New-York tribune., 1870-12-14
LECTURE TO MEN, BXCLUSTTELY

We may as well face the trutn' OVer our
wives, sisters OF swcehearts we have just now
very little influence. The last whim of woman
is to find a career for herself, and for this
business she has set aside az OF secondary I'M
portance Iher old cmplOyments OF love-maklng
and child bearing and training. 1.-The destiny
"of woman is to work." says one OF her spokes-
men marriage and maternity are mere accl-
"dentsn-and such is the drift OF all her public
teaching. When the adult woman has taken
the bit between her teeth to this extent, the
wisest plan is to let her run her length un-
baked, whatever may be our opinion OF her
road OF gait. But such of us as are fathers
have surely some authority in deciding at
least the bodily fate of our infant daughters,
and it is worth our while seriously TO c0nsidef
if the physical condition of the next genera
ton of women is to be as deplorable as
that OF the present. AS to whether
the American woman is slave, or whether
suffrage OF a new husband every fourth year
is the best remedy for her political and social
grievances, we may each have different opin-
ion. But that the American woman is weak
in the back, ,-dyspeptic in the stomach, and
nervous to the verge of insanity, Is fact
which almost every husband and father con-
fesses in the bitterness of his SOUL
A leading article in womans paper this
week sets forth this fact more plainly than we
would dare to do. "Most women are almost
"invalids,n we are told. and they are coun-
seled to treat themselves asf they were altogeth-
er so. The ordinary New-York woman begins
to ego Off while her children are babies
She is advised that rest is what she wants.
"Stay in bed; if the cook does spoil and
steal, and the children's aprons do get dirty,
4" do MT quicken that laboring heart, and set
those tired muscles quivering by jumping up
Z" to make things right. Let your husband do
"it, If nurse ia out. 1t won't hurt him."
leading physician, "whose practice is largely
among women" offers his advice: " The
"gentlest gymnastics for the chest; quiet
"drive, OF a swing, with an easy chair for
"seat; eggs, beef-tea, broiled meats, and
cream; iron in small Doses" With this
prescription, the ordinary woman, it is hoped,
may bolster up her poor wreck of body
while it shuifles its unable way through
life. The leading physician adds,
significantly: "a woman has no busi-
"ness to have a string Of children
"long enough to 60 across the street but she
Fought to have one or two. And she is, above
all things, to be pitied who destroys her first
born. If she ever has fine, intelligent child,
ait should be the first. And in losing that
81 she cuts down the flower and hope of her
"lifer The wise doctors words, we are as
sured, should stand without comment or addi-
| ton. We have but one comment to offer, and
that is, that for the woman by whom such
advice is needed one or two children are
| quite too many. Let her devote herself to
voting, OF to the PhilharmOnics, or bazars,
or fve-hounced dresses, from which she is
warned; but for the sacred Office of mother
hood she is untitled in body and soul, in the
eyes both of God and man. The worst of it
is, that the extreme remedies prOpounded i'm
press the reader as only sensible and just. 1t
| is like a prescription of yeast OF anodynes,
given when the patient is in drtculo raortiS--not
to save life, but to make lingering death easy.
Now what is the cause of this deplorabe
state of affairs 7 The great-grandmother of
this hapless creature, very likely, was pioneer
in the woods reared family of twelve or
thirteen children spun, scrubbed, wove, and
cooked lived to eightY-fye, with iron mus
ces, broad chest, and keen, clear eyes.
Climatic influences have nothing to do with
|
the Middle States, to-day, sits down when her
| days work is done an unlovely object enough,
it is true, with her leathery skin and wisp of
hair knotted back, but without pain or an
ache, and good for fifty healthy years yet.
| Nor will it do to say that the substitution of
mental training in the education of girls for
manual labor has weakened their bodies and
irritated their nerves. The shrewd wife of an
early pioneer found her judgment, her obser-
walton, and invention called into incessant
| action; used her brain more in a week than
the New-York woman of ton would in q year
of balls and bazars. Nor Will the substitution
of an artificial for natural mode of life alto
gether account for it. The English fashionable
woman leaves nature out of sight also; yet,
compared with her American sister, is Hebe
| to shadow.
| The secret we believe to lie in the false
strain and tension of American society. Men
| as well as women are borne into O maestrom
OF social struggle; but a boy carries his body
| along with him. 1t has chance of fresh air
and exercise as he pushes his way in college
or on Change or market; but the girl, at the
very age when her physical frame calls for
rest and outdoor training, is crammed, taught
to dance, to 1irt, to dress, to look out
anxiously for husband: when she is married,
she has her children to push on in their turn,
household drudgery, or O whirl Of fashionable
engagements; or, if she has taken the newer
but no less exhausting route, her sex's wrongs
to right. In any case, her neglected body be-
comes mere bundle of nerves ON which to
hang diseases; and, as the easiest way of rid
ding herself of some Of them, she declines
to become the mother of more than one OF
two children When our infant daughters
have the duties of men odded In tboir o,vn