The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1870-03-12
WHAT WOMAN MUST BE.
BY JOHN F. W. WARE.

Thank God Tor the pure WOmanly in woman
the thing of beauty that her life is in many
spheres of love and use she touches; for her
sympathies and charities and compositions and
comfortings. Nowhere that woman will not go.
| Danger, distance, contagion, privation, battle,
will she dare. Step by step with man, she fol-
lows civilization into the wilderness; he pi-
oneer OF industries she of graces. In the tor
rid zones OF India and America hermissonary Ia
bors adorn and relieve the history of missionary
zeal. Let the pestilence walk by noon-day and
she is there; let inen fall at her right hand and
her left hand, she is still there. Ihave seen her
amid rough, vulgar men under the f!Own of
batteries, tender as an infant. graceful and
sweet in all that culture and wealth add t.
charity, staunching red wounds and hearing
dying mems groans, or tenderly tiding dying
souls over the wave that breaks for them upon
the eternal shore. And with no gathered
skirts, serene. and pure, and hopeful have
seen her move amid the unclean, the shad-
ow of her passing spirit leaving behind its
bencdiction. Poverty nor ignorance rcpel h;r;
age nor sex, nor color. She is minister TO all,
not with the charity Of The hand or OF the lips
Of the heart as we'll, while in church. IN fari-
ty, in home, in renovating public opinion, and
establishing the sanctity, il not the rcspecta-
bility OF work, she pioneers highway along
which the sex is to push its emancipation from
every thrall of law, of CUSTOM of man and her
self. She is making it felt that it is no disgrace
to exercise any gift of God, only disgrace not to
do it, and when that is at last ccomplished,
clothed in the garments her maker dccreed for
her, woman shall stand out before the Universe,
but little lower than the angels, crowned with
glory and with honor.
So much many a woman does, so much all
women must do. What women need be shown
is what women Gan do. What they need be
| taught is that the only sphere for woman Is the
sphere of use. the sphere in which the highest
and the best in her can have the fullest play,
and accomp plish the most genuine good. What
| theyneed TO feel is, that what has been done is
but drop to what may be done that it is but
the crossing the threshold ofability that there
| is wide world possible to them uncntered and
| and uncultured, and i'll il all manner OF lmpo-
tent wait the coming of her redeeming splr-
it, the spirit which while it redeems others, re-
| veals ITSELF
For nothing is trucr than this-that we have
not yet seen woman; that she has never yet
| guaged herself. She has never yet had, or gwen
herself fair play. We will notargue the ques-
ton whether it be her own fault or mans, or in
| what parts each is to blame. You cannot look
| fairly at history and fact, at past and present,
without feeling how much the woman spirit
has been repressed how little Of it has actu-
| ally been suffered to come out new laws have
held it back and customs crippled; how foolish
notions and false proprieties, social standards
and small pre- udices have checked womanhood
in its free motions toward the unfolding ofitself.
| those the prejudice or ignorance OF long years,
and her growth has been between the lines SO
drawn. And now we, for the first time stand,
where she may fairly begin and grapple with
the problem. She is beginning to assert her
self. She has taken the aggressive. She has
advanced to new positions, and SO far, believe,
| none that she has not held. In art who ques-
tions Rosa Bonheur and Harriet Hosmer; on
the platform Anna Dickinson and Mrs. Liver
more; in the pulpit, Lucretia Motto and Olym-
pia Boron; in philanthrophy, Dorothea Dix and
| Mrs. Frye in invention, names you would not
| recognize, but known to science; in literature,
Harriet Montineau and Elizabeth Browning;
| in science Mrs. Somerville and Maria Mitchell
| in monarchy Elizabeth of Eng, and Isabella of
| Spain; in heroism Joan of Arc and Ida Lewis,
of Newport, and whole galaxy of equal and
lesser lights? Nothing to which woman has
| put her hand but she has been equal; nothing
| she has touched but she has adorned, and the
| burden that the sturdier shoulders of men
| have halted under, she has upborn to success,
for here is patient, enduring courage that
outlives mans sturdier but less elastic spirit
No one having any interest in woman-and
| what man has not?-but must heartily desire
anything that will help in the development of
| her every power, make her happier, remove
| the terrible causes of terrible evils under
| which she labors; give her, discover for her
| or restore her the all, God intended for her
| sex. Inthe outgrowing of every capacity of
woman lies the advancement of the race
Let us help her with our laws, our sympathy,
| and our prayers.
1t seems to be agreed in the various analy-
| ses that have been made of the female char
acter, that the power of broad, sustained thought
| is hardly hers, that she Jumps intuitively at
conclusions rather than reaches them by pro-
cess; that thinking with her is chiefly a
mode of feeling and though very generous in
| her acts she is rarely so in opinions |
suspect there is good deal of truth in
| this, and it suggests what seems to me
first dem and of woman. She must learn
| to think, to counteract this tendency of feel
| ing to take the place of thought. The sub
ject is broad one and can scarcely be touched
| here, but take women as you know them, the
elder as the younger, and you must be struck
with thelittle evidence of thought among them:
with the quick, decisive, tenaciously held opin-
/ ion, coming as the lightning comes which is to
her as the unalterable word of fate. The fe'
male nature nor the female work can be per-
fected without thought. Woman has moral
| nature the exquisiteness of whose organism as
well as the delicacy of whose influence as far
| exceeds the grosser organism and influence OF
man as the down on the cheek OF the peach
| exceeds the hoar and craggy bark OF the moss
grown oak, but it will not do for her to rest on
| that, and give and live thing OF impulse,
1 nor guided merely by her better intuitions.-
| She really needs in life opinions, things care
| fully thought, and not feelings; principles
things thoroughly sounded, and not sentiment.
| She has mind and it ought to be disciplin-
ed not merely in the direction in which schools
| discipline it, so as to grasp languages ana
| theorems, but so as he be at home in every day
demand that lite makes of thought. For life
| is woman's sphere, these things right about us
| everyday. They are her creating and control
| ing. In society, in domestic life she is the
| presiding genius, and we cannot have every
day complete. except through her fidelity
| She must train herself to think, and in turn
/ train her children. Why should not woman
| exercise mind? We expect, we demand it OF
man. Shouldn't she think, nor of drees, nor
| OF domestics, but of things that shall make
her heart expand, her life grow, herself ofuse
A man is thinking and growing all the time,
and you sadly see sometimes his wife has stood
still and been left behind. Thinking, the dis
cipline of thought, action controlled by it, do
not require learning or leisure, only practice,
patience and conscience. In this common, fash
ionablc, giddy thoughtlessness of young wo-
men, this want any well-balanced opinion up
on themselves, their duties and resposibilities,-
anything but defect? A silly girl and as
silly men may think it "taking," or call it "the
thing" but agiggling, dawdling, empty ybrained
girl is not the thing, cover her never so deep in
laces and jewels and graces and put never SO
many thousands to her dowry, and marry her
with never SO many BRIDES maids, with never so
much champagne and publicity. Why men
may fool with such girl not when they come to
| the more serious matters, " Hey oe men, Iney
want 6rainS-not the outside of the head but
the inside! The shallowness of education is
bad enough, not the shallowness that one
makes for herself, why it is so bad there is no
English TO describe it.
Now want to say thatwomen ought to think,
to have and hold broad, intelligent opinions, if
not on matters of large, public concern, yet
on matters of every day which come largely
within every woman'S sphere, and mould every
| woman's life. They and We shall be happier
and better. No better pincher for mans
mind than that of an intelligent woman, and
until he has the mind of such, no subject is
complete to him. And all these things about
women which now vex or exercise, the settling
which rightly very vital to both sexes, about
which the prejudices of women are deeper even
than those of man, and get speedy and wise
settlement while many petty tyrannies, now
petulant and domineering in the universe
of their tininess, would be swept out of our
daily lives. We could better decide then il
{ the men keep down the women, or women
keep down themselves.
As much, perhaps more even than this, wo-
man must have not merely the right to ,0ork
but work ITSELF She has no business to be drone
/ or idler No position exempts her from the
great necessity. The cause of the sex has
been its position on this point. By her very
make woman is a worker. Idleness consumes
her, takes all the pure unselfsh out of her, ia.
kes her into herself and shuts her in. "There
is no greater enemy to body and soul than idle
ness unless it be the absurd public sentiment
which compels to idleness. Disease, depressi.