Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1869-01-20


Why not permit the women who recognize
and worship the s~aviours of this world while
furious mobs of men drag them to cruciixion,
to have some choice in selecting the rulers
who are needed to save the world from it's
sad turmoil and its infdel strifcs? Why
not trust to the vote cast in the g radiance
of womsn's unreasoning WISDOM which
leads man from truth to truth, and guide,
him from star to star ?
And what docs the instance of the Euro
pean peasantry prove? Is it that suffrage
debases woman? Is it not rather that the
absence of it degrades and dcbases man, takes
from him every attribute of leadership, mas
terry and authority, and makes him and wo-
man equal? And may We not reason from
this, not as l.. does that equality Of right
viii degrade woman, but that equality Of
wrongs brings all to the sane level Of misery
and that the suffrage, this exercise Of sover-
eighty, will lift woman as it does man to a
higher condition of Independent thought and
action, and a freer and fuller scope to every
power and faculty God has given to her ?
That the devils are equally miserable, would
hardly be a sound argument against giving
equality to the angels.
And we cannot forbear protesting against
arguing this question upon assumptions not
true in fact. 1t is begging the whole ques-
ton to assume that woman takes a mans place
when she votes. The very question to be
decided is whether man has a monopoly of
co-orrn,arF W. ~ro,1I ~ Io-a v-.p.,,
other than the very best, and noblest creation
Of God. We would have no gift which she
has for healing and saving the world unem-
ployed, no ray Of light which she can shed
upon this disordercd Garth, darkcned by a
disastrous eclipse. Aud it is because VIC be-
lieve that woman now not seldom come. in
iinitely short Of reaching the achievements Of
which she is capable. that her intellect, her
energies, her gifts, her very life, are too
often wasted upon the fripperies Of dress,
that she spends her days and nights and
occupies the precious moments Of this pre-
lude to eternity making a god Of apparel,
studying the-tricks of attire, and bc-silked
and be-jeweled worships in the temples Of
Fashion, with milliners for her priests, and
Demorest and Cooley and Peterson for her
prophets, that we ask for her some noblcr
work, something that will identify her in
action with the working, suffering world,
and make her its saviour rather than its
plaything, co-worker with angels and all
good men rather than a painted and gilded
toy, or a loye-stricksn Desdemona waiting for
her Othello. If to be this she must lose
some Of the traditional s%oftness and affection
ateness which have 50 charmed the old poets
and inspired the ancient masters Of painting
and sculpture, who shall say that she is not
after all thus nearer Gods ideal Of the per-
feet woman, and will not inspire the artists
and poets of the future with more glowing
tints for their canvas, more noble features for
their marble, and lofticr themes. for their
undying songs?
And where, consulting nature, art, history
and progress, docs our correspondent find
the true mysteries Of social life? Is it
among the wives and landmarks Of the pa
triarch Abraham, or in the y%anities Of Solo
mons court, or in the harem of the Turk, or
In the giddy society of the French capital
wifi its dancing and its dissoluteness, or in
the fashionable coteric. Of our own cities?
May we not, in recognizing woman as a CO.
yorker with man, as nearer his equal, a.
having some right to independent thought
Iaad to free voluntary action, believe great
advance has been made since the earlier cen
turtles. and that the bcncficent doctrines Of
tGhristisniZanep befare as hefqre
man, new spheres for activity, higher culture,
lnobler work, than was the lot Of the wives
Fof Abraham, the mistresses Of solomon, or
The houris of a M~ohammedan paradise ? Must
it not be conceded that art, science, progress
and Christianity have no more completed
their cycles for woman than for man and that
while we may gather light from all the past,
that light should be turned by wise men upon
! the path stretching before man and woman
alike in the ages to come? And may not
that future bring woman to a higher level
than she has yet reached, in which she may
help to shape the destinies Of nations, saving
governments from destruction, saving them
from hell, as in Dante's poem che saves
man.
| And 30 these twain. upon the skirts or Time.
Sit side by side, fall summed in all their powers,
I Dispensing harvest, sowing the To BE.
I Selfreverent each, and reyerencing each,
Distinct in ndividualIties,
But like each other, even - those VINO love.
Then comes the stateller Eden back 10 men;
Then reigns the world. great bridals, eha-te and
calm:
Then spring. the crowning race Of humankind.
May these things be-