The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-14
soRos1s AND yRs. eRuNDY.

strain UPON ctymOioBy, 10 oonoeAucu w A4ee'-~
sisterhood. Most, if not all, its members are
educated, literary, in easy circumstances, OF
fair moral repute, and addicted to that sort OF
self-conscious and scrupulously displayed in
dependence in thought and life which is one
of the most infallible proofs of morbid sus-
ceptibihty to the worlds opinions and re-
marks. If they profess to have mission
apart from their social Conversations and
conversations, it is devoted to improving the
position of their sex without trying, as the
advocates of the "woman's rights move
ment propose to do, the dubious and
perilous experiment Of putting women
on precisely the same footing, political
civil, and industrial, with men. And In
this they show a discrimination and
tact not often found in persons OF either
sex who set up as reformers For, laying
aside the difficulties and vexatious, and weari-
some and sickening delays which even the
most energetic and hopeful champions of
woman's rights, in the sense above indicated,
must undergo it is certain that the assump-
ton by women of rights heretofore exclu-
sively exercised by men would be attended
by the tacit Remuneration and the actual for
fixture of some of the most precious OF those
rights which are now accorded as the peculiar
privileges of their sex. Sorosis is wise, there
fore, in retaining from projects which look to
removing from women those disabilities which
constitute, paradoxical as it may seem, their
strongest panoply against the remorseless OPP
Grafton of the political and economical forces
of the world. The effect of their present dis
abilities is not to exclude them as prescribed
class, but to seclude them as o cherished
class it is not ostracism, but shelter.
But whether the sisterhood were as discreet
as bold in adopting resolutions declaring it to
be absurd and servile for woman to conform,
as an arbitrary rule, to fashion, and to consult
anybody's taste but their own in matters OF
dress, will, doubtless, by most of their sex be
open to question. And the most astounding
step ON this occasion was to resolve 60 that
Mrs. Grundy is a nuisance that shall neither
be tolerated nor quoted by member of the
Sorosis." 1t is needless to say who and what
is Mrs. Grundy. She is, as oil minds given
to philosophical reflection have, Of course,
| long since found out, an acidulous, highly
starched and superlatively puckered up
female, of uncertain age and of extremely
recondite virtue, who embodies the idea,
and calculates the darts of conventional
propriety; terrible indeed, but as
much of an allegory as Gorgon or Chimera,
as Bunyan's Giant Despair or Dickens's
Veneering and Podsnap. And her sanctuary
has always been the sdnctlm sGnctorlun of
secular worship for womankind. Men have
been known bold enough to spurn her dicta,
and to insist upon having their own way &C
cording to their own notions-such worthless,
for example, as Diogenes and Cato, Dean
| Swift and Sam Johnson. But what woman
ever in her heart despised the DEGREES, and
| disputed the omnipotence of Mrs. Grundy ?
| Weidoubt that one may be named even from
among those that have been most ostenta-
| tious in indecorum or hbertanism who has
| not mentally trembled at the name, and
bowed in awe and reverence before the frown,
| of this most searching of iniquisitors and
| most merciless of judges. Very naturally,
the strongholds of convention and fashion
two powers which are identical in the
Grundian personifcation-have always been
in the female department of society. The
most distinguishing quality of the typical
sw woman of society" is an exquisite sense OF
the boundary lines of ordinary existence.
Nothing is more prosaic, hard and angular
than the lines which govern tie daily life Of
this lovely creature who is supposed, in the
masculine imagination, to illustrate the sweet.
ness and the rhythm of beautiful poem in al
her movements. The freedom and unconfne-
ment which are essential to poetry, whether
in its gentler or its tragic moods,
are as foreign to her as they are
to the hand which marks the hours
of clock, and which move every day round
the dial obedient to the interior mechanism
She shrinks from all sorts of excess, from al
sorts of eccentricity, unless fashion first in.
dorses them, and then, of course, convention
ally speaking, they cease to be excess or &C.
centricity. Without this Endorsement, ex
IRENE delicacy, extreme warmth OF feeling
even extreme devotion to truth and virtue al
come under the head of the Ortre, and arr
therefore to be abhorred. She cultivates sucf
pleasures as are calculated to disqualif,
for entrance, hereafter, either. into Hell
or Heaven. She has no use for new
thoughts, for new subjects, but il
insatiably avaricious of new clothes. Wit o
the first order, literature of the highest class
the great and the sublime in poetry. in paint
ing, in sculpture, in acting-all these ar
oppressive to her in their original present
ment, and she is not reconciled to them unit
they have received the seal of fashion. Sh
delights in middling things. She is laugh
to believe that all else is replete with perils
Fundamental GOODNESS and monotony, AM
superficial excitement and mutability max
up the sum of her existence under the stereo
typed code and the incidental statutes of tn
infallible Mrs. Grundy.
Now we will not dispute that fashion, con
vention, artificial decorum, are all goo
enough in their way. Without them man
; propensities to evil that are now restraints
would doubtless come into full play, an
! society, freed from all discipline in respect t
| minor matters vould tend dangerously Z