Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1858-05-07

Democratic leaders that Congress will not ad'
| journ before June is.
GEORGE W. CURTIS ON FAR PLAY FOR
WoMEN,"-George W. Curtis, Esq, delivered
lecture before the Lowell Institute, in Boston, on
Wednesday evening last, oil " Fair Play for
Women" which is reported as follows in the
Journal:
He began by congratulating himself that on
the theme he had chosen there was no lyceum,
no church, no party, not even a committee, to be
compromised by any plain speaking This,
though new subject, has already literature of
its own. 1t already counted brilliant list of
advocates; and many views which might seem
novel, or at least unusual to his audience, were as
familiar to those who had seriously thought OF the
question as 1.-THE flowers of May and when we
saw that something ought to be done and that
something might be DONE we would soon enough
begin to consider how it should be done. Just
in the degree that the world advanced every
question OF right and responsibility in human
relations was sure to come to the most certain
discussion. 1t did no good to lose our tempers
and call bad names We might indeed suppress
debate, when the subject was but an infant, by
laughing merlily; but when the poor little baby
of question that we laughed at had grown to be
a vigorous problem, determined TO be resolved,
without the slightest respect for bugaboo, and
quite able to endure being called vulgar and
atheistic and all the other cries Of mad dog, and
when 1t became strong enough to hold our fists
and pummel US with its own, we would very soon
have to come>to terms, or be reduced to an intel
lectual and moral jelly. So, 10 our day, the wo-
mans question was coming t. be quite robust
1t might be infant still. but it was a very moi.
sy infant, and certainly doing quite as we'll
as could be expected. The question whether wo-
men have the same fair play for their faculties in
the world that men have for theirs, had be ONE
an absorbing and all important query indeed, and
was not likely to be extinguished with a sneer,
or put off with sops and sugar much longer. The
question was not whether women were men, or
whether there were differences Of duties arising
from difference of sex. In general and poetic
way. man might be called the head, aud woman
the heart; man the intellectual and directing
force, woman the receptive and modifying genius.
1t was an instructive requirement that every wo-
man should be essentially womanly-though wo-
manly could not be defned-as that every man
should be truly manly. The sexes had domestic
relations in common, but each had duties and
claims beyond the kitchen and nursery. But,
Notwithstanding this, the inferior position OF wo.
man in human society was apparent equally in
| the history of savage and Of civilized nations.
Among primitive nations woman belonged to
the man who seized her first and the earlier
| books of the Old Testament showed how she
was regarded by the Hebrews who were polyga-
| mists, and among whom she kept and sold
| like slaves. St. Paul was always jew in re
| gard TO woman, and many of the early Christian
fathers were positive pagans in their notions as
to her duties and position. Here the lecturer
| discussed the position of woman under the
| Egyptians, the Grecians, the Romans, among the
Oriental nations and the Northern races, tracing
her social progress through the chivalric and
| Elizabethan ages, down to more recent times
In The history Of lite ature, as showing the posi-
ton of woman, he knew nothing more touching
or beautiful than the words that we'll out of all
the filth OF the seventeenth century, written by
London hosier, who proposed in his ESSAY on
sPFOle Of forx nd
declared, in a strain of simple, poetic, manly re-
spect, unequalled since Shakespeare but indica.
tive Of the general sentiment of his day L can
not think that God made them so delicate so
glorious creatures, to be only safeguards of his
house, drudgcs and slaves. A woman well-bred
and we'll taught, furnished with all the addition.
al accomplishments of knowledge and behavior is
a creature without comparison her society is
the emblem Of Sublmer eDjoyments. She is all
softness and sweetness, love, vii, and delight
In the eighteenth century woman were the
toasts Of convivial hours, the toys Of passionate
moments, the puppets of court, the slaves of
parents and of brothers, the drudges of the house.
hold and Of the field. In England Judge grave
~ held, from under his horse hair wig, that man
might beat his wife with stick as large as his
thumb, and the women Immediately petitioned
| him to know the size of the judicial thumb. But
u 1t had not been larger than his wit or his SYM
patty, cord OF such sticks would not have made
baby tinge.
| Inc Whole theory OF modern society was that
| Of the Cochin China proverb, that women's
hearts bear good deal of breaking and Goody
bsrlowe, toward the end OF the last century ex-
pressed the common opinion of what was called
| and is called the sphere OF woman, when she sim
pered, in her languid verses on flowers:
Gay without toll, aud lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense ard glad the heart;
Nor blush, my fair, to own you copy these,
Your best, your sweetest empire is to pease'
This was precisely the sentiment urged by eve.
~ slave merchant upon every Circassian girl that
| he brought to the market at Constant nople and
precisely the same lesson was inculcated by
schem ng mammas in Paris, London, New York,
and Boston.
Mr. Curtis proceeded to vindcate the right and
capacity Of women to take rank with men in the
studio, the school room, the study the lecture
room-in all departments Of intellectual activity.
and all efforts for the social amelioration Of both
sexes, and concluded by ably and eloauently
urging her claims 10 the right Of suffrage and
answering all objections thereto. He was enthus-
iastically applauded throughout,
The Londen Times, of the 18th of March.
h a.