The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1854-01-12
For the National Era.
A REVERIE.

"Woman's Rights Woman's Rights .
Sounding words =" great swelling words of
vanity" sometines-echoing. words now at
every point in every tone-croaked in ambi-
tious crescendo by the frog who would be an
ox-hissed sharply, through scorn set teeth,
masculine, of course,) or enveioped in not I'M
musical laughter by the contented blind.
Was it a special wonder that, with the day g
din in my ears, the days paper before my eyes
and the days care chafng me YEARLY, | fell
bordering whether had a right to anything !!
Or that, musing, melted into that seance, in
whose magnetic triumph over time and space
the procession of ages walks upon a breath
and that in dream, which was not all
a dream, the floating tones took shape and
history?
got brush from the brief skirts of dam
eel, who was climbing above my head, to take
up Bible position" and | saw her boptees
set their sharp heels straight through Saint
Paul: fierce woman in spectaces threw her
blue lights over my idle figure, and raised me
with a scornful snuff hopelessly little ladies
whisked by me, on stills fearfully tall ladies
strobe over me by native propulsion one poor
little wiry body shrieked the common cry
with voice ike a paper of pins foot-sore
women moaned it, as they sat down by the
roadside, half way up the hill sorrowful women
groaned it, under heavy burdens; balfnaked
figures, toiling with skinny fingers over rich
vestments, dared not stop to utter it misera-
BILE crowds--pressing aimlessly against each
other, the hurry in their faces sharply at war
with their slow, crowding footsteps, sent up
the words, in a starved wall pitiful to hear j;
from lonely figures, standing on blackened
hcarthstones they dropped, like clods upon
coffin wild armies turned them to fierce bat
tle-cry; and hunger, grown to madness,
wrought all forms of horror in their sacred
name while, in far, dim background to all
this uproar, g inarticulate masses " seemed to
shape their claim, in slow, dismal pantomime,
against shaded sky.
Now, in the wide dream light, | could see
that, through all the ringing changes Of the
"Woman's Call" from base to t0p-stcne of the
living pyramid, it was from each-even from
those who garnished their clamors with rheto-
rio and explanation-les the text of an argu-
ment, than the keynote of a single life; and
my mazed mind went cropping for the abstract
right.
Once thought CLINT Of It's "silyer lining"
fell On me, from cloudy corner, where weak
women worked in still patience, against want,
neglect abuse-wearing ever thinner and
paler-while more and more their faces shone,
as the face of an angel, and their quiet lips
opened to the words, counted worthy to suf-
ferO Yes--the right to endure--that was it
the right, through faith and patience, to draw
nearer, year by year, to the great Captain of
our salvation
None gainsaid my triumphant solution, yet
the fairly conceded right was not widely
claimed.
But hearty matron near me was drawing
a different inference from the same premises,
calling cheerfully-a-top pile of overturned
cradles and bread troughs, her rickety ros-
what all this fuss is about. You want better
husbands and better brothers--to make better
homes. You've right to them But you
can't straighten the sticks ready grown and
twisted. You must shape the timber twigs,
le's go home and do it. !"
A fat baby hand tore the paper screen from
my day-dream-the tyrant fingers sundering
the Women from their Rights-and, through
the rift, heaven-blue eyes, and six very new
teeth, flashed laugh into my face, while
pure baby voice gave me greeting as fresh as
if mamma were the very newest discovery
in language. 1t was all Right in a minute.
Who but |, in all the world, had claim to the
little word from the lips that made it my mu-
sic A graver name, from older lips, was
mine too and lifting the special pleader to his /
place of right and rubbing my eyes-which |
overfowed q little woke to a long train of |
rights, whose deeper value has no representa-. |
tive in the worlds reckoning; free gifts but
by deed eternal.
Pity tits, dear public you can have no list of |
them but the recording ink, is it not on the I
carpet ?-sked untiuely by that same little in.