The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1870-03-19

VI InC uTcdHl ~ UOyby Uub Jue QeSlrc Oh man
the instinct of her sex. The age is somewhat
hard, abrupt and boisterous, and woman has
caught something of its spirit, as she had
not when, at her own hearth h-stone, she sat in
proud and satisfied content The spirit that
our mothers had-is there just Il suspicion of
halo cast by tender memories about it or was
1T just little sweeter, no less firm, but little
less pronounced than to-day's? Is there not
a something that we miss in homes now, that
comes OF the intruding of the worlds things
over the sacred line they might not in old time
pass More of the world, less of the home, and
woman of to-day may fancy hers a wider
sphere, and that in it her mission les-and
God knows there is enough for woman to do,
that woman only can debut need she take on
this unrest that denudes the sex of some of its
sweetest powers, and makes herself only one
like us, with no peace, only. push? Whether
it be the unrest of fashion or of philanthropy
1T is equally bad, equally unnatural equally
hardens the sex. One shrinks about equally,
though from different causes, from the
woman whose life is spent upon a platform,
and the woman whose life is spent in a ball
room. The public breath sullies just that
purity which cannot get away from the hearth
in that taint. don't doubt. l believe there
must be here and there, some to sacrifice the
home right and hope, and step out as
Iskirmishers before the front of battle, or the
! e. quick scud before the storm and in deing
IL IHC) HbfC Oh0e SOs.A~esAf117
of exquisite delicacy which you can never get
a true man to dissociate from the name Of
woman. The world-conhict does leave it's
mark upon them, not less woman but less what
man loves to see in woman, less what influences
him. Let them be the exceptions;
"Theirs but to do or die
but pray, 0 ye women of to day, do not catch
their spirit; nor that other, the spirit loved"
"fast' which is to-day's type and signet of to-
=. LII. L..N Il L.
without betraying the pure gift divine. Not
this spurious dignity which comes out of books,
and these CALLING, idle etiquettcs, which create
the incense society so greedily absorhs, but the
inborn dignity, whose fires God lighted in the
first female heart, which better than the tabled
zone of beauty descends to every living daugh-
ter, such dignity is yours to have and to hold,
to be grace and glory, which, husbands and
lovers shall recognize and all men bow before
In this storm time ofman S life what woman's
touch is in our pain, VIC want her spirit to be
in our straits, with self sustaining quiet that
shall make all tumult in our lives subside like
the sea of Galilee beneath the footstep of esus
The tone of woman of to-day is getting to be
too much that of an exactng. peevish dissats
faction. She catches the spirit not from the un-
rest of the age alone, but from conventions,
from sorosis, from all the agitation OF debate
lecture and press from the patent eXaggeration
of her wrongs and morbid counting over her
disabilities In pressing for justice to herself
she is likely TO be uni ust to those she now too
much regards not as antagonists so much as
tyrauts in winning for her true, is in danger of
assuming false, position Acerbity is an inevi-
table if not necessary element in all revolution
but no woman ever becomes sharp or bitter
without vitiating the cause she advocates, as
we'll as dropping herself as an influence with
those to whom she appeals. In the great, un-
questioned good, not desired only but within
the day reach, woman's time honored, original
weepers are most effective. She can do more
with them than with the grosser things men
WELD, even as the fair boy, David, could do
more by relying upon his own weapon than by
accepting the mere seemiy and well tried armOr
of his warrior Ring.
De Toequeville discussing the character and
condition of the American People, says that
were he asked to what the singular prosperity
and growing strength of that people ought
mainly to be attributed, replies "to the supe-
ridrity Of the women" as not the mere compli
ment of Frenchman, but the considered
opinion of broad, far-seeing philosopher. The
judgment should be accepted not as soothing
to a national or a sex vanity, but as convincing
women Of the power she has to mould and hold
people, and stimulating her not to fall below
the standard which the past has attained. The
past is secure. 1t is of the last generation that
he said that. Will it still be to be said OF the
next AS the French say chat depends
cast no horoscope. | have not the wisdom
nor tie means. Wiz, fGotwit, hays-beeE busy
at the problem, and caricature from pen and
pencil, in prose and poetry and drama, has
leaped audaciously to the front. We have had
pictures dark, and prophecies dire and portents
innumerable, the whole face of the domestic
and political world convulsed and changed,
and new base arranged. woman usurping
every manly function, and man, whipped and
resigned, accepting demurel the cast-nff
III 6, 4
l suppose tits very funny. Men seem to think
so. They must be indulged in their little ways!
Let them have chalk and a bit of board and
exercise the gift that is iii them 1t soOthes
them and hurts nobody, but it terribly shows
how little they realize the depth Of the move
ment or the fact OF the coming future.
FUTURE.
The woman of the future is to be no such
thing as they portray. They are drawing from
the present and from lineaments that will
smooth out under the soothing hand of time.
They are drawing from that which is transient,
but the eternal in woman, the great wealth and
privilege of sex-they are overlooking l be-
lieve in progress and that everything in the
future is to grow right, though | know what
crudeness the process of growth entails, just as
believe it Of the peach, though Isee the pail
fairness of its blossom exchanged for rough
and scrubby hide of ugly green, neither flower
nor fruit. Though feel that to day has lost for
us much which adorned the past, 1 believe it
has in itself and holds the promise of all that
shall qualify the future. Its grosser cerements
encase a life of glory and of beauty.
And believe the victories of the future
the winning of all right, the shedding away of
all wrong are to be elsewhere than on the
political arena. Women are going to vote, and
men, rather than their own sex, are going to
help them. The ways of men are past any
finding out, and they will fasten to the queerest
things 1t was q man, believe, who when he
was drowning, clung to the anchor There is
large opposition to suffrage in our homes, and
l see that women of some social prominence
are going to try to bring out the antl-sut1rage
opinion and the working women of Massachu.
sets have entered, in form, their protest
against it. All well-but the aoomen are going
to cote 1t is a little more Of that tinkering to
which what we call the ship of state has got to
be subjected 1t is all right. Men may prove
it to their own satisfying that woman has not
the right. The proof is as good as many ether
proofs that prove nothing. She will vote, and
not one of all the prophesied ills will come.
Those are like ghosts that make terrible row
but always vanish with the coming of day In
western colleges that is proved byexperiment,
which used to exist in Newburg and academy
that the education of the sexes together
promotes the best good of each. Facts are as
reliable and quite as stubborn as theories and
prejudice must give way, at last, to things es-
tablished The truth is the sexes were made to
gv- together from tho cradle to the grave, and
the moral evils men anticipate from their
mingling have been created by their artificial
separation. Woman purifes whatever atmos-
phere she breathes, and politics will prove no
exception AS question of social and domes-
tic expediency l have my doubts about voting
great deal of confusion and clamor, and a
good deal of the same sort of twisting up of
things that we get now, at first, but woman
wonderfully smoothes and straightens out every
thing she takes bold of, and if she continue IN
it, the old trade of the politician is played out.
He may hang up his fiddle and take to the hoe,
and welcome to any power that can cleanse
this nation of the leprous curse entailed upon!
it by the race Of polticians-big and little, and
if our redeemer is again to be woman, then
make way, and welcome for her at the polls
But woman's future, which is TO be mans
future, is to be wrought out elsewhere, in other
fields than those in which Anna Dickenson and
Mrs Stanton now scatter seed. There is a deep
in woman to which herself has not yet found
the pummet She is but the first, dawn fush
of herself Ever and anon some new spirit
essaying new thing shows what undiscovered
mines lie within woman's nature, and how
pure and precious the ore she may bring from
unguessed recesses, as in the darkening homes
of war she stood revealed to herself and to us
as almost some new creation? Sowherever new
endeavor or new want lie is she, not helpless
or in the way, but pioneer, cheerful and hope
full and believing though we despair, when the
fierce fire burns out, and woman comes to see
what at last she must see the fearful havoc and
wreck she makes of herself while dragging at
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