man master. The fact that the proprietors of 
 such hotels invariably prefer American “help” to 
 Irish, shows that the philosophy of the whole question 
 lies in a different direction from that indicated by 
 our good friend Miss Ingelow. The evil of which 
 she speaks does not properly exist : the real difficulty 
 lies in a different direction, and cannot be settled 
 till we see farther into the social organization that is 
 
 to come. 
 
 ASAIN 
 SELF-SUPPORT. 
 
 It is the English theory, that society needs a leisure 
 class, not self-supporting, from whom public services 
 and works of science and art may proceed. Even 
 Darwin recognizes this theory. But how little is 
 England doing for science and art, compared to 
 Germany ! and the German work of that kind is not 
 done by a leisure class, but by poor men. I believe 
 that the necessity of self-support, at least in the earlier 
 
 N 2 
 
180 Common Sense about Wonen. 
 
 years of life, is the best training for manhood ; and 
 it does not seem desirable that women should be 
 wholly set free from it. 
 
 A clever writer, on the other hand, maintains that 
 women should never support themselves if it be 
 possible honourably to avoid it. ‘“ Pecuniary depen- 
 dence, degrading to men, is not only not undignified, 
 but is the only thoroughly dignified condition, for 
 women. In a renovated and millennial society all 
 women will be supported by men,—will have no 
 more to do with bringing in money than the lilies of 
 the field.” This statement is delightfully uncompro- 
 mising, and it is a great thing to hear an extreme 
 position so clearly and unequivocally put. Especially 
 on a question so difficult as the labour and wages of 
 women, it is particularly desirable to have each 
 extreme worked out to its logical results. 
 
 It is certainly the normal condition of woman to 
 be a wife and a mother. It is equally certain that 
 this condition withdraws woman from the labour- 
 market, during the prime of her life. The very 
 years during which a man attains his highest skill, 
 and earns his highest wages,—say, from twenty-five 
 to forty,—are lost to woman, in this normal condition, 
 so far as earning money is concerned. This is the 
 
 main fact, as I judge, which keeps down the standard 
 
Self Support. 18ST 
 
 of both work and pay among women, as a class. If 
 men, as a class, were thus heavily weighted, the 
 result would be as clearly seen. Where one sex 
 brings into the market the full vigour of its life, and 
 the other has only crude labour, or occasional labour, 
 or broken labour, to offer, the result cannot be 
 doubtful. Yet this is precisely the state of the com- 
 petition between man and woman. 
 
 I believe, therefore, with this writer, that woman 
 was not intended to be the equal competitor of man 
 in business pursuits—or, indeed, to be self-supporting 
 at all—during her career of motherhood. It is gene- 
 rally recognized as a calamity, when she is obliged 
 to support herself at that time. Most people believe 
 with Miss Mitford that “women were not meant to 
 earn the bread of a family,” and that men are. But 
 to earn the bread of a family is not self-support : it is 
 much more than self-support. And when this writer 
 takes a step beyond, and says, “I think the necessity 
 of earning her own living is always a woman’s 
 misfortune,” then she seems to theorize beyond good 
 sense, and to confuse things very different. Self- 
 support is one thing : supporting seven small children 
 is quite another thing. 
 
 That which shouid never be left out of sight is 
 
 the essential dignity of labour. Woman during the 
 
182 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 period of maternity is rightly excused from earning 
 money; but it is because she is better occupied. 
 She is not exempted in the character of lily of the 
 field, but in the capacity of mother of a family. It 
 is an important distinction. For labour in the lower 
 sense, she substitutes what, in a higher and a more 
 sacred sense, we still call “labour.” She is not sup- 
 ported because she is a woman, but because, in -her 
 capacity as woman, she happens to have home-duties. 
 If she had no such duties, there seems no reason why 
 she should be supported any more than if she were 
 aman. To bea wife and mother is a vocation, and 
 one which usually for a time precludes all others. 
 Merely to be a woman is not a vocation; and, so 
 long as one can make no better claim on the world 
 than that, the world has a right to demand something 
 more. The Irishwoman who locks her little children 
 into her one room, that she may go out to earn their 
 bread, seems to me in a position no falser than that 
 of the over-worked father who breaks himself down 
 with toil that his daughters may live like the lilies of 
 the field. 
 
 Soo S= -— 
 
Sedf-Supporting Waves. 183 
 
 OIA 
 SELF-SUPPORTING WIVES. 
 
 FOR one, I have never been fascinated by the style 
 of domestic paradise that English novels depict,— 
 half a dozen unmarried daughters round the family 
 hearth, all assiduously doing worsted work and _pet- 
 ting their papa. I believe a sufficiency of employ- 
 ment to be the only normal and healthy condition 
 for a human being ; and where there is not work 
 enough to employ the full energies of all, at home, it 
 seems as proper for young women as for young birds 
 to leave the parental nest. If this additional work is 
 done for money, very well. It is the conscious dignity 
 of self-support that removes the traditional curse from 
 labour, and woman has a right to claim her share in 
 that dignified position. 
 
 Yet I cannot agree, on the other hand, with Celia 
 Burleigh, when she says that her “True Woman” 
 should be self-supporting, even in marriage. 
 Woman’s part of the family task—the care of home 
 and children—is just as essential to building up the 
 
 family fortunes as the very different toil of the out- 
 
Se 
 
 *% 
 
 184 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 door partner. For young married women to under- 
 take any more direct aid to the family income is in 
 most cases utterly undesirable, and is asking of them- 
 selves a great dealtoo much. And this is not because 
 they are tobe encouraged inindolence, but because they 
 already, in a normal condition of things, have their 
 hands full. As, on this point, I may differ from some 
 of my readers, let me explain precisely what I mean. 
 
 As I write, there are at work, in another part of 
 the house, two paper-hangers, a man and his wife, 
 each forty-five or fifty years of age. Their children 
 are grown up, and some of them married: they have 
 a daughter at home, who is old enough to do the 
 housework, and leave the mother free. There is no 
 way of organizing the labours of this household 
 better than this: the married pair toil together dur- 
 ing the day, and go home together to their evening 
 rest. A happier couple I never saw ; it is a delight 
 to see them cheerily at work together, cutting, 
 pasting, hanging: their life seems like a prolonged 
 industrial picnic ; and, if I had the ill-luck to own as 
 many palaces as an English duke, I should keep them 
 permanently occupied in putting fresh papers on the 
 walls. 
 
 But the merit of this employment for the woman is, 
 
 that it interferes with no other duty. Were shea 
 
5 
 
 Self-Supporting Wi ives. 185 
 
 young mother with little children, and obliged by her 
 paper-hanging to neglect them, or to leave them at a 
 “day-nursery,” orto overwork herself by combining too 
 many cares, then the sight of her would be very sad. 
 So sacred a thing does motherhood seem to me, so 
 paramount and absorbing the duty of a mother to 
 her child, that in a true state of society I think she 
 should be utterly free from all other duties,—even, if 
 possible, from the ordinary cares of housekeeping. 
 If she has spare health and strength to do these 
 other things as pleasures, very well; but she should 
 be relieved from them as duties. And, as to the 
 need of self-support, I can hardly conceive of an 
 instance where it can be to the mother of young 
 children any thing but a disaster. As we all know, 
 this calamity often occurs ; I have seen it among the 
 factory operatives at the North, and among the 
 negro-women in the cotton-fields at the South: in 
 both cases it is a tragedy, and the bodies and brains 
 of mother and children alike suffer. That the mother 
 should bear and tend and nurture, while the father 
 supports and protects,—this is the true division. 
 Does this bear in any way upon suffrage ? Not at 
 all. The mother can inform herself upon public 
 questions in the intervals of her cares, as the father 
 
 among his; and the baby in the cradle is a perpetual 
 
186 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 appeal to her, as to him, that the institutions under 
 which that baby dwells may be kept pure. One of 
 the most devoted young mothers I ever knew—the 
 younger sister of Margaret Fuller Ossoli—made it a 
 rule, no matter how much her children absorbed her, 
 to read books or newspapers for an hour every day ; 
 in order, she said, that their mother should be more 
 than a mere source of physical nurture, and that 
 her mind should be kept fresh and alive for them. 
 But to demand in addition that such a mother 
 should earn money for them, is to ask too much ; 
 and there is many a tombstone in New England 
 which, if it told the truth, would tell what comes of 
 
 such an effort. 
 
 XLVI. 
 THE PROBLEM OF WAGES. 
 
 TALKING, the other day, with one of the leading 
 dressmakers of a New England town, I asked her 
 why it was, that, when women suffered so much 
 from scanty employments and low pay, there should 
 yet be so few good dressmakers. “You are all 
 
 overrun and worn out with work,” I said, “all 
 
Lhe Problem of Wages. 187 
 
 the year round; every lady in: town complains that 
 there are so few of you; and it is the same in every 
 town where I ever lived.’ She answered, as: such 
 witnesses always answer, ‘ Women do not engage 
 in occupations, as men do, for a lifetime. They 
 expect only to continue in them for a year or two 
 until they shall be married. I employ twelve girls, 
 and not one of them expects to be a dressmaker for 
 life. They work their ten hours a day, under my 
 directions, and that is all.” 
 
 Here lies the point of difference between the work 
 of women and that of men, as a class; I mean, in 
 their industrial pursuits, the work that earns money. 
 Until we reach this point, or get a social philosophy 
 that explains this, we are yet upon the surface only. 
 The enfranchisement of woman will help us towards 
 this, but will not, of itself, solve the problem of wages, 
 because that depends on other than political conside- 
 rations. 
 
 Why do the mass of men work? Not from taste, 
 or for love of the work, but from conscious need. If 
 they do not work, they and their families will starve. 
 It is a necessity, and a permanent necessity. It will 
 last all their lives, except in the case of a few who 
 will “come into their property” by-and-by, like 
 
 Mr. Toots—and their work is usually worth about 
 
188 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 as much as his. We see this every day in the 
 sons of rich men. Their fathers may bring them 
 up to work, yet the mere fact that they are to be 
 relieved from this compulsion within a dozen years 
 is apt to paralyze their active faculties. They 
 study law or medicine, or dabble in “ business:” 
 but they only play at the practice of their pursuits 
 because there is no conscious necessity behind theni. 
 There are exceptions, but the exceptions are remark- 
 able men. 
 
 Now, theorize as we may, the fact at present is 
 that what thus paralyzes the energies of a few young 
 men brings the same paralysis to many young 
 women. Those whose parents are wealthy do not 
 learn any regular occupation at all. Those whose 
 parents are poor are obliged by necessity to learn 
 one; yet they do not learn it as men in general learn 
 theirs, but only as rich young men do, as if it were 
 something to be followed for a time only,—till they 
 ‘“come into their property.” To the rich young man 
 the property isa landed estate, or some bank-stock. 
 To the poor girl the prospective property is a 
 nusband. She expects to be married ; and after that 
 her money-making occupation is gone, and a new 
 avocation—that of housekeeping and maternity— 
 
 begins. It is no less arduous, no less honourable; but 
 
The Problem of Wages. 189 
 
 it is different. In it her previous special training 
 goes for nothing; and the thought of this must 
 diminish her interest in the previous special training. 
 It is only a temporary thing, like the few years’ 
 labour of a rich young man. There are exceptions, 
 but they are extraordinary. 
 
 One reason why women’s work is not at present 
 so well paid as that of men is because it is not 
 ordinarily so well done, especially in the more 
 difficult parts. All employers, male and female, 
 tell you this; and one great reason why it is not 
 so well done is because women have not, as men 
 have, a spring of permanent necessary to urge 
 them on. How shall we supply the spring? This 
 is the question we need to answer. As yet. I do 
 not think we have reached it. It does not seem 
 to me to be, like the suffrage question, one easily 
 settled. ‘The reader will find very important facts 
 and testimonies bearing upon it in Virginia Penny’s 
 “Cyclopedia of Female Employments.” * 
 
 I confess myself unable, even after a good many 
 years of study, to solve it fully; but a few proposi- 
 tions, |) think, are .sure;- and. may’ be -taken as 
 axioms to begin with. The general wages of 
 
 * Especially on, pps 110, 146, 235, 238, \243, 245, 247, 300, 
 318, 322, 367, 380. 
 
19o Common Sense about Women. 
 
 women will always depend greatly on the amount 
 of skill acquired by the mass of them. The mass 
 of women will always look forward to being married, 
 and, when married, to being necessarily withdrawn 
 from the labour-market. Those who look forward 
 to this withdrawal will not, as a rule, concentrate 
 themselves upon learning their vocation as if it were 
 for life; and, at any rate, when they leave it, they 
 will take their skill with them, and so lower the 
 average skill of the whole. 
 
 The problem, therefore, is how to equalize wages 
 between a sex which works continually throughout 
 life, driven by conscious necessity, and a sex which 
 habitually works with temporary expectations, 
 looking forward to a withdrawal from the labour- 
 market in a few years, and which, when so with- 
 drawn, carries its acquired skill with it, leaving 
 only inexperience in its place. We all wish to 
 solve the problem ; every man would like to have 
 his daughters as well paid for their labour as his 
 sons. The ballot will help to elucidate it, no doubt, 
 by putting woman’s political protection, at least, 
 into her own hands: but wholly to solve the problem 
 will take the wisdom of several generations ; nor will 
 it be done, perhaps, until the greater problem of 
 
 association vs. competition is also understood. It 
 
Lhe Problem of Wages. IQI 
 
 certainly never will be solved by slighting the 
 marriage-relation, or by advocating either “free 
 
 love” or celibacy for women or for men. 
 
 XEVIT: 
 THOROUGH. 
 
 “THE hopeless defect of women in all practical mat- 
 ters,” said a shrewd merchant the other day, “is, that 
 it is impossible to make them thorough.” -It was a 
 shallow remark, and so I told him. Women are 
 thorough in the things which they have accepted as 
 their sphere—in their housekeeping and their dress 
 and their social observances. There is nothing more 
 thorough on earth than the way housework is done 
 in a genuine New England household. There is an 
 exquisite thoroughness in the way a milliner’s or a 
 dressmaker’s work is done—a work such as clumsy 
 man cannot rival, and can hardly estimate. No gene- 
 ral plans his campaigns or marshals his armies better 
 than some women of socicty manage the circles of 
 which they are the centre. Day and night, winter 
 
 and summer, at city or watering-place, year in 
 
As 
 
 ss 
 
 192 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 and year out, such a woman keeps open house for 
 her gay world. She has a perpetual series of 
 guests who must be fed luxuriously, and amused 
 profusely ; she talks to them in four or five languages ; 
 at her entertainments, she notes who is present and 
 who absent, as carefully as Napoleon watched his 
 soldiers ; her interchange of cards, alone, is a thing 
 as complex as the army muster-rolls: thus she plans, 
 organizes, conquers, and governs. People speak of 
 her existence as that of a doll or a toy, when she is 
 the most untiring of campaigners. Grant that her 
 aim is, after all, unworthy, and that you pity the worn 
 face which has to force so many smiles. No matter: 
 the smiles are there, and so is the success. I often 
 wish that the reformers would do their work as tho- 
 roughly as the women of society do theirs. 
 
 No, there is no constitutional want of thoroughness 
 in women. ‘The trouble is, that into the new work 
 upon which they are just entering they have not yet 
 brought their thoroughness to bear. They suffer and 
 are defrauded and are reproached, simply because 
 they have not yet nerved themselves to do well the 
 things which they have asserted their right todo. A 
 distinguished woman, who earns perhaps the largest 
 income ever honestly earned by any woman off the 
 
 stage, told me the other day that she left all her busi- 
 
 ~ 
 
Thorough. rO3 
 
 ness affairs to the management of others, and did not 
 even know howto drawa check on a bank. Whata 
 melancholy self-exhibition was that of a clever 
 American woman, the author of half a dozen success- 
 ful books, refusing to look her own accounts in the 
 face, until they had got into such a tangle that not 
 even her own referees could disentangle them to suit 
 her! These things show, not that women are con- 
 stitutionally wanting in thoroughness, but that it is 
 hard to make them carry this quality into new fields. 
 
 I wish I could possibly convey to the young women 
 who.write for advice on literary projects, something 
 of the meaning of this word “thorough” as applied 
 to literary work. Scarcely any of them seem to 
 have a conception of it. Dash, cleverness, reckless- 
 ness, impatience of revision or of patient investigation, 
 these are the common traits. To a person of experi- 
 ence, no stupidity is so discouraging as a brilliancy 
 that has no roots. It brings nothing to pass ; where- 
 as a slow stupidity, if it takes time enough, may 
 conquer the world. Consider that for more than 
 twenty years the path of literature has been quite as 
 fully open for women as for men, in America—the 
 payment the same, the honour the same, the obstacles 
 no greater. Collegiate education has, until very lately, 
 been denied them; but how many men succeed as 
 
 O 
 
194 Comnton Sense about Women. 
 
 writers without that advantage! Yet how little, how 
 very little, of really good literary work has been done 
 by American women! Young girls appear one after 
 another: each writes a single clever story ora single 
 sweet poem, and then disappears for ever. Look at 
 Griswold’s “ Female Poets of America,” and you are 
 disposed to turn back to the title-page, and see if 
 these utterly forgotten names do not really represent 
 the “female poets” of some other nation. They are 
 forgotten, as most of the more numerous “female 
 prose writers” are forgotten, because they had no root. 
 Nobody doubts that women have cleverness enough, 
 and enough of power of expression. If you could 
 open the mails and take out the women’s letters, as 
 somebody says, they would prove far more graphic 
 and entertaining than those of the men. They 
 would be written, too, in what Macaulay calls—speak- 
 ing of Madame d’Arblay’s early style—“true woman's 
 English, clear, natural, and lively.” What they need 
 in order to convert this epistolary "brilliancy into 
 literature, is to be thorough. 
 
 You cannot separate woman’s rights and her re- 
 sponsibilities. In all ages of the world she has had a 
 certain limited work to do, and has done that well. 
 All that is needed, when new spheres are open, is 
 
 that she should carry the same fidelity into those. 
 
Thorough. 195 
 
 If she will work as hard to shape the children of her 
 brain as to rear her bodily offspring, will do intellec- 
 tual work as well as she does housework, and will 
 meet her moral responsibilities as she meets her 
 social engagements, then opposition will soon dis- 
 appear. The habit of thoroughness is the key to 
 all high success. Whatever is worth doing is worth 
 doing well. Only those who are faithful in a few 
 
 things will rightfully be made rulers over many. 
 
 SEVITI: 
 TALKING AND TAKING. 
 
 EVERY time a woman does anything original or re- 
 markable—inventing a rat-trap, let us say, or carving 
 thirty-six heads on a _ walnut-shell—all observers 
 shout applause. “ There’s a woman for you, indeed ! 
 Instead of talking about her rights, she takes them. 
 That’s the way to do it. What a lesson to these 
 declaimers upon the platform !” 
 
 It does not seem to occur to these wise people that 
 the right to talk is itself one of the chief rights in 
 
 O72 
 
195 Connuzsn Sense about Women. 
 
 America, and the way to reach all the others. To 
 
 talk, is to make a beginning, at any rate. To catch 
 
 oO? 
 
 people with your ideas, is more than to contrive a 
 rat-trap; and Isotta Nogarola, carving thirty-six 
 empty heads, was not working in so practical a 
 fashion as Mary Livermore when she instructs thirty- 
 six hundred full ones. 
 
 It shows the good sense of the woman suffrage 
 agitators that they have decided to begin with talk. 
 In the first place, talking is the most lucrative of all 
 professions in America ; and therefore it is the duty 
 of American women to secure their share of it. Mrs. 
 I'rances Anne Kemble used to say that she read 
 Shakspeare in public “for her bread ;” and when, 
 after melting all hearts by a course of farewell read- 
 ings, she decided to begin reading again, she said she 
 was doing it “for her butter.” So long as women are 
 often obliged to support themselves and their children, 
 and perhaps their husbands, by their own labour, 
 they have no right to work cheaply, unless driven to 
 it. Anna Dickinson has no right to make fifteen 
 dollars a week by sewing, if, by stepping out of the 
 ranks of needlewomen into the ranks of the talkers, 
 she can make a hundred dollars a day. Theorize as 
 we may, the fact is, that there is no kind of work in 
 
 America which brings such sure profits as public 
 
Lalking and Taking. 197 
 
 speaking. If women are unfitted for it, or if they 
 “know the value of peace and quietness,” as the 
 hand-organ-man says, and can afford to hold their 
 tongues, let them do so. But if they have tongues, 
 and like to use them, they certainly ought to make 
 some money by the performance. 
 
 This is the utilitarian view. And when we bring 
 in higher objects, it is plain that the way to get any 
 thing in America is to talk about it. Silence is 
 golden, no doubt, and like other gold remains in the 
 bank vaults, and does not just now circulate very 
 freely as currency. Even literature in America is 
 utterly second to oratory as a means of immediate 
 influence. Of all sway, that of the orator is the most 
 potent and most perishable; and the student and 
 the artist are apt to hold themselves aloof from it, 
 for this reason. But it is the one means in America 
 to accomplish immediate results, and women who 
 would take their rights must take them through 
 talking. It is the appointed way. 
 
 Under a good old-fashioned monarchy, if a woman 
 wished to secure any thing for her sex, she must 
 cajole a court, or become the mistress of a monarch. 
 That epoch ended with the French Revolution. 
 When Bonaparte wished to silence Madame de Staél, 
 
 he said, “What does that woman want? Does she 
 
198 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 want the money the government owes to her father ?” 
 When Madame de Staél heard of it she said, “The 
 question is not what I want, but what I think.” 
 Henceforth women, like men, are to say what they 
 think. For all that flattery and seduction and sin, 
 we have substituted the simple weapon of talk. If 
 women wish education, they must talk ; if better laws, 
 they must talk. The one chief argument against 
 woman suffrage, with men, is that so few women even 
 talk about it. 
 
 As long as talk can effect any thing, it is the duty 
 of women to talk; and in America, where it effects 
 every thing, they should talk all the time. When 
 they have obtained, as a class, absolute equality of 
 rights with men, their talk on this subject may be 
 silent, and they may accept, if they please, that 
 naughty masculine definition of a happy marriage— 
 
 the union of a deaf man with a dumb woman. 
 
 a oe 
 
for Self-Protection. 199 
 
 SUPE RAGE. 
 
 ** No such phrase as virtual representation was ever known in law or 
 
 coustitution. Ltrs altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded 
 nd absur 7 
 
 and absurd. We must not be cheated by airy such phantom or any other 
 
 trick of law and politics.” —J AMES OTIS, quoted by CHARLES SUMNER 
 in Speech, March 7, 1866. 
 
 ADS 
 FOR SELF-PROTECTION. 
 
 I] REMEMBER to have read, many years ago, the life 
 of Sir Samuel Romilly, the English philanthropist. 
 He was the author of more beneficent legal reforms 
 than any man of his day, and there was in this book 
 a long list of the changes he still meant to bring 
 about. It struck me very much, that, among these 
 proposed reforms, not one of any importance referred 
 to the laws about women. 
 
 It shows—what all experience has shown—that no 
 class or race or sex can safely trusts its protection 
 in any hands but its own. The laws of England 
 in regard to woman were then so bad that Lord 
 Brougham afterwards said that they needed total 
 
 reconstruction, if they were to be touched at all. 
 
Pn 
 
 200 Common Sense about Wonzen. 
 
 And yet it is only since woman suffrage began to be 
 talked about, that the work of law reform has really 
 taken firm hold. In many cases in America the 
 beneficent measures are directly to be traced to some 
 appeal from feminine advocates. Even in Canada, 
 as stated the other day by Dr. Cameron, formerly of 
 Toronto, the bill protecting the property of married 
 women was passed under the immediate pressure of 
 Lucy Stone’s eloquence. And} even whercaume a 
 direct agency could not be traced, the general fact 
 that the atmosphere was full of the agitation had 
 much to do with all the reforms that took place. 
 Legislatures, unwilling to give woman the ballot, 
 were shamed into giving her something. The chair- 
 man of the Judiciary Committee in Rhode Island told 
 me, that, until he heard women address the com- 
 mittee, he had not reflected upon their legal dis- 
 abilities, or thought how unjust these were. While 
 the matter was left to the other sex only, even men 
 like Sir Samuel Romilly forgot the wrongs of woman. 
 When she began to advocate her own cause men also 
 waked up. 
 
 But now that they are awake, they ask, Is not this 
 sufficient ? Not at all. If an agent who has cheated 
 you surrenders reluctantly one-half of your stolen 
 
 goods, you do not stop there and say, “ It is enough. 
 
for Self-Protection. 201 
 
 Your intention is honourable. Please continue my 
 agent with increased pay.” On the contrary, you 
 say, “Your admission of wrong is a plea of guilty. 
 Given me-thegresti off what isrmine! i There\tis' no 
 defence like self-defence, no protection like self-pro- 
 tection. 
 
 All theories of chivalry and generosity and vicarious 
 representation fall before the fact that woman has 
 been grossly wronged by man. ‘That being the case, 
 the only modest and honest thing for man to do is to 
 say, ‘“ Henceforward have a voice in making your own 
 laws.” Till this is done, she has no sure safeguard, 
 since otherwise the same men who made the old bar- 
 barous laws may at any time restore them. 
 
 It is common to say that woman suffrage wil! 
 make no great difference ; for that women will think 
 very much as men do, and it will simply double 
 the vote without varying the result. About many 
 matters this may be true. To be sure, it is probable 
 that on questions of conscience, like slavery and 
 temperance, the woman’s vote would by no means 
 coincide with man’s. But grant that it would. The 
 fact remains—and all history shows it—that on all 
 that concerns her own protection a woman needs her 
 own vote. Would a woman vote to give her husband 
 
 the power of bequeathing her children to the control 
 
a 
 
 202 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 and guardianship of somebody else? Would a 
 woman vote to sustain the law by which a Massa- 
 chusetts chief justice bade the police take those 
 crying children from their mother’s side in the 
 Boston court-room a few years ago, and hand them 
 over to a comparative stranger, because that mother 
 had married again? You might as well ask whether 
 the coloured vote would sustain the Dred Scott 
 decision. Tariffs or banks may come or go the same, 
 whether the voters be white or black, male or female. 
 But, when the wrongs of an oppressed class or sex 
 are to be righted, the ballot is the only guaranty. 
 After they have gained a potential voice for them- 
 selves, the Sir Samuel Romillys will remember 
 them. 
 
 ——— 
 
 L. 
 WOMANLY STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 THE newspapers periodically express a desire to know 
 whether women have given evidence, on the whole, 
 of superior statesmanship to men. There are con- 
 stant requests that they will define their position as 
 to the tariff and the fisheries and the civil-service 
 
 question. If they do not speak, it is naturally as- 
 
Womanly Statesmanshtp. 2G 
 
 sumed that they will for ever after hold their peace. 
 Let us see how that matter stands, 
 
 It is said that the greatest mechanical skill in 
 America is to be found among professional burglars 
 who come here from England. Suppose one of these 
 men were in prison, and we were to stand outside 
 and taunt him through the window: “Here is a 
 locomotive engine: why do you not mend or manage 
 it? Here is a steam printing-press: if you know 
 any thing, set it up forme! Youa mechanic, when 
 you have not proved that you understand any of 
 these things? Nonsense!” 
 
 But Jack Sheppard, if he condescended to answer 
 us at all, would coolly say, “ Wait a while, till I have 
 finished my present job. Being in prison, my first 
 business is to get out of prison. Wait till I have 
 picked this lock, and mined this wall; wait till I 
 have made a saw out of a watch-spring, and a ladder 
 out of a pair of blankets. Let me do my first task, 
 and get out of limbo, and then see if your little 
 printing-presses and locomotives are too puzzling for 
 my fingers.” 
 
 Politically speaking, woman is in prison, and her 
 first act of skill must be in getting through the wall. 
 For her there is no tariff question, no question of the 
 fisheries. She will come to that by-and-by, if you 
 
204 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 please ; but for the present her statesmanship must 
 be employed nearer home. The “civil-service re- 
 form” in which she is most concerned is a reform 
 which shall bring her in contact with the civil service. 
 Her political creed, for the present, is limited to that 
 of Sterne’s starling in the cage,—“I can’t get out.” 
 If she is supposed to have any common-sense at all, 
 she will best show it by beginning at the point where 
 she is, instead of at the point where somebody else 
 is. She would indeed be as foolish as these editors 
 think her if she now spent her brains upon the tariff 
 question, which she cannot reach, instead of upon 
 her own enfranchisement, which she is fast reaching. 
 The woman-suffrage movement in America, in all 
 its stages and subdivisions, has been the work of 
 woman. No doubt men have helped in it ; much of 
 the talking has been done by them, and they have 
 furnished many of the printed documents. But the 
 energy, the methods, the unwearied purpose of the 
 movement, have come from women: they have led 
 in all councils ; they have established the newspapers, 
 got up the conventions, addressed the legislatures, 
 and raised the money. Thirty years have shown, 
 with whatever temporary variations, one vast wave 
 of progress towards success, both in this country and 
 
 in Europe. Now, success is statesmanship. 
 
Womanly Statesmanshtp. 205 
 
 I remember well the shouts of laughter that used 
 to greet the anti-slavery orators when they claimed 
 that the real statesmen of the country were not the 
 Calhouns and Websters, who spent their strength in 
 trying to sustain slavery, and failed, but the Garri- 
 sons, who devoted their lives to its overthrow, and 
 were succeeding. Yet who now doubts this? Tried 
 by the same standard, the statesmanship of to-day 
 does not lie in the men who can find no larger ques- 
 tions before them than those which concern the 
 fisheries, but in the women whose far-reaching efforts 
 will one day make every existing voting-list so much 
 waste paper. | 
 
 Of course, when the voting-lists with the women’s 
 names are ready to be printed, it will be interesting 
 to speculate as to how these new monarchs of our 
 destiny will use their power. For myself, a long 
 course of observation in the anti-slavery and woman- 
 suffrage movements has satisfied me that women are 
 not idiots, and that, on the whole, when they give 
 their minds to a question, whether moral or practical, 
 they understand it quite as readily as men. In the 
 anti-slavery movement it is certain that a woman, 
 Elizabeth Heyrick, gave the first impulse to its direct 
 and simple solution in England ; and that another 
 
 woman, Mrs. Stowe, did more than any man, except 
 
206 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 perhaps Garrison and John Brown, to secure its right 
 solution here. There was never a moment, I am 
 confident, when any great political question growing 
 out of the anti-slavery struggle might not have been 
 put to vote more safely among the women of New 
 England than among the clergy, or the lawyers, or 
 the college professors. If they have done so well 
 in the last great issue, it is fair to assume that, after 
 they have a sufficient inducement to study out future 
 issues, they at least will not be very much behind 
 the men. 
 
 But we cannot keep it tooclearly in view that the 
 whole question, whether women would vote better or 
 worse than men on general questions, is a minor 
 matter. It was equally a minor matter in case of 
 the negroes. We gave the negroes the ballot, simply 
 because they needed it for their own protection ; 
 and we shall by-and-by give it to women for the 
 same reason. Tried by that test, we shall find that 
 their statesmanship will be genuine. When they 
 come into power, drunken husbands will no longer 
 control their wives’ earnings, and a chief justice will 
 no longer order a child to be removed from its 
 mother, amid its tears and outcries, merely because 
 that mother has married again. And if, as we are 
 
 constantly assured, woman’s first duty is to her home 
 
Womanly Statesmanshtp. 207 
 
 and her children, she may count it a good beginning 
 in statesmanship to secure to herself the means of 
 protecting both. That once settled, it will be time 
 enough to “interview” her in respect to the proper 
 
 rate of duty on pig-iron. 
 
 LI. 
 TOO MUCH PREDICTION. 
 
 “SEEK not to proticipate,’ says Mrs. Gamp, the 
 venerable nurse in “ Martin Chuzzlewit ”—“ but take 
 "em as they come, and as they go.” Iam persuaded 
 that our woman-suffrage arguments would be im- 
 proved by this sage counsel, and that at present we 
 indulge in too many bold anticipations. 
 
 Is there not altogether too much tendency to pre- 
 dict what women will do when they vote? Could 
 that good time come to-morrow, we should be startled 
 to find to how many different opinions and “causes” 
 the new voters were already pledged. One speaker 
 wishes that women should be emancipated, because 
 of the fidelity with which they are sure to support 
 
 certain desirable measures, as peace, order, freedom, 
 
2c8 Common Sense about Wonen. 
 
 temperance, righteousness, and judgment to come. 
 Then the next speaker has his or her schedule of 
 political virtues, and is equally confident that women, 
 if once enfranchised, will guarantee clear majorities 
 for them all. The trouble is, that we thus mortgage 
 this new party of the future, past ‘relief, beyond pos- 
 sibility of payment, and incur the ridicule of the 
 unsanctified by committing our cause to a great 
 many contradictory pledges. 
 
 I know an able and high-minded woman of foreign 
 birth, who courageously, but as I think mistakenly, 
 calls herself an atheist, and who has for years advo- 
 cated woman suffrage as the only antidote to the rule 
 of the clergy. On the other hand, an able speaker 
 in the late Boston convention advocated the same 
 thing as the best way of defeating atheism, and 
 securing the positive assertion of religion by the 
 community. Both cannot be correct: neither is 
 entitled to speak for woman. That being the case, 
 would it not be better to keep clear of this dangerous 
 ground of prediction, and keep to the argument 
 based onrights and needs? If ourtheory of govern- 
 ment be worth any thing, woman has the same right 
 to the ballot that man has: she certainly needs it as 
 much for self-defence. How she will use it, when 
 
 she gets it, is her own affair. It may be that she 
 
_ ie 
 
 Too much Prediction. 209 
 
 will use it more wisely than her brothers ; but I am 
 satisfied to believe that she will use it as well. Let 
 us not attribute infallible wisdom and virtue, even to 
 women ; for, as dear Mrs. Poyser saysin “ Adan 
 Bede,” “God Almighty made some of ’em foolish to 
 match the men.” 
 
 It is common to assume, for instance, that all 
 women by nature favour peace; and that, even if 
 they do not always seem to promote it in their 
 social walk and conversation, they certainly will in 
 their political When we consider how all the 
 pleasing excitements, achievements, and glories of 
 war, such as they are, accrue to men only, and 
 how large a part of the miseries are brought home 
 to women, it might seem that their vote on this 
 matter, at least, would be a sure thing. Thus far 
 the theory: the fact being that we have but just 
 emerged from a civil war which convulsed the 
 Datioummane  cOsteshalhi ae millions lives: and which 
 was, from the very beginning, fomented, stimu- 
 lated, and applauded, at least on one side, by the 
 united voice of the women. It will be generally 
 admitted by those who know, that, but for the 
 women of the seceding States, the war of the 
 Rebellion would have been waged more feebly, been 
 sooner ended, and far more easily forgotten. Nay, 
 
 P 
 
210 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 I was told a few days since by an able Southern 
 lawyer, who was long the mayor of one of the 
 largest Southern cities, that in his opinion the prac- 
 tice of duelling—which is an epitome of war—owes 
 its continued existence at the South to a sustain- 
 ing public sentiment among the women. 
 
 _Again, where the sympathy of women is wholly 
 on the side of right, it is by no means safe to assume 
 that their mode of enforcing that sentiment will be 
 equally judicious. Take, for instance, the temper- 
 ance cause. It is usual to assume that women are 
 a unit on that question. When we look at the two 
 extremes of society—-the fine lady pressing wine 
 upon her New Year’s visitors, and the Irishwoman 
 laying in a family supply of whisky to last over 
 Sunday—the assumption seems hasty. But grant 
 it. Is it equally sure that when woman takes hold 
 of that most difficult of all legislation, the license 
 and prohibitory laws, she will handle them more 
 wisely than men have done? Will her more ardent 
 zeal solve the problem on which so much zeal has 
 already been lavished in vain? In large cities, for 
 instance, where there is already more law than can 
 be enforced, will her additional ballots afford the 
 means to enforce it ? It may be so; but it seems wiser 
 
 not to predict nor to anticipate, but to wait and hope. 
 
Too much Prediction. 2IL 
 
 It is no reproach on woman to say that she is not 
 infallible on particular questions. There is much 
 reason to suppose that in politics, as in every other 
 sphere, the joint action of the sexes will be better 
 and wiser than that of either singly. It seems 
 obvious that the experiment of republican govern- 
 ment will be more fairly tried when one-half the 
 race is no longer disfranchised. It is quite certain, 
 at any rate, that no class can trust its rights to the 
 mercy and chivalry of any other, but that, the weaker 
 it is, the more it needs all political aids and securities 
 for self-protection. Thus far, we are on safe ground ; 
 and here, as it seems to me, the claim for suffrage 
 may securely rest. To go farther in our assertions 
 seems to me unsafe, although many of our wisest 
 and most eloquent may differ from me; and, the 
 nearer we approach success, the more important it is 
 to look to our weapons, It isa plausible and tempt- 
 ing argument, to claim suffrage for woman on the 
 eround that she is an angel ; but I think it will prove | 
 
 wiser, in the end, to claim it for her as being human. 
 
212 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 ‘Ree 
 EDUCATION via SUFFRAGE. 
 
 I KNOW a rich bachelor of large property who 
 fatigues his friends by perpetual denunciations of 
 every thing American, and especially of universal 
 suffrage. He rarely votes ; and I was much amazed, 
 when the popular vote was to be taken on building 
 an expensive schoolhouse, to see him go to the polls, 
 and vote in the affirmative. On being asked his 
 reason, he explained that, while we laboured under 
 the calamity of universal (male) suffrage, he thought 
 it best to mitigate its evils by educating the voters. 
 In short, he wished, as Mr. Lowe said in England 
 when the last Reform Bill passed, “to prevail upon 
 our future masters to learn their alphabets.” 
 
 These motives may not be generous; but the 
 schoolhouses, when they are built, are just as useful. 
 Even girls get the benefit of them, though the long 
 delay in many places before girls got their share 
 came in part from the want of this obvious stimulus, 
 It is universal male suffrage that guarantees school- 
 
 house and school. The most selfish man under- 
 
Education via Suffrage. ote 
 
 stands that argument: “We must educate the 
 masses, if it is only to keep them from our throats.” 
 
 But there is a wider way in which suffrage guaran- 
 beeswcaucation. Ateevyery election: time, political 
 information is poured upon the whole voting com- 
 munity, till it is deluged. Presses run night and 
 day to print newspaper extras; clerks sit up all 
 night to frank congressional speeches; the most 
 eloquent men in the community expound the most 
 difficult matters to the ignorant. Of course each 
 party affords only its own point of view ; but every 
 man has a neighbour who is put under treatment 
 by some other party, and who is constantly attack- 
 ing all who will listen to his provoking and pestilent 
 counter-statements. All the common-school educa- 
 tion of the United States does not equal the educa- 
 tion of election day; and, as in some States elec- 
 tions are held very often, this popular university 
 seems to be kept in session almost the whole year 
 round. The consequence is a remarkable average 
 popular knowledge of political affairs—a training 
 which American women now miss, but which will 
 come to them with the ballot. 
 
 And in still another way, there will be an educa- 
 tion coming to woman from the right of suffrage. It 
 will come from her own sex, proceeding from highest 
 to lowest. We often hear it-said that, after enfran- 
 
he foe 
 
 214 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 chisement, the more educated women will not vote,. 
 while the ignorant will. But Mrs. Howe admirably 
 pointed out, at a Philadelphia convention, that, the 
 moment women have the ballot, it will become the 
 pressing duty of the more educated women, even 
 in self-protection, to train the rest. The very fact 
 of the danger will be a stimulus to duty, with 
 women, as it already is with men. 
 
 It has always seemed to me rather childish, in a 
 man of superior education, or talent, or wealth, to 
 complain that when election day comes he has no 
 more votes than the man who plants his potatoes 
 or puts in his coal, The truth is, that under the 
 _tiost thorough system of universal suffrage the man 
 of wealth or talent or natural leadership has still « 
 disproportionate influence, still casts a hundred votes: 
 where the poor of ignorant or feeble man throws 
 but one. Even the outrages of New York elec- 
 tions turned out to be caused by the fact that the 
 leading rogues had used their brains and energy, 
 while the men of character had not. When it came 
 to the point, it was found that a few caricatures 
 by Nast, and a few columns of figures in the 7zmes, 
 were more than a match for all the repeaters of the 
 ring. It is always so. Andrew Johnson, with all 
 the patronage of the nation, had not the influence 
 of “Nasby” with his one newspaper. The whole 
 
Pee "ms 
 
 Education via Suffrage. 215 
 
 Chinese question was perceptibly and instantly modi- 
 fied when Harte wrote “The Heathen Chinee.” 
 
 These things being so, it indicates feebleness or 
 dyspepsia when an educated man is heard whining, 
 about election time, with his fears of ignorant voting. 
 It is his business to enlighten and control that igno- 
 rance. With a voice and a pen at his command, 
 with a town-hall in every town for the one, anda 
 newspaper in every village for the other, he has such 
 advantages over his ignorant neighbours that the 
 only doubt is, whether his privileges are not greater 
 than he deserves. For one, in writing for the press, 
 I am impressed by the undue greatness, not by the 
 littleness, of the power I wield. And what is true 
 of men will be true of women. If the educated 
 women of America have not brains or energy 
 enough to control, in the long-run, the votes of the 
 ignorant women around them, they will deserve a 
 severe lesson, and will be sure, like the men in New 
 York, to receive it. And thenceforward they will 
 educate and guide that ignorance, instead of evading 
 or cringing before it. 
 
 But I have no fear about the matter. It is a libel 
 on American women to say that they will not go 
 anywhere or do any thing which is for the good 
 of their children and their husbands. Travel West. 
 
 on any of our great lines of railroad, and see what 
 
216 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 women undergo in transporting their households 
 to their new homes. See the watching and the 
 feeding, and the endless answers to the endless 
 questions, and the toil to keep little Sarah warm, 
 and little Johnny cool, and the baby comfortable. 
 What a hungry, tired, jaded, forlorn mass of 
 humanity it is, as the sun rises on it each morn- 
 ing, in the soiled and breathless railway car! Yet 
 that household group is America in the making ; 
 those are the future kings and queens, the little 
 princes and princesses, of this land. Now, is the 
 mother who has undergone for the transportation of 
 these children all this enormous labour, to shrink at 
 her journey’s end from the slight additional labour of 
 coing to the polls to vote whether those little ones 
 shall have schools or rum-shops? The thought is 
 an absurdity. A few fine ladies in cities will fear to 
 spoil their silk dresses, asa few foppish gentlemen 
 now fear for their broadcloth. But the mass of intel- 
 lisent American women will vote, as do the mass of 
 
 men. 
 
as 
 
 Follow your Leaders. iy, 
 
 ELLY 
 FOLLOW YOUR LEADERS. 
 
 “THERE go thirty thousand men,’ shouted the 
 Portuguese, as Wellington, with a few staff-officers, 
 rode along the mountain-side. The action of the 
 leaders’ minds, in any direction, has a value out of 
 all proportion to their numbers. In a campaign, 
 there is a council of officers,—Grant and Sherman 
 and Sheridan perhaps. They are but a trifling 
 minority, yet what they plan the whole army will 
 do; and such is the faith in areal leader, that were 
 all the restraints of discipline for the moment re- 
 laxed, the rank and file would still follow his 
 judgment. What a few general officers see to be 
 the best to-day, the sergeants and corporals and 
 private soldiers will usually see to be best to-morrow. 
 
 In peace, also, there is a silent leadership ; only 
 that in peace, as there is more time to spare, the 
 leaders are expected to persuade the rank and file, 
 instead of commanding them. Yet it comes to the 
 same thing in the end. The movement begins with 
 
 certain guides, and, if you wish to know the 
 
 sg ae a oi 
 en ot , .— “ Ex | whi. CER 
 
218 Conemon Sense about Women. 
 
 future, keep your eye on them. If you wish to 
 know what is already decided, ask the majority ; 
 but, if you wish to find out. what is likely to be 
 done mext, ask the leaders. 
 
 It is constantly said that the majority of women 
 do not yet desire to vote, and it istrue. But, to find 
 out whether they are likely to wish for it, we must 
 keep our eyes on the women who lead their sex. The 
 representative women,—those who naturally stand 
 for the rest, those most eminent for knowledge and 
 self-devotion,—how do they view the thing? The 
 rank and file do not yet demand the ballot, you 
 say ; but how is it with the general officers ? 
 
 Now, it is aremarkable fact, about which those who 
 have watched this movement for twenty years can 
 hardly be mistaken, that almost any woman who 
 reaches a certain point of intellectual or moral devel- 
 opment will presently be found desiring the ballot 
 for her sex. If this be so, it predicts the future. It is 
 the judgment of Grant and Sherman and Sheridan, 
 as against that of the average private soldier of the 
 Two Hundredth Infantry. Set aside, if you please, 
 the specialists of this particular agitation,—those who 
 were first known to the public through its advocacy. 
 There is no just reason why they should be set aside, 
 yet concede that for a moment. The fact remains 
 that the ablest women in the land—those who were 
 
 ——_ - ~~ ow eee a ae sehr = dl Fe ~~ 
 
Follow your Leaders. pata 
 J 
 
 recognized as ablest in other spheres, before they 
 took this particular duty upon them—are extremely 
 apt to assume this cross when they reach a certain 
 stage of development. 
 
 When Margaret Fuller first came forward into 
 literature, she supposed that literature was all she 
 wanted. It was not till she came to write upon 
 woman’s position that she discovered what woman 
 needed. Clara Barton, driving her ambulance or her 
 supply-waggon at the battle’s edge, did not foresee, 
 perhaps, that she should make that touching appeal, 
 when the battle was over, imploring her own enfran- 
 chisement from the soldiers she had befriended. Lydia 
 Maria Child, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, Louisa Alcott, came to the claim for the bal- 
 lot earlier than a million others, because they were 
 the intellectual leaders of American womanhood. 
 They saw farthest, because they were in the highest 
 place. They were the recognized representatives of 
 their sex before they gave in their adhesion to the 
 new demand. Their judgment is as the judgment of 
 the council of officers; while Flora McFlimsey’s 
 opinion is as the opinion of John Smith, unassigned 
 recruit. But, if the generals make arrangements for 
 a battle, the chance is that John Smith will have to 
 take a hand in it, or else run away. 
 
 It is a rare thing for the petition for suffrage from 
 
 a 
 ope 
 
220 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 any town to comprise the majority of women in that 
 town. It makes no difference: if there are Tew 
 women in the town who want to vote, there is as 
 much propriety in their voting as if there were ten 
 millions, so long as the majority are equally pro- 
 tected in their right to stay at home. But, when the 
 names of petitioners come to be weighed as well as 
 counted, the character, the purity, the intelligence, 
 the social and domestic value of the petitioners is 
 seldom denied. The women who wish to vote are 
 not the idle, the ignorant, the narrow-minded, or the 
 vicious ; they are not “the dangerous classes:” they 
 represent the best class in the community, when tried 
 by the highest standard. They are the natural 
 leaders. What they now see to be right will also be 
 perceived even by the foolish and the ignorant by- 
 and-by. 
 
 In a poultry-yard in spring, when the first brood of 
 ducklings go toddling to the water-side, no doubt all 
 the younger or feebler broods, just hatched out of 
 similar eggs, think these innovators dreadfully mis- 
 taken. “You are out of place” they ieebiyspcae: 
 “See how happy we are in our safe nests! Perhaps, 
 by-and-by, when properly introduced into society, we 
 may run abouta little on land, but to swim !——never !” 
 Meanwhile their elder kindred are splashing and 
 diving in ecstasy; and, so surely as they are born 
 
follow your Leaders. at 
 
 ducklings, all the rest will swim in their turn. The 
 instinct of the first duck solves the problem for all 
 the rest. It is amere question of time. Sooner or 
 later, all the broods in the most conservative yard 
 will follow their leaders. 
 
 —————— 0) 
 
 EIM 
 HOW TO MAKE WOMEN UNDERSTAND POLITICS. 
 
 AN English member of Parliament said in a speech, 
 some years ago, that the stupidest man had a clearer 
 understanding of political questions than the brightest 
 woman. He did not find it convenient to say what 
 must be the condition of a nation which for many 
 years has had a woman for its sovereign; but he 
 certainly said bluntly what many men feel. It is not 
 indeed very hard to find the source of this feeling. 
 It is not merely that women are inexperienced in 
 questions of finance or administrative practice, for 
 many men are equally ignorant of these. But it is 
 undoubtedly true of a large class of more funda- 
 mental questions,—as, for instance, of some now 
 pend ng at Washington,—which even many clear- 
 headed women find it hard to understand, while men 
 of far less general training comprehend them entirely. 
 
 Questions of the distribution of power, for instance, 
 
222 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 between the executive, judicial, and legislative 
 branches of government—or between the United 
 States government and those of the separate States 
 —belong to the class I mean. Many women of great 
 intelligence show a hazy indistinctness of views when 
 the question arises whether it is the business of the 
 General Government to preserve order at the voting- 
 places at a congressional election, for instance, as 
 the Republicans hold ; or whether it should be left 
 absolutely in the hands of the State officials, as the 
 Democrats maintain. Most women would probably 
 say that so long as order was preserved, it made very 
 little difference who did it. Yet, if one goes intoa 
 shoe-shop or a blacksmith’s shop, one may hear just 
 these questions discussed in all their bearings by 
 uneducated men, and it will be seen that they involve 
 a principle. Why is this difference? Does it show 
 some constitutional inferiority in women as to this 
 particular faculty ? 
 
 The question is best solved by considering a case 
 somewhat parallel. The South Carolina negroes were 
 considered very stupid, even by many who knew them ; 
 and they certainly were densely ignorant on many 
 subjects. Put face to face with a difficult point of 
 finance legislation, I think they would have been 
 found to know even less about it than I do. Yet the 
 abolition of slavery was held in those days by many 
 
How to make Women Understand Politics. 223 
 
 great statesmen to be a subject so difficult that they 
 shrank from discussing it ; and nevertheless I: used 
 to find that these ignorant men understood it quite 
 clearly in all its bearings, Offer a bit of sophistry 
 to them, try to blind them with false logic on this 
 subject, and they would detect it as promptly, and 
 answer it as keenly, as Garrison or Phillips would 
 have done; and, indeed, they would give very much 
 the same answers. What was the reason? Notthat 
 they were half wise and half stupid; but that they 
 were dull where their own interests had not trained 
 them, and they were sharp and keen where their own 
 interests were concerned. 
 
 I have no doubt that it will be so with women 
 when they vote. About some things they will be 
 slow to learn; but, about all that immediately con- 
 cerns themselves, they will know more at the very 
 beginning than many wise men have learned since 
 the world began. How long it took for English- 
 speaking men to correct, even partially, the iniquities 
 of the old common law !—but a parliament of women 
 would have set aside at a single sitting the alleged 
 right of the husband to correct his wife with a stick 
 no bigger than his thumb. It took the men of a 
 certain State of this Union a good many years to see 
 that it was an outrage to confiscate to the State one- 
 
 half the property of aman who died childless, leaving 
 
204 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 his widow only the other half; but a legislature of 
 women would have annihilated that enormity by a 
 single day’s work. I have never seen reason to 
 believe that women on general questions would act 
 niore wisely or more conscientiously, as a rule, than 
 men: but self-preservation is a wonderful quickener 
 of the brain ; and, in all questions bearing on their 
 own rights and opportunities as women, it is they who 
 will prove shrewd and keen, and men who will prove 
 obtuse, as indeed they have usually been. 
 
 Another point that adds force to this is the fact 
 that wherever women, by their special position, have 
 more at stake than usual in public affairs, even as 
 now organized, they are apt to be equal to the occa- 
 sion. When the men of South Carolina were ready 
 to go to war for the “States-Rights” doctrines of 
 Calhoun, the women of that State had also those 
 doctrines at their fingers’-ends. At Washington, 
 where politics make the breath of life, you will often 
 find the wives of members of Congress following the 
 debates, and noting every point gained or lost, 
 because these are matters in which they and their 
 families are personally concerned ; and, as for that 
 army of women employed in the “ departments” of 
 the government, they are politicians every one, 
 because their bread depends upon it. 
 
 _ The inference is, that, if women as a class are now 
 
flow to make Women Understand Politics. 225 
 
 —— 
 
 unfitted for politics, it is because they have not that 
 pressure of personal interest and responsibility by 
 which men are unconsciously trained. Give this, and 
 self-interest will do the rest ; aided by that power of 
 conscience and affection which is certainly not less in 
 them than in men, even if we claim no more. A 
 young lady of my acquaintance opposed woman 
 suffrage in conversation on various grounds, one of 
 which was that it would, if enacted, compel her to 
 read the newspapers, which she greatly disliked. I 
 pleaded that this was not a fatal objection ; since 
 many men voted “early and often” without reading 
 them, and in fact without knowing how to read at all. 
 She said, in reply, that this might do for men, but 
 that women were far more conscientious, and, if they 
 were once compelled to vote, they would wish to 
 know what they were voting for. This seemed to me 
 to contain the whole philosophy of the matter ; and 
 I respected the keenness of her suggestion, though it 
 
 led me to an opposite conclusion. 
 
226 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 DY 
 “INFERIOR TO MAN, AND NEAR TO ANGELS,” 
 
 IF it were anywhere the custom to disfranchise 
 persons of superior virtue because of their virtue, and 
 to present others with the ballot, simply because they 
 had been in the State Prison—then the exclusion of 
 women from political rights would be a high compli- 
 ment, no doubt. But I can find no record in history 
 of any such legislation, unless so far as itis contained 
 in the doubtful tradition of the Tuscan city of Pistoia, 
 where men are said to have been ennobled as a 
 punishment for crime. Among us crime may often 
 be a covert means of political prominence, but it is 
 not the ostensible ground; nor are people habitually 
 struck from the voting-lists for performing some rare 
 and eminent service, such as saving human life, or 
 reading every word of a Presidential message. If a 
 man has been President of the United States, we do 
 not disfranchise him thenceforward ; if he has been 
 governor, we do not declare him thenceforth ineligible 
 to the office of “United States senator. “On @the 
 contrary, the supposed reward of high merit is to give 
 higher civic privileges. Sometimes these are even 
 
“Tnferior to Man.” 227 
 
 forced on unwilling recipients, as when Plymouth 
 Colony in 1633 imposed a fine of twenty pounds on 
 any one who should refuse the office of governor. 
 
 It is utterly contrary to all tradition and precedent, 
 therefore, to suppose that women have been hitherto 
 disfranchised because of any supposed superiority. 
 Indeed, the theory is self-annihilating, and involves 
 all supporters in hopeless inconsistency. Thus the 
 Southern slaveholders were wont to argue that a 
 negro was only blest when a slave, and there was no 
 such inhumanity as to free him. Then, if a slave 
 happened to save his master’s life, he was rewarded 
 by emancipation immediately, amid general applause. 
 The act refuted the theory. And so, every time we 
 have disfranchised a rebel, or presented some eminent 
 foreigner with the freedom of a city, we have recog- 
 nized that enfranchisement, after all, means honour, 
 and disfranchisement implies disgrace. 
 
 I do not see how any woman can help a thrill of 
 indignation, when she first opens her eyes to the fact 
 that it is really contempt, not reverence, that has so 
 long kept her sex from an equal share of legal, poli- 
 tical, and educational rights. In spite of the duty 
 paid to individual women as mothers, in spite of the 
 reverence paid by the Greeks and the Germanic 
 races to certain women as priestesses and sibyls, the 
 fact remains that this sex has been generally recog- 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 Comnion Sense about Women. 
 
 nized, in past ages of the human race, as stamped by 
 hopeless inferiority, not by angelic superiority. This 
 is carried so far, that a certain taint of actual inferi- 
 ority is held to attach to women in barbarous nations. 
 Among certain Indian tribes, the service of the gods 
 is defiled if a woman but touches the implements 
 
 of sacrifice ; and a Turk apologizes to a Christian 
 
 ; 
 physician for the mention of the women of his family, 
 in the phrases used to soften the mention of any 
 degrading creature. Mr. Leland tells us that among 
 the English gipsies any object that a woman treads 
 upon, or sweeps with the skirts of her dress, is de- 
 stroyed or made away with in some way, as unfit for 
 use. In reading the history of manners, it is easy to 
 trace the steps from this degradation up to the point 
 now attained, such as it is. Yet even the habit of 
 physiological contempt is not gone, as readers of late 
 controversies on “ Sex in Education” know full well ; 
 and I do not see how any one can read history with- 
 out seeing, all around us, in society, education, and 
 politics, the tradition of inferiority. Many laws and 
 usages which in themselves might not strike all women 
 as intrinsically worth striving for—as the exclusion 
 of women from colleges or from the ballot-box— 
 assume great importance to a woman’s self-respect, 
 when she sees in these the plain survival of the same 
 contempt that once took much grosser forms. 
 
“Inferior to Man.” 229 
 
 And it must be remembered that in civilized com- 
 munities the cynics, who still frankly express this 
 utter contempt, are better friends to women than the 
 flatterers, who conceal it in the drawing-room, and 
 only utter it freely in the lecture-room, the club, and 
 the Worth American Review. Contempt at least 
 arouses pride and energy. To be sure, in the face of 
 history, the contemptuous tone in regard to women 
 seems to me untrue, unfair, and dastardly; but, like 
 any other extreme injustice, it leads to reaction. It 
 helps to awaken women from that shallow dream of 
 self-complacency into which flattery lulls them. 
 There is something tonic in the manly arrogance of 
 Fitzjames Stephen, who derides the thought that the 
 marriage contract can be treated as in any sense a 
 contract between equals; but there is something that 
 debilitates in the dulcet counsel given by an anony- 
 mous gentleman, in an old volume of the Ladies’ 
 Magazine that lies before me—“ She ought to present 
 herself as a being made to please, to love, and to seek 
 
 support ; @ being inferior to man, and near to angels.” 
 
230 Conemon Sense about Women. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO 3 Bea 
 
 ‘* When you were weak and I was strong, I toiled for you. Now you 
 are strong and Tam weak. Because of my work for you, L ask your 
 ad. I ask the ballot for myself and my sex. As TI stood by you, I 
 pray you stand by me and mine.” —CLARA BARTON. 
 
 [Appeal to the returned soldiers of the United States, written from 
 Geneva, Switzerland, by Clara Barton, invalided by long service in the 
 hospitals and on the field during the civil war. ] 
 
 LVI. 
 THE FACT OF SEX. 
 
 IT is constantly said that the advocates of woman 
 suffrage ignore the fact of sex. On the contrary, 
 they seem to me to be the only people who do not 
 ignore it. 
 
 Were there no such thing as sexual difference, the 
 wrong done to woman by disfranchisement would 
 be far less. It is precisely because her traits, habits, 
 needs, and probable demands are distinct from those 
 of man, that she is not, never was, never can, and 
 never will be, justly represented by him. It is not 
 merely that a vast number of human individuals 
 
 are disfranchised ; it is not even because in many of 
 
The Fact of Sex. 231 
 
 our States the disfranchisement extends to a majority, 
 that the evil is so great; it is not merely that we 
 disfranchise so many units and tens: but we exclude 
 a special element, a peculiar power, a distinct interest 
 —in a word, a sex. 
 
 Whether this sex is more or less wise, more or 
 less important, than the other sex, does not affect 
 the argument: it is a sex, and, being such, is more 
 absolutely distinct from the other than is any mere 
 race from any other race. The more you emphasize 
 the fact of sex, the more you strengthen our argu- 
 ment. If the white man cannot justly represent 
 the negro,—although the two races are now so 
 amalgamated that not even the microscope can 
 always decide to which race one belongs, — how 
 impossible that one sex should stand in legislation 
 for the other sex ! 
 
 This is so clear, that, so soon as it is stated, there 
 is a shifting of the ground. ‘But consider the 
 danger of introducing the sexual influence into 
 legislation!” .... Then weare sure to be confronted 
 with the case of Miss Vinnie Ream, the sculptor. 
 See how that beguiling damsel cajoled all Congress 
 into buying poor statues! they say. If one woman 
 could do so much, how would it be with one hundred? 
 Precisely the Irishman’s argument against the use 
 
 of pillows: he had put one feather on a rock, and 
 
222 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 found it a very uncomfortable support. Grant, for 
 the sake of argument, that Miss Ream gave us poor 
 art; but what gave her so much power? Plainly, 
 that she was but a single feather. Congress being 
 composed exclusively of men, the mere fact of her 
 sex gave her an exceptional and dangerous influence. 
 Fill a dozen of the seats in Congress: with women, 
 and that danger at least will be cancelled. The 
 taste in art may be no better; but an artist will no 
 more be selected for being a pretty girl than now 
 for being a pretty boy. So in all such cases. 
 Here, as everywhere, it is the advocate of woman 
 suffrage who wishes to recognize the fact of sex, 
 and guard against its perils. 
 
 It is precisely so in education. Believing boys 
 and girls to be unlike, and yet seeing them to be 
 placed by the Creator on the same planet and in 
 the same family, we hold it safer to follow his 
 method. As they are born to interest each other, 
 to,istimulate.j;each other, ito excite each sothenme 
 seems better to let this impulse work itself off in a 
 natural way,—to let in upon it the fresh air and the 
 daylight, instead of attempting to suppress and 
 destroy it. In a mixed school, as in a family, the 
 fact of sex presents itself as an unconscious, healthy, 
 mutual stimulus. It is in the separate schools that 
 the healthy relation vanishes, and the thought of 
 
Lhe Fact af Sex. 233 
 
 sex becomes a morbid and diseased thing. This 
 observation first occurred to me when a pupil and a 
 teacher in boys’ boarding-schools years ago: there 
 was such marked superiority as to sexual refinement 
 in the day-scholars, who saw their sisters and the 
 friends of their sisters every day. All later experi- 
 ence of our public-school system has confirmed this 
 opinion. It is because I believe the distinction of 
 Se 4104 De inomentous, that. L, dread to see, the sexes 
 educated apart. 
 
 The truth of the whole matter is, that Nature will 
 have her rights—innocently if she can, guilty if she 
 must ; and it is a little amusing that the writer of 
 an ingenious paper on the other side, called “ Sex 
 in Politics,’ in an able New York journal, puts our 
 case better than I can put it, before he gets through, 
 only that he is then speaking of wealth, not women: 
 ‘Anybody who considers seriously what is meant 
 by the conflict between labour and capital, of which 
 we are only just witnessing the beginning, and what 
 is to be done éo give money legitimately that influence 
 on legislation which it now exercises tlegitimately, 
 must acknowledge at once that the next generation 
 will have a thorny path to travel.” The Italics are 
 my own. Precisely what this writer wishes to secure 
 for money, we claim for the disfranchised half of 
 
 the human race,—open instead of secret influence ; 
 
234 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 the English tradition instead of the French ; women 
 as rulers, not as kings’ mistresses ; women as legis- 
 lators, not merely as lobbyists; women employing 
 in legitimate form that power which they will other- 
 wise illegitimately wield. This is all our demand. 
 
 TVaT: 
 HOW WILL. IT. RESULT ? 
 
 “IT would be a great convenience, my hearers,” 
 said old Parson Withington of Newbury, “if the 
 moral of a fable could only be written at the begin- 
 ning» ‘of it, instead sof the end. Butt nevertias 
 Commonly the only thing to be done is to get hold 
 of a few general principles, hold to those, and trust 
 that all will turn out well. No matter how thoroughly 
 a reform may have been discussed,—negro emanci- 
 pation or free trade, for instance,—it is a step in the 
 dark at last, and the detailed results never turn out 
 to be precisely according to the programme. 
 
 An “esteemed correspondent,’ who has written 
 some of the best things yet said in America in 
 behalf of the enfranchisement of woman, writes 
 privately to express some solicitude, since, as she 
 
 thinks, we are not ready for it yet. “I am con- 
 
How wtll zt Result ? 235 
 
 vinced,” she writes, “of the abstract right of women 
 to vote; but all I see of the conduct of the existing 
 women, into whose hands this change would throw 
 the power, inclines me to hope that this power will 
 not be conceded till education shall have prepared 
 a class of women fit to take the responsibilities.” 
 
 Gradual emancipation, in short !—for fear of trust- 
 ing truth and justice to take care of themselves. 
 Who knew, when the negroes were set free, whether 
 they would at first use their freedom well, or ill? 
 Would they work ? would they avoid crimes ? would 
 they justify their freedom? The theory of education 
 and preparation seemed very plausible. Against 
 that, there was only the plain theory which Elizabeth 
 Heyrick first announced to England,—“ Immediate, 
 unconditional emancipation.” “The best prepara- 
 tion for freedom is freedom.” What was true of the 
 negroes then is true of women now. 
 
 “The lovelier traits of womanhood,” writes ear- 
 nestly our correspondent, “simplicity, faith, guile- 
 lessness, unfit them to conduct public affairs, where 
 one must deal with quacks and charlatans. ... We 
 are not all at once ‘as gods, knowing good and 
 evil;’ and the very innocency of our lives, and the 
 habits of pure homes, unfit us to manage a certain 
 class who will flock to this standard.” 
 
 But the basis of all republican government is in 
 
236 Common Sense about Woneen. 
 
 the assumption that good is ultimately stronger than 
 evil. If we once abandon this, our theory has gone 
 to pieces, at any rate. If we hold to it, good women 
 are no more helpless and useless than good men. 
 The argument that would here disfranchise women 
 has been used before now to disfranchise clergymen. 
 I believe that in some States they are still dis- 
 franchised ; and, if they are not, it is partly because 
 good is found to be as strong as evil, after all, and 
 partly because clergymen are not found to be so 
 angelically good as to be useless. I am very con- 
 fident that both these truths will be found to apply 
 to women also. 
 
 Whatever else happens, we may be pretty sure 
 that one thing will. The first step towards the 
 enfranchisement of women will blow to the winds 
 the tradition of the angelic superiority of women. 
 Just as surely as women vote, we shall have occa- 
 sionally women politicians, women corruptionists, and 
 women demagogues, Conceding, for the sake of 
 courtesy, that none such now exist, they will be born 
 as instantaneously, after enfranchisement, as the 
 frogs begin to pipe in the spring. Those who doubt 
 it ignore human nature; and, if they are not pre- 
 pared for this fact, they had better consider it in 
 season, and take sides accordingly. In these pages, 
 
 at least, they have been warned. 
 
Tiow. will 7 hesull?2 2389 
 
 What then? Suppose women are not “as gods, 
 knowing good and evil:” they are not to be eman- 
 cipated as gods, but as fallible human beings. They 
 are to come out of an ignorant innocence, that may 
 be only weakness, into a wise innocence that will 
 be strength. It is too late to remand American 
 women into a Turkish or Jewish tutelage: they have 
 emerced, too, far not.to come: farthers,| In a certain 
 sense, no doubt, the butterfly is safest in the chrysalis. 
 When the soft thing begins to emerge, the world 
 certainly seems a dangerous place; and it is hard to 
 say what will be the result of the emancipation. 
 But when she is once half out, there is no safety for 
 the pretty creature but to come the rest of the way, 
 
 and use her wings. 
 
 LOVALTY, 
 OU AVEMALI Time RIGHTS 0 WAND 
 
 WHEN Dr. Johnson had published his English Dic- 
 tionary, and was asked by a lady how he chanced 
 to make a certain mistake that she pointed out, he 
 answered, “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.” I 
 always feel disposed to make the same comment on 
 the assertion of any woman that she has all the 
 
238 Comnion Sense about Wonen. 
 
 rights she wants. For every woman is, or may be, 
 or might have been, a mother. And when shecomes 
 to know that even now, in many parts of the Union, 
 a married mother has no legal right to her child, I 
 should think her tongue would cleave to her mouth 
 before she would utter those foolish words again. 
 
 All the things I ever heard or read against slavery 
 did not fix in my soul such a hostility to it as a 
 single scene in a Missouri slave-market some twenty- 
 five years ago. AsI sat there, a purchaser came in 
 to buy a little girl to wait on his wife. Three little 
 sisters were brought in, from eight to twelve years 
 old: they were mulattoes, with sweet, gentle manners; 
 they had evidently been taken good care of, and 
 their pink calico frocks were clean and whole. The 
 gentleman chose one of them, and then asked her, 
 good-naturedly enough, if she did not wish to go 
 with him. She burst into tears, and said, “I would 
 rather stay with my mother.” But her tears were as 
 powerless, of course, as so many salt drops from the 
 ocean. 
 
 That was all. But all the horrors of “Uncle 
 Tom’s Cabin,” the stories told me by fugitive slaves, 
 the scarred backs I afterwards saw by dozens among 
 coloured recruits, did not impress me as did that 
 hour in the gaol. The whole probable career of that 
 poor, wronged, motherless, shrinking child passed 
 
“TL have all the Rights [ Want.” 239 
 
 before me infancy. It seemed to me that a man 
 must be utterly iost to all manly instincts who would 
 not give his life to overthrow such a system. - It 
 seemed to me that the woman who could tolerate, 
 much less defend it, could not herself be true, could 
 not be pure, or must be fearfully and grossly ignorant. 
 
 You acquiesce, fair lady. You say it was horrible 
 indeed, but, thank God! it is past. Past? Isit so? 
 Past, if you please, as to the law of slavery, but, as 
 to the legal position of woman, still a fearful reality. 
 It is not twelve years since a scene took place in a 
 Boston court-room, before Chief Justice Chapman, 
 which was worse, in this respect, than that scene in 
 St. Louis, inasmuch as the mother was present when 
 the child was taken away, and the wrong was sanc- 
 tioned by the highest judicial officer of the State. 
 Two little girls, who had been taken from their 
 mother by their guardian, their father being dead, 
 had taken refuge with her against his wishes ; and 
 he brought them into court under a writ of habeas 
 corpus, and the court awarded them to him as against 
 their mother. “The little ones were very much 
 affected,” says the Boston Herald, “by the result of 
 the decision which separated them from their mother ; 
 and force was required to remove them from the 
 court-room. The distress of the mother was also 
 very evident.” 
 
240 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 There must have been some special reason, you 
 say, for such a seeming outrage: she was a bad 
 woman. No; she was “a lady of the highest re- 
 spectability.” . No charge was made against her: 
 but, being left a widow, she had married again ; and 
 for that, and that only, so far as appears, the court 
 took from her the guardianship of her own children, 
 —pbone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh, the chil- 
 dren for whom she had borne the deepest physical 
 agony of womanhood,—and awarded them to some- 
 body else. 
 
 You say, “But her second husband might have 
 misused the children.” Might? So the guardian 
 might, and that where they had no mother to protect 
 them. Had the father been left a widower, he 
 might have made a half-dozen successive marriages, 
 have brought stepmother after stepmother to control 
 these children, and no court could have interfered. 
 The father is recognized before the law as the natural 
 guardian of the children. The mother, even though 
 she be left a widow, is not. The consequence is a 
 series of outrages of which only a few scattered 
 instances come before the public; just as in slavery, 
 out of a hundred little girls sold away from their 
 parents, only one case might ever be mentioned in 
 any newspaper. 
 
 This case led to an alteration of the law in Massa- 
 
“TL have all the Rights IT Want.” 241 
 
 chusetts, but the same thing might yet happen in 
 some States of the Union. The possibility. of a 
 single such occurrence shows that there is still a 
 fundamental wrong in the legal position of woman. 
 And the fact that most women do not know it, only 
 deepens the wrong—as Dr. Channing said of the 
 contentment of the Southern slaves. The mass of 
 men, even of lawyers, pass by such things, as they 
 formerly passed by the facts of slavery. 
 
 There is no lasting remedy for these wrongs, 
 except to give woman the political power to protect 
 herself. There never yet existed a race, nor a class, 
 nor a sex, which was noble enough to be trusted 
 with political power over another sex, or class, or 
 race. It is for self-defence that woman needs the 
 ballot. And, in view of a single such occurrence as 
 I have given, I charge that woman who professes to 
 have “all the rights she wants,” either with a want of 
 all feeling of motherhood, or with “ignorance, madam 
 
 pure ignorance.” 
 
242 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 PTX 
 “NOT SENSE ENOUGH TO VOTE.” 
 
 THERE is one special point on which men seem to 
 me rather insincere toward women. When they 
 speak to women, the objection made to their voting 
 is usually that they are too angelic. But when men 
 talk to each other, the general assumption is, that 
 women should not vote because they have not brains 
 enough—or, as old Theophilus Parsons wrote a 
 century ago, have not “a sufficient acquired discre- 
 tion.” 
 
 It is an important distinction. Because, if women 
 are too angelic to vote, they can only be fitted for it 
 by becoming more wicked, which is not desirable. 
 On the other hand, if there is no objection but the 
 want of brains, then our public schools are equalizing 
 that matter fast enough. Still, there are plenty of 
 people who have never got beyond this objection. 
 Listen to the first discussion that you encounter 
 among men on this subject, wherever they may con- 
 gregate. Does it turn upon the question of saintli- 
 ness, or of brains? Let us see. 
 
 I travelled the other day upon the Boston and 
 
“Not Sense enough to Vote.” 243 
 
 Providence Railroad with a party of mechanics, 
 mostly English and Scotch. They were discussing 
 this very question, and, with the true English habit, 
 thought it was all a matter of property. Without it 
 a woman certainly should not vote, they said; but 
 they all favoured, to my surprise, the enfranchise- 
 ment of women of property. “As a general rule,” 
 said the chief speaker, “a woman that’s got property 
 has got sense enough to vote.” 
 
 There it was! These foreigners, who had found 
 their own manhood by coming to a land which not 
 only the Pilgrim Fathers but the Pilgrim Mothers 
 had settled, and subdued, and freed for them, were 
 still ready to disfranchise most of the daughters of 
 those mothers, on the ground that they had “not 
 sense enough to vote.” I thanked them for their 
 blunt truthfulness, so much better than the flattery of 
 most of the native born. 
 
 My other instance shall be a conversation over- 
 heard ina railway station near Boston, between two 
 intelligent citizens, who had lately listened to Anna 
 Dickinson. “The best of it was,” said one, “to see 
 our minister introduce her.”—-“Wonder what the 
 Orthodox churches would have said to that ten years 
 ago?” said~the other. “Never mind,’ was the 
 answer. “Things have changed. What I think is, 
 it’s all in the bringing up. If women were brought 
 
 R ‘2 
 
244 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 up just as men are, they’d have just as much brains,” 
 (Brains again!) “That's what Beecher says. Boys 
 are brought up to do business, and take care of 
 themselves: that’s where it is. Girls are brought up 
 to dress and get married. Start ’em alike! That’s 
 what Beecher says. Start ’em alike, and see if girls 
 haven't got just as much brains.” 
 
 “Still harping on my daughter,” and on the condi- 
 tion of her brains! It is on this that the whole ques- 
 tion turns, in the opinion of many men. Ask ten 
 men their objections to woman suffrage. One will 
 plead that women are angels, Another fears discord 
 in families. Another points out that women cannot 
 fight—-he himself being very likely a non-combatant. 
 Another quotes St. Paul for this purpose—not being, 
 perhaps, in the habit of consulting that authority on 
 any other point. But with the others, very likely, 
 every thing will turn on the question of brains. They 
 believe, or think they believe, that women have not 
 sense enough to vote. They may not say so to 
 women, but they habitually say it tomen. If you 
 wish to meet the common point of view of masculine 
 voters, you must find it here. 
 
 It is fortunate that it isso. Of all points, this is 
 the easiest to settle; for every intelligent woman, 
 even if she be opposed to woman suffrage, helps to 
 settle it. Every good lecture by a woman, every 
 
“Not Sense enough to Vote.” 245 
 
 good book written by one, every successful business 
 enterprise carried on helps to decide the question. 
 Every class of girls that graduates from every good 
 school helps to pile up the argument on this point. 
 And the vast army of women, constituting nine out 
 of ten of the teachers in our American schools, may 
 appeal as logically to their pupils, and settle the 
 argument based on brains. “If we had sense enough 
 to educate you,” they may say to each graduating 
 class of boys, ““we have sense enough to vote beside 
 
 you.” 
 
 LX. 
 THE ROB ROY THEORY. 
 
 The Saturday Review, in an article which denounces 
 all equality in marriage laws and all plans of woman 
 suffrage, admits frankly the practical obstacles in the 
 way of the process of voting. “Possibly the presence 
 of women as voters would tend still further to pro- 
 mote order than has been done by the ballot.” It 
 plants itself wholly on one objection, which goes far 
 
 deeper, thus :— 
 
 “If men choose to say that women are not their equals, 
 women have nothing to do but to give in. Physical force, the 
 
+ 
 
 246 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 ultimate basis of all society and all government, must be on 
 the side of the men; and those who have the key of the posi- 
 tion will not consent permanently to abandon it.” 
 
 It is a great pleasure when an opponent of justice 
 is willing to fall back thus frankly upon the Rob Roy 
 
 theory :— 
 “ The good old rule 
 
 Sufficeth him, the simple plan 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can.” 
 It is easy, I think, to show that the theory is utterly 
 false, and that the basis of civilized society is not 
 physical force, but, on the contrary, brains. 
 
 In the city where Zhe Saturday Review is pub- 
 lished, there are three regiments of “Guards” which 
 are the boast of the English army, and are believed 
 by their officers to be the finest troops in the world. 
 They have deteriorated in size since the Crimean 
 war; but I believe that the men of one regiment 
 still average six feet two inches in height ; and I am 
 sure that nobody ever saw them in line, without 
 noticing the contrast between these magnificent men 
 and the comparatively puny officers who command 
 them. These officers are from the highest social 
 rank in England, the governing classes; and, if it 
 were the whole object of this military organization to 
 give a visible proof of the utter. absurdity of Zhe 
 Saturday Review's theory, it could not be better 
 
Lhe Rob Roy Theory. 247 
 
 done. There is no country in Europe, I suppose, 
 where the hereditary aristocracy is physically equal 
 to that of England, or where the intellectual class 
 has so good a physique. But set either the House 
 of Lords, or The Saturday Review contributors, 
 upon a hand-to-hand fight against an equal number 
 of “navvies” or “costermongers,” and the patricians 
 would have about as much chance as a crew of 
 Vassar girls in a boat-race with Yale or Harvard. 
 Take the men of England alone, and it is hardly too 
 much to say that physical force, instead of being the 
 basis of political power in any class, is apt to be 
 found in inverse ratio to it. In case of revolution, 
 the strength of the governing class in any country is 
 not in its physical but in its mental power. Rank 
 and money, and the power to influence and organize 
 and command, are merely different modifications of 
 mental training brought to bear by somebody. 
 
 In our country, without class distinctions, the same 
 truth can be easily shown. Physical power lies 
 mainly in the hands of the masses: wherever a class 
 or profession possesses more than its numerical share 
 of power, it has usually less than its proportion of 
 physical vigour. This is easily shown from the vast 
 body of evidence collected during our civil war. In 
 the volume containing the medical statistics of the 
 Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, we have the 
 
248 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 tabulated reports of about 600,000 persons subject 
 to draft, and of about 500,000 recruits, substitutes, 
 and drafted men ; showing the precise physical con- 
 dition of more than a million men. 
 
 It appears that, out of the whole number examined, 
 rather more than 257 in each 1,000 were found unfit 
 for military service. It is curious to see how gene- 
 rally the physical power among these men is in in- 
 verse ratio to the social and political prominence of 
 the class they represent. Out of 1,000 unskilled 
 labourers, for instance, only 348 are physically dis- 
 qualified; among tanners, only 216; among iron- 
 workers, 189. On the other hand, among lawyers, 
 544 out of 1,000 are disqualified ; among journalists, 
 740; among clergymen, 954. Grave divines are 
 horrified at the thought of admitting women to vote, 
 when they cannot fight ; though not one of twenty 
 of their own number is fit for military duty, if he 
 volunteered. Of the editors who denounce woman 
 suffrage, only about one in four could himself carry 
 a musket ; while, of the lawyers who fill Congress, 
 the majority could not be defenders of their country, 
 but could only be defended. If we were to distri- 
 bute political power with reference to the “ physical 
 basis” which 7h%e Saturday Review talks about, it 
 would be a wholly new distribution, and would put 
 
 things more hopelessly upside down than did the 
 
Lhe Rob Roy Theory. 249 
 
 worst phase of the French Commune. If, then, a 
 political theory so utterly breaks down when applied 
 to men, why should we insist on resuscitating it in 
 order to apply it to women? The truth is, that, as 
 civilization advances, the world is governed more and 
 more unequivocally by brains ; and whether those 
 brains are deposited in a strong body or a weak one 
 becomes a matter of less and less importance. But 
 it is only in the very first stage of barbarism that 
 mere physical strength makes mastery ; and the long 
 head has controlled the long arm since the beginning 
 of recorded time. 
 
 And it must be remembered that even these statis- 
 tics very imperfectly represent the case. They do 
 not apply to the whole male sex, but actually to the 
 picked portion only, to the men presumed to be of 
 military age, excluding the very old and the very 
 young. Were these included, the proportion unfit 
 for military duty would of course be far greater. 
 Moreover, it takes no account of courage or cowardice, 
 patriotism or zeal. How much all these considera- 
 tions tell upon the actual proportion, may be seen 
 from the fact, that in the town where I am writing, 
 for instance, out of some twelve thousand inhabitants 
 and about three thousand voters, there are only some 
 three hundred who actually served in the civil war,— 
 
 a number too small to exert a perceptible influence 
 
250 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 on any local election. When we see the community 
 yielding up its voting power into the hands of those 
 who have actually done military service, it will be 
 time enough to exclude women for not doing such 
 service. If the alleged physical basis operates as 
 an exclusion of all non-combatants, it should surely 
 give a monopoly to the actual combatants. 
 
 ibpeele 
 THE VOTES OF NON-COMBATANTS. 
 
 THE tendency of modern society is not to concen- 
 trate power in the hands of the few, but to give a 
 greater and greater share to the many. Read 
 Froissart’s Chronicles, and Scott’s novels of chivalry, 
 and you will see how thoroughly the difference 
 between patrician and plebeian was then a difference 
 of physical strength. The knight, being better 
 nourished and better trained, was apt to be the 
 bodily superior of the peasant, to begin with; and 
 this strength was re-enforced by armour, weapons, 
 horse, castle, and all the resources of feudal warfare. 
 With this greater strength went naturally the as- 
 sumption of greater political power. To the heroes 
 
Lhe Votes of Non-Combatants. 251 
 
 of “Ivanhoe,” or “The Fair Maid of Perth,” it would 
 have seemed as absurd that yeomen and lackeys 
 should have any share in the government, as it would 
 seem to the members in an American legislature 
 that women should have any such share. In a con- 
 test of mailed knights, any number of unarmed men 
 were but so many women. As Sir Philip Sidney 
 said, “The wolf asketh not how many the sheep 
 may be.” 
 
 But time and advancing civilization have tended 
 steadily in one direction. “He giveth power to the 
 weak, and to them who have no might He increaseth 
 strength.” Every step in the extension of political 
 rights has consisted in opening them to a class 
 hitherto humbler. From kings to nobles, from 
 nobles to burghers, from burghers to yeomen; in 
 short, from strong to weak, from high to low, from 
 rich to poor. All this is but the unconscious follow- 
 ing out of one sure principle—that legislation is 
 mainly for the protection of the weak against the 
 strong, and that for this purpose the weak must be 
 directly represented. The strong are already pro- 
 tected by their strength: it is the weak who need 
 all the vantage-ground that votes and legislatures 
 can give them. The feudal chiefs were stronger 
 without laws than with them. “Take care of your- 
 
 selves in Sutherland,’ was the anxious message of 
 
ps2 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 the old Highlander: “the law has come as far as 
 Tain.” It was the peaceful citizen who needed the 
 guaranty of law against brute force. 
 
 But can laws be executed without brute force ? 
 Not without a certain amount of it, but that amount 
 under civilization grows less and less. Just in pro- 
 portion as the masses are enfranchised, statutes 
 execute themselves without crossing bayonets. “In 
 a republic,” said De Tocqueville, ‘if laws are not 
 always respectable, they are always respected.” If 
 every step in freedom has brought about a more 
 peaceable state of society, why should that process 
 stop at this precise point ? Besides, there is no pos- 
 sibility in nature of a political division in which all 
 the men shall be on one side and all the women on 
 the other. The mutual influence of the sexes forbids 
 it. The very persons who hint at such a fear refute 
 themselves at other times, by arguing that “ women 
 will always be sufficiently represented by men,” or 
 that “ every woman will vote as her husband thinks, 
 and sit :will) merely double thé numbers.9 agra 
 matter of fact, the law will prevail in all English- 
 speaking nations: a few men fighting for it will be 
 stronger than many fighting against it; and, if those 
 few have both the law and the women on their side, 
 there will be no trouble. 
 
 The truth is, that, in this age, cedant arma toge: 
 
The Votes of Non-Combatants. 253 
 
 it is the civilian who rules on the throne or behind 
 it, and who makes the fighting-men his mere agents. 
 Yonder policeman at the corner looks big and for- 
 midable : he protects the women, and overawes the 
 boys. But away in some corner of the City Hall, 
 there is some quiet man, out of uniform, perhaps a 
 consumptive or a dyspeptic or a cripple, who can 
 overawe the burliest policeman by his authority as 
 city marshal or as mayor. So an army is but a 
 larger police ; and its official head is that plain man 
 at the White House, who makes or unmakes, not 
 merely brevet-brigadiers, but major-generals in com- 
 mand,—who can by the stroke of the pen convert 
 the most powerful man of the army into the most 
 powerless. Take away the occupant of the position, 
 and put ina woman, and will she become impotent 
 because her name is Elizabeth or Maria Theresa? 
 It is brains that more and more govern the world ; 
 and whether those brains be on the throne, or at the 
 ballot-box, they will soon make the owner’s sex a 
 subordinate affair. If woman is also strong in the 
 affections, so much the better. “Win the hearts of 
 your subjects,” said Lord Burleigh to Queen Eliza- 
 beth, “and you will have their hands and purses.” 
 War is the last appeal, and happily in these days 
 the rarest appeal, of statesmanship. In the multi- 
 farious other duties that make up statesmanship, we 
 
254 Conemon Sense about Women. 
 
 cannot spare the brains, the self-devotion, and the 
 enthusiasm, of woman. One of the most important 
 treaties of modern history, the Peace of Cambray, in 
 1529, was negotiated, after previous attempts had 
 failed, by two women,—Margaret, aunt of Charles V., 
 and Louisa, mother of Francis I. Voltaire said that 
 Christina of Sweden was the only sovereign of her 
 time who maintained the dignity of the throne 
 against Mazarin and Richelieu. Frederick the Great 
 said that the Seven Years’ War was waged against 
 three women,—Elizabeth of Russia, Maria Theresa, 
 and Mme. Pompadour. There is nothing impotent 
 in the statesmanship of women when they are ad- 
 mitted to exercise it: they are only powerless for 
 good when they are obliged to obtain by wheedling 
 and flattery a sway that should be recognized, re- 
 sponsible, and limited. 
 
 SS S=—- 
 
 PAL 
 KILKENNY CAT ARGUMENTS. 
 
 IT always helps a good cause when its opponents are 
 in the position of the famous Kilkenny cats, and 
 mutually eat each other up. In the anti-slavery 
 movement, it was justly urged that the slaves might 
 possibly be (as slaveholders alleged) a race of petted 
 
Kilkenny Cat Arguments. 255 
 
 children, whose hearts could not possibly be alienated 
 from their masters; or they might be (as was also 
 alleged by slaveholders) a race of fiends, whom a 
 whisper could madden: but they could not well be 
 both. Every claim that the negro was happy was 
 stultified by that other claim, that the South was 
 dwelling on a barrel of gunpowder, and that the 
 mildest anti-slavery tract meant fire and explosion. 
 The twin arguments saved abolitionists a great deal 
 of trouble. Either by itself would have required an 
 answer; but the two answered each other—devoured 
 each other, in fact, like the Kilkenny cats. 
 
 So, whenever the advocates of woman suffrage are 
 assailed on the ground that women are too super- 
 stitious, and will, if enfranchised, be governed by 
 religion and the Church alone, there is always 
 sure to come in some obliging advocate with his 
 “Besides, the tendency of the movement is to 
 utter lawlessness, to the destruction of religion, the 
 marriage-vows, the home”—and all the rest of it. 
 The boy in the story is hardly more self-contradic- 
 tory, when, in answer to his friend’s appeal for his 
 jack-knife, he replies, “I haven’t any. Besides, I 
 want to use it.” 
 
 Here, for instance, is Mr. Nathan N. Withington 
 of Newbury, Mass., who in an address on woman 
 suffrage, while waiving many arguments against it, 
 
256 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 plants himself strongly on the ground that it must 
 be fatal to the family. “No one whose opinion is 
 worth reckoning, with whom I have talked on the 
 matter, ever denied entirely that the logical result of 
 the movement was what is called free love.” My 
 inference would be, in passing, that my old neighbour 
 Mr. Withington must confine himself to a very narrow 
 circle, in the way of conversation; or, that he must 
 find nobody’s opinion “worth reckoning ” if it differs 
 from his own. Certainly I have talked with hardly 
 an advocate of woman suffrage in New England 
 who would not deny entirely—and with a good 
 deal of emphasis—any such assumptions as he here 
 makes. But let that go: the subject has already 
 been discussed far more than its intrinsic importance 
 required ; and convention after convention has taken 
 unnecessary pains to refute a charge more baseless 
 than the slaveholders’ fears of insurrection. What 
 I wish to point out is, that such charges have, in one 
 way, great value: they precisely neutralize and utterly 
 annihilate the equally baseless terror of “ Too super- 
 stitious.” 
 
 If it is true, as is sometimes alleged, that women 
 are constitutionally under the dominion of religion 
 and the Church, then it is pretty sure that, under 
 these auspices, the moral restraints of the community, 
 as marriage and the home, will be maintained. If it 
 
Kilkenny Cat Arguments. 257 
 
 is true on the other hand, as Mr. Withington honestly 
 thinks, that the tendency of woman suffrage is to 
 create a deluge that shall sweep away the home, then 
 it is certain that all vestiges of churchly superstition 
 will be swamped in the process. The logical outcome 
 of the movement may be, if you please, to establish 
 the Spanish Inquisition or to bring back the horrors 
 of the French Revolution, but it seems clear that it 
 cannot simultaneously bring both. The advocates of 
 both theories are equally sincere, doubtless, in their 
 predictions of alarm ; but one set of alarmists or the 
 other set of alarmists must be woefully disappointed 
 when the time comes. And, if either, why not both ? 
 
 The simple fact is, that whosoever draws upon his 
 imagination for possible disasters from any particular 
 measure, has a great fund at his disposal, whether he 
 looks right or left. He has always this advantage over 
 the practical reformer, that whereas the claims of the 
 reformer are, or should be, definite, coherent, practical, 
 the opponent can, if he wishes, have the whole cloudy 
 domain of possibility to draw upon: he can marshal 
 an army in the atmosphere, while the practical re- 
 former must stay on earth. It is a comfort when 
 two of these nebulous armies of imaginary obstacles 
 fight in the air, as in the present case, like the 
 shadowy hosts in Kaulbach’s great cartoon; and so 
 destroy one another, bringing back clear sky. 
 
 S 
 
258 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 Woman needs the ballot for self-respect and self- 
 protection, and to do her share for the education and 
 moral safety of the children she bears. This is enough 
 to begin with, In seeking after this we have firm 
 foothold. _The old Eastern fable describes a certain 
 man as finding a horseshoe. His neighbour soon 
 begins to weep and wail, because, as he justly points 
 out, the man who has found a horseshoe may some 
 day find a horse, and may shoe him ; and the neigh- 
 bour’s child may some day goso near the horse’s heels 
 as to be kicked, and die; and then the two families 
 may quarrel and fight, and several valuable lives be 
 lost through that finding of ahorseshoe. The gradual 
 advancement of women must meet many fancies as 
 far-fetched as this, and must see them presented as 
 arguments ; and we must be very grateful if they 
 prove Kilkenny cat arguments, and destroy one 
 
 another. 
 SS SS 
 
 ROU LE 
 DANGEROUS VOTERS. 
 
 ONE of the few plausible objections brought against 
 women’s voting is this: that it would demoralize the 
 suffrage by letting in very dangerous voters; that 
 virtuous women would not vote, and vicious women 
 
 would. It is a very unfounded alarm. 
 
Dangerous Voters. 259 
 
 For, in the first place, our institutions rest—if they 
 have any basis at all—on this principle, that good is 
 stronger than evil, that the majority of men really 
 wish to vote rightly, and that only time and patience 
 are needed to get the worst abuses righted. How 
 any one can doubt this, who watches the course of 
 our politics, I do not see. In spite of the great dis- 
 advantage of having masses of ignorant foreign 
 voters to deal with,—and of native black voters, who 
 
 have been purposely kept in ignorance,—we cer- 
 tainly see wrongs gradually righted, and the truth by 
 degrees prevail. Even the one great exceptional 
 case of New York City has been reached at last ; 
 and the very extent of the evil has brought its own 
 cure. Now, why should this triumph of good over 
 evil be practicable among men, and not apply to 
 women also? 
 
 It must be either because women, as a class, are 
 worse than men,—which will hardly be asserted,—or 
 because, for some special reason, bad women have 
 an advantage over good women such as has no 
 parallel in the other sex. But I do not see how this 
 cambea i Let usconsider 
 
 It is certain that good women are not less faithful 
 and conscientious than good men. It is generally 
 admitted that those most opposed to suffrage will 
 very soon, on being fully enfranchised, feel it their 
 
 » 2 
 
260 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 duty to vote. They may at first misuse the right 
 through ignorance, but they certainly will not shirk 
 it. It is this conscientious habit on which I rely 
 without fear. Never yet, when public duty required, 
 have American women failed to meet the emergency ; 
 and I am not afraid of it now. Moreover, when 
 they are once enfranchised, and their votes are 
 needed, all the men who now oppose or ridicule the 
 demand for suffrage will begin to help them to 
 exercise it. When the wives are once enfranchised, 
 you may be sure that the husbands will not neglect 
 those of their own household: they will provide 
 them with ballots, vehicles, and policemen, and will 
 contrive to make the voting-places pleasanter than 
 many parlours, and quieter than some churches. 
 
 On the other hand, it seems altogether probable 
 that the very worst women, so far from being osten- 
 tatious in their wickedness upon election day, will, 
 on the contrary, so disguise and conceal themselves 
 as to deceive the very elect, and, if it were possible, 
 the very policemen. For whatever party they may 
 vote, they will contribute to make the voting-places 
 as orderly as railway stations. These covert ways 
 are the very habit of their lives, at least by daylight ; 
 and the women who have of late done the most 
 conspicuous and open mischief in our community 
 have done it, not in their true character as evil, 
 
Dangerous Voters. 261 
 
 but, on the contrary, under a mask of elevated pur- 
 pose. 
 
 That women, when they vote, will commit their 
 full share of errors, I have always maintained. But 
 that they will collectively misuse their power, seems 
 to me out of the question ; and that the good women 
 are going to stay at home, and let bad women do 
 the voting, appears quite as incredible. In fact, if 
 they do thus, it is a fair question whether the epithets 
 “sood” and “bad” ought not, politically speaking, 
 to change places. For it naturally occurs to every 
 one, on election day, that the man who votes, even 
 if he votes wrong, is really a better man, so far as 
 political duties go, than the very loftiest saint who 
 stays at home and prays that other people may vote 
 right. And it is hard to see why it should be other- 
 
 wise with women. 
 
 Ib: 
 HOW WOMEN WILL LEGISLATE. 
 
 IT is often said, that, when women vote, their votes 
 will make no difference in the count, because they 
 will merely duplicate the votes of their husbands 
 
 and brothers. Then these same objectors go on and 
 
262 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 predict all sorts of evil things, for which women will 
 vote, quite apart from their husbands and brothers, 
 Moreover, the evils thus predicted are apt to be 
 diametrically opposite. Thus Goldwin Smith pre- 
 dicts that women will be governed by priests, and 
 then goes on to predict that women will vote to 
 abolish marriage; not seeing that, as Professor 
 Cairnes has pointed out, these two predictions 
 destroy each other. 
 
 On the other hand, I think that the advocates of 
 woman suffrage often err by claiming too much,—as 
 that all women will vote for peace, for total absti- 
 nence, against slavery, and the rest. It seems better 
 to rest the argument on general principles, and not 
 to seek to prophesy too closely. The only thing 
 which I feel safe in predicting is, that woman suffrage 
 will be used, as it should be, for the protection of 
 woman. Self-respect and self-protection,—these are, 
 as has been already said, the two great things for 
 which woman needs the ballot. 
 
 It is not the nature of things, I take it, that a class 
 politically subject can obtain justice from the govern- 
 ing class. Not the least of the benefits gained by 
 political equality for the coloured people of the South 
 is, that the laws now generally make no difference 
 of colour in penalties for crime. In slavery times 
 there were dozens of crimes which were punished 
 
Fiow Women will Legrslate. 263 
 
 more severely by the statute if committed by a slave 
 or a free negro, than if done by a white. I feel very 
 sure that under the reign of impartial suffrage we 
 should see fewer such announcements as this, which 
 I cut from a late New York Evening Express :— 
 
 “Last night Capt. Lowery, of the Twenty-seventh Precinct. 
 made a descent upon the dance-house in the basement of 96, 
 Greenwich Street, and arrested fifty-two men and eight women. 
 The entire batch was brought before Justice Flammer, at the 
 Tombs Police Court, this morning. Louise Maud, the pro- 
 prietress, was held in five hundred dollars bail to answer at 
 the Court of General Sessions. The fifty-two men were fined 
 three dollars each, all but twelve paying at once; and the eight 
 women were fined ten dollars each, and sent to the Lsland for 
 one month.” : 
 
 The Italics are my own. When we reflect that 
 this dance-house, whatever it was, was unquestion- 
 ably sustained for the gratification of men, rather 
 than of women; when we consider that every one 
 of these fifty-two men came there, in all probability, 
 by his own free will, and to spend money, not to earn 
 it; and that the undoubted majority of the women 
 were driven there by necessity or betrayal, or force 
 or despair, —it would seem that even an equal 
 punishment would have been cruel injustice to the 
 women. But when we observe how trifling a penalty 
 was three dollars each to these men, whose money 
 was sure to go for riotous living in some form, and 
 forty of whom had the amount of the fine in their 
 
264 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 pockets; and how hopelessly large an amount was 
 ten dollars each to women who did not, probably, 
 own even the clothes they wore, and who were to be 
 sent to prison for a month in addition,—we see a 
 kind of injustice which would stand a fair chance of 
 being righted, I suspect, if women came into power, 
 Not that they would punish their own sex less 
 severely ; probably they would not; but they would 
 put men more on a level as to the penalty. 
 
 It may be said that no such justice is to be 
 expected from women; because women in what is 
 
 ) 
 
 called “society” condemn women for mere impru- 
 dence, and excuse men for guilt. But it must be 
 remembered, that in “society” guilt is rarely a matter 
 of open proof and conviction, in case of men: it is 
 usually a matter of surmise ; and it is easy for either 
 love or ambition to set the surmise aside, and to 
 assume that the worst reprobate is “only a little 
 wild.” In fact,as Margaret Fuller pointed out years 
 ago, how little conception has a virtuous woman as 
 to what a dissipated young man really is! But let 
 that same woman be a Portia, in the judgment-seat, 
 or even a legislator or a voter, and let her have the 
 unmistakable and actual offender before her, and I 
 do not believe that she will excuse him for a paltry 
 fine, and give the less guilty woman a penalty more 
 
 than quadruple. 
 
Flow Women will Legistlate. 265 
 
 Women will also be sure to bring special sympathy 
 and intelligent attention to the wrongs of children. 
 Who can read without shame and indignation this 
 report from Zhe New York Herald ? 
 
 THE CHILD-SELLING CASE, 
 
 Peter Hallock, committed on a charge of abducting Lena 
 Dinser, a young girl thirteen years old, whom, it was alleged, 
 her father, George Dinser, had sold to Hallock for purposes of 
 prostitution, was again brought yesterday before Judge West- 
 brook, in the Supreme Court Chambers, on the writ of adeas 
 corpus previously obtained by Mr. William F. Howe, the 
 prisoner’s counsel. Mr. Howe claimed that Hallock could not 
 be held on either section of the statute for abduction. Under 
 the first section the complaint, he insisted, should set forth that 
 the child was taken contrary to the wish and against the con- 
 sent of her parents. On the contrary, the evidence, he urged, 
 showed that the father was a willing party. Under the second 
 section, it was contended that the prisoner could not be held, 
 as there was no averment that the girl was of previous chaste 
 character. Judge Westbrook, a brief counter argument having 
 been made by Mr. Dana, held that the points of Mr. Howe 
 were well taken, and ordered the prisoner’s discharge. 
 
 Here was a father, who, as the newspapers allege, 
 had previously sold two other daughters, body and 
 soul, and against whom the evidence seemed to be in 
 this case clear. Yet through the defectiveness of the 
 statute, or the remissness of the prosecuting attorney, 
 he goes free, without even a trial, to carry on his 
 infamous traffic for other children. Grant that the 
 
266 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 points were technically well taken and irresistible,— 
 though this is by no means certain,—it is very sure 
 that there should be laws that should reach such 
 atrocities with punishment, whether the father does 
 or does not consent to his child’s ruin; and that 
 public sentiment should compel prosecuting officers 
 to be as careful in framing their indictments where 
 human souls are at stake as where the question 
 is of dollars only. It is upon such matters that 
 the influence of women will make itself felt in legis- 
 lation. 
 
 EXYVs 
 DEFEATS BEFORE VICTORIES. 
 
 AFTER one of the early defeats in the War of the 
 Rebellion, the commander of a Massachusetts regi- 
 ment wrote home to his father: “I wish people would 
 not write us so many letters of condolence. Our 
 defeat seemed to trouble them much more than it 
 troubles us. Did people suppose there were to be 
 no ups and downs? We expect to lose plenty of 
 battles, but we have enlisted for the war.” 
 
 It is just so with every successful reform. While 
 
Defeats before Victorves. 267 
 
 enemies and half-friends are proclaiming its defeats, 
 those who advocate it are rejoicing that they have at 
 last got an army into the field to be defeated. Unless 
 this war is to be an exception to all others, even the 
 fact of having joined battle is a great deal. It is the 
 first step. Defeat first; a good many defeats, if you 
 please: victory by-and-by. 
 
 William Wilberforce, writing to a friend in the 
 year 1817, said, “I continue faithful to the measure 
 of Parliamentary reform brought forward by Mr. 
 Pitt. Iam firmly persuaded that at present a pro- 
 digious majority of the people of this country are 
 adverse to the measure. In my view, so far from 
 being an objection to the discussion, this is rather 
 a recommendation.” In 1832 the Reform Bill was 
 passed. 
 
 In the first Parliamentary debate on the slave- 
 trade, Col. Tarleton, who boasted to have killed more 
 men than any one in England, pointing to Wilber- 
 force and others, said, “The inspiration began on 
 that side of the house ;” then turning round, “The 
 revolution has reached to this also, and reached to 
 the height of fanaticism and frenzy.” The first vote 
 in the House of Commons, in 1790, after arguments 
 in the affirmative by Wilberforce, Pitt; Fox, and 
 Burke,’ Stood; ayes, $3 9’ noes; 163.39 majority 
 
 -against the measure, 75. In 1807 the slave-trade 
 
268 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 was abolished, and in 1834 slavery in the British 
 colonies followed; and even on the very night when 
 the latter bill passed, the abolitionists were taunted 
 by Gladstone, the great Demarara slaveholder, with 
 having toiled for forty years and done nothing. The 
 Roman Catholic Kelief Bill, establishing freedom of 
 thought in England, had the same experience. It 
 passed in 1829 by a majority of a hundred and three 
 in the House of Lords, which had nine months before 
 refused by a majority of forty-five to take up the 
 question at all. 
 
 The English corn-laws went down a quarter of a 
 century ago, after a similar career of failures. In 
 1840, there were hundreds of thousands in England 
 who thought that to attack the corn-laws was te 
 attack the very foundations of society. Lord Mel- 
 bourne, the Prime Minister, said in Parliament, that 
 “he had heard of many mad things in his life, but, 
 before God, the idea of repealing the corn-laws was 
 the very maddest thing of which he had ever heard.” 
 Lord John Russell counselled the House to refuse to 
 hear evidence on the operation of the corn-laws. 
 Six years after, in 1846, they were abolished for ever. 
 
 How Wendell Phillips, in the anti-slavery meetings, 
 used to lash pro-slavery men with such formidable 
 facts as these,—and to quote how Clay and Calhoun 
 and Webster and Everett had pledged themselves 
 
Defeats before Victories. 269 
 
 that slavery should never be discussed, or had _ pro- 
 posed that those who discussed it should be impri- 
 soned,—while, in spite of them all, the great reform 
 was moving on, and the abolitionists were forcing 
 politicians and people to talk, like Sterne’s starling, 
 nothing but slavery ! 
 
 We who were trained in the light of these great 
 agitations have learned their lesson. We expect to 
 march through a series of defeats to victory. The 
 first thing is, as in the anti-slavery movement, so to 
 arouse the public mind as to make this the central 
 question. Given this prominence, and it is enough 
 for this year or for many years to come. Welling- 
 ton said that there was no such tragedy as a 
 victory, except a defeat. On the other hand, the 
 next best thing to a victory is a defeat, for it 
 shows that the armies are in the field. Without 
 the unsuccessful attempt of to-day, no success to- 
 morrow. 
 
 When Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble came to this 
 country, she was amazed to find Americans cele- 
 brating the battle ef Bunker Hill, which she had 
 always heard claimed as a victory for King George. 
 Such it was doubtless called; but what we cele- 
 brated was the fact that the Americans there threw 
 up breastworks, stood their ground, fired away their 
 ammunition,—and were defeated. And thus the 
 
270 Common Sense about Women. 
 
 reformer, looking at his failures, often sees in them 
 such a step forward, that they are the Bunker Hill 
 of a new revolution. Give us plenty of such defeats, 
 and we can afford to wait a score of years for the 
 victories. They will come. 
 
 Woodfall and Kinder, Printers, Milford Lane, Strand, London, W.C. 
 
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