The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-07
pIsCoRp IN CONCORD.
Prom ne N. I. World.

The serene and Scnolarly atmosphere OF
Concord New Hampshire, has recently been
agitated by O concourse of strong-mlnded
women and feeble-minded divines who as
sembled there in order to make some speeches
about woman's rights. The novelty of the
subject which they came together to discuss
impels us to rescue the proceedings from the
oblivion which would otherwise await them.
A good deal of darkness was cast upon the
subject at large by the speakers, and the pro-
ceedings were much too harmonious for those
of meeting summoned in the interest of re-
form. An element of tempest and moral re-
celebration should pervade the gathering
together of the apostles of change. But Miss
Anthony, who usually supplies that disturbing
magnetism, was not present; and the absence
of her waterfall, towering dark and huge
above the platform, was lamented as much as
the absence of the helm of Ajax would have
been in an assemblage of the Homeric war
riors. There were present. however, female
divines, physicians, and reporters-visible
and valuable exemplars of the capacity of
woman to accomplish other work than that
of the household or the school-room. What
sort of gospel the lady divines dispensed
with" what sort of physic the hippocratic
females prescribed, or what sort of nonpa-
reil the petticoated reporters reported, we
know not; but there is nothing unreasonable
in assuming them to have been, as theology,
physic, and literature go, good average speci-
mems of their kind, and such as to fully
entitle their respective professors to the
honors and immunities which appertain to
those vocations. There was good deal of
murky verbiage, and the tediousness of some
of the speakers was evidently the fruit of
good health and long practice. But the fact
was manifest that the reformers were very
much in earnest. They have a tolerably
clear purpose, and they are evidently going to
toll towards it till they achieve it, They are
not always coherent or precise in setting
forth their creed or the reforms which they
propose to effect. But they make up for that
lack by an amount of enthusiasm and talking
power which would be incredible if it were
not so continually evinced. Incessant drop
ping weareth away stone; so incessant meet
ings and speechifyings and resolutions will
doubtless in time procure for them the privi-
lege of the ballot. The supplicant at the
Judgment seat who bored the Judge SO that
he decided in her favor, irrespective of the
law or the equity of the case, was female of
prodigious sapience, and her "agitating"
sisterhood have well learned the lesson which
her experience inculcates. They have dis
covered the potency of prolixity; and this Is
the terrible weapon with which they fight
their crusade.
And the crusade really wakes formidable.
The blare of its bugles and the glitter of it's
standards have summoned to its ranks war
riors of other sort than those which followed
its initial forays. 1t numbers among its adj
vocates statesmen, philosophers, and scholars;
men of robust texture of mind, not given to
irregular enthusiasms, but the intellectual
pioneers who stand in the forefront of pro-
gress 1t looks as if daylight would really
dawn upon the the oppressed female one of
these days. and illumine her road to all sorts
of civic and other distinctions; and we never
read the proceedings of an official assem-
blage of the strong minded without being
impressed with the conviction that she ought
diligently to set about preparing for enfran-
chisement. Notwithstanding the enormous
number of womens right meetings held
throughout the country during the last ten
years, there is said to be no woman in Anne
RIGA competent to preside over a con-
vention OF meeting with due OBJ
servance of parliamentary rules.
Notwithstanding the immense number of
speeches made by women during the same
period the number of those who are capable
of rendering reason is portentously limited.
They can talk, but they cannot argue they
can agitate, but they cannot reason. All
their sound thinking is done for them by
their enemies, the men. All the arguments
calculated to make an impression upon dis
eiplined understanding have been formulated
and put in effective shape by men. They have
chaInpioned their own cause for the most part
with a kind of petulant vehemence which re-
jected all logical laws and limitations, and it
is really time that they set about acquiring
some of the rudiments of that knowledge
which they will find so useful and necessary
in the new and responsible career which
awaits them. Mrs. Howe-by far the ablest
and most learned of the strong minded sisters,
a lady of much Latin and more Greek, to
whom Terence is not too heavy nor Plautus
too light, to whom Justin Martyr and
Tertullian and Hypatia are as familiar as Dr.
Charming and Schleirmacher, or Theodore
Parker and Gervinus- showed herself not
superior to the besetting sin of her sex. She
lost the scent, like badly trained pointer,
and ran wild after hedgehogs when she should
steadfastly have kept the trail of the deer
The time and place rendered it appropriate
for her to talk about the rights and wrongs
of women, and either rehearse the old or adj
vance new arguments in favor of admitting
them to political equality with men, But
she fed wildly from the theme, and, like
swift Camilla securing the plain, did not fold
her pinions till she got to Cuba, and over that
sultry and unhappy isle she poured her melan-
cboly wall. 1t is not possible for lady of
her talents and learning to be other than in
teresting whether she sticks to the subject
in hand or abandons III but her intellectual
discipline must make her aware that the de-
parture of the Spanish gunboats had nothing
to do with the subject which they had come
together to discuss.
She might as we'll have interposed disserta-
tion on the Greek particle OF the Demiurgus
of the Gnostics Her phrase, that the ghost
of Captain Kidd must have laughed and the
timbers of the Mayhower groaned at that
naval exodus might answer very well in a