The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-01-20
For the National Era.
MEN AND w MEN,
Wherein Other Illustrations are Given of
Mans Thick Headedness.
BY GAIL HAMILTON.

"Of all the blind fanatics in this perverse
world" says one writer, your professed hater
OF fanaticism is the most inveterate and con-
spicuons of all agitators, your determined foe
to agitation is the most pestilent and effective
Many an excitement has been kept up long after
it would have died natural death by the
wrong-headed hostility of those who had deter
mined and proclaimed that it should be sup
pressed instanter." These men have profound
faith in the Wis inertiae. Like the dog Noble,
they believe that squirrel once in a hole can
not by any possibility have got out again. If
women are ever caught doing foolish thing,
men evidently fancy that they must be keeping
up steady doing it, Many years ago, women
compressed themselves suicidally in steel and
whalebone and, though the custom is dead and
buried beyond all hope of resurrection, there
are men, not few, who will go down to their
graves in the firm belief that women are killing
themselves off by thousands with tight lacing.
Here and there foolish girl is said to have
been found on damp pavements with thin shoes.
Corollary: No end Of homilies on the folly and
wickedness Of sacrificing health to beauty. A
handful of women have occasionally amused
themselves by thrusting a long stick into the
mud puddle of society, and forthwith what a
hubbub among the arimnleulae Ficl fe !
Do men really baiicve that the mass Of women
ale possessed with an insane and Unsuitable de-
sire to distinguish themselves before the world ?
Nothing is farther from the truth. A decade
of years may perhaps produce RS many women
who see fairer pictures than in the household
fire, who find swept1r music than the lisping
voice of childhood, but such cases are very
rare. On the contrary, women need to be
reused rather than represSed. They are far
too apt to be content with small attainments
and ignoble ends. This woman's rights agita-
ton is but the natural reaction from frivolity,
aimlessness, inanity. 1t is only move too far
in the right direction, or rather an injudicious
means to compass worthy ends. can far more
readily sympathize with those who are, blindly
and blunderingly it may be, but honestly, endeav-
oring to right the wrong, than with those who
weakly acquiesce. When such things as these
happen without commen.--that school for
boys and gins is changed into one for girls
only, the boys being removed with their eek
cellent and efficient Principal" to another, and
the gir,s remaining behind with their female
assistant, who receives less than half the saa-
ry Of her male predecessor-wh a father on
his death-bed is allowed by law to bequeath the
only child Of his wife to strangers, and that
child is torn from her widowed bosom, and all
her prayers, and tears, and agony of love, are of
no ayail=-.do you wonder that a woman can
help thinking if she has any think in her? And
if she be a'wonan of energy, accustomed to act
as well as think, and if the men around her be
stupid or indifferent, is il strange that, with her
burning sense Of wrong, her woman's intense
hatred of injustice and sympathy with the OPP
pressed, she should herself strive to redress the
grievance? And if so be the reins shall slack.
EN- in her unwonted hand-if her feeble fingers
essay in vain to stay her steed of heaven---if,
on the sharp thorns or jagged rocks of some
untroddea mounlaip side, you shall see her
womanhood lie, bleeding shattered, formless-
you may weep and wall, but--mock, if You
dare
They, therefore, are right-rght in their
premises, lnOuSH "NOtlS III lutlI
who dolefuly affirm our Female Conventions
and Lucy Stones to be the sad results of our
free society. They are the results of free So
ciety just as the smoke, and SCOT, and Gin
ders helched forth by George Stephenson's
first locomotive engine, were the results of the
practical application of great principle-the
might of matter quelled by the might of mind.
But, Just as the more perfect calculation of that
principle converted this very smoke and SCOT
into a motive power, so will free society, when
it has learned wisdom, turn all this surplus ac
tivity into its proper channels, and make all
things work together for good-which is God.
Newspaper readers will perhaps remember a
statement, originating, | am sorry to say, in
Massachusetts, but copied by our enlightened
free press as accurately, extensively, and intel
ligenJy, as flock of sheep follow their leader
over the gap in stone fence. am sorry that
cannot give the paragraph exactly; the writer
seemed to have boanced suddenly against the
fact that there are not so mi.ny marriages In
the country as there used to be, and ought to
be. Being greatly exercised thereby, he casts
about for cause and remedy for this deplo-
rable state Of things. In frenzy of haste he
seizes his cudgel, and hangs away at whatever
comes within his reach and as he could not
walk up and down the fine old high street of
his native city without seeing troops of hand
somely dressed women, he I" falls to" upon
female extravaganza. 81 have found it! !