The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-03-28

we find none who nave bluleheu oh
platforms or made an historical parade
of their work. Quietly, and with the dignity
which comes by self-respeot, and the con-
soiousness of strength, they have done what
IL was in their hearts to do, leaving the world
TO find out the value of their labors, and to
applaud or deride their independence. Mrs.
Soneryille asked no mans leave to study sci
enoe and make herself distinguished name
as the result, nor did she find the need
of any more special organization than
what the best books, free press,
and first-rate available teaching OF
fered. Miss Martineau dived with more or
less success into the forbidding depths of the
"dismal SCIENCE at a time when political
economy was shirked by men, and considered
as essentially unfeminine as top-boots and
tobacco; and she was confessedly an advanced
Liberal when to be high Tory was part OF
the whole duty of woman. Miss Nightingale
undertook the care of wounded soldiers with
out any more publicity than was absolutely
necessary for the organization of her stah,
and with not so much as one shrek. Rosa
Bonheur laughed at those who told her
that animal painting was unwomanly, and
that she had better restrict herself to flowers
and heads, as became the jeune dem0iseJlo of
conventional life but she did not publish her
programme of independence, nor take the
world into her confidence, and tell them of
her difficulties and defiance. The lady super
intendents of our own various sisterhoods
have organized their communities and per-
formeS their works Of charity with very faint
blare of trumpets indeed and we might
enumerate many more who have quietly
lived the life of action and independence of
which others have only raved, and who have
done while their sisters shrieked. These are
the women to be respected, whether we SYM
| pathize with their line of action or not, hav-
| ing shown themselves to be true workers,
capable of sustained effort, and, therefore,
worthy of the honor which belongs to strength
and endurance.
OF one thing women may be very sure,
though they invariably deny it; the world is
| glad to take good work from whomsoever will
supply it. The most certain patent of sue
cess is to deserve it; and if women will prove
that they can do the worlds work as well as
men, they will share with them in the labor
and the reward, and if they do it better they
| will distance them. Theappropriation of fields
| of labor isnot so much question of seltishness
as of (hitherto) proved fitness; but if in times
| to come women can show better harvesting
than men, can turn out more finished, more
| perfected results of any kind, the worlds
| custom will flow to them by the very force of
natural law, and they will have the most to
| do of that which they can do the best If
they wish to educate public opinion to ac-
cept them as equals with men, they can only
| do so by demonstration, not by shrieks.
Even men, who are supposed to inherit the
| earth and to possess all the good things of
| life, have to do the same thing. Every young
man yet untred is only in the position of
every woman; and, granting that he has not
| the lightweight of precedeat and prejudice
| against him, he yet has to win his spurs
before he can wear them. But women
/ anti thafrC f,iu fA 1rrith hn11f
winning, and, moreover, ask to be taught
how to wear them when they have got them.
They want to be received as masters before
they have served their apprenticeship, and to
| be put into Office without passing an exami-
nation submitting to competition. They
scream out for clear stage and favor super
added; and they ask men to shackle their own
feet, like Lightfoot in the fairy tale, that
they may then be handicapped to a more
equal running. They do not remember that
their very demand for help vitiates their
claim to equality; and that if they were
what they assume to be, they would
simply take without leave asked or given,
and work out their own social salvation
by the irrepressible force of concen-
trated will and in the silence of conscious
strength While the shrieking sisterhood re-
main to the front, the world will stop its ears,
and for every hysterical advocate ''the cause
loses rational adherent and gains disguised
opponent. 1t is our very desire to see women
happy, noble, ftly employed, and we'll re-
munerated for such work as they can do,
which makes us SO indignant with the foolish
among them who obscure the question they
pretend to elucidate, and put back the cause
which they say they advance. The earnest
and practical workers among women are a
very different class from the shriekers; but
we wish the world could dissociate them more
clearly than it does at present, and discrimi-
nate between them, both in its censure and
its praise.