The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-11-20
evening State garrnaI.
Lecture--George William Curtis Discourse
on Women In the Old Time and In the New.

Mr.. George W. Curtis delivered the first
of series of lectures, under the auspices
Of the General Society of Mechanics and
Tradesmen of the city of New York. at
Steinway Hall, last evening, before an UNI
usually large and respected audience. His
subject was, "Women in the Old Time and
in the New" lie said that the olden
time always appeared to US more reverent
and more romantic than our day. We
feel as if beauty was more beautiful and
valor more heroic, and it seems that we
were left on the lees of time and the
worlds decrepitude. .g- uf
We deplore everything in our own time,
and the social moralist of our day con-
dennis the expensive dresses Of our FASH
ionable women, and asks why can not they
be like their predecessors of few hundred
years ago? He laments that women have
descended to French dolls, whose color is
made up of paint, whose head is loaded
with dyed hair and horse-hair stuff, whose
waist is reduced to cypher, and who
believe weakness grace, and affectation
simplicity. But in Queen Elizabeth's time
that lady left three thousand dresses be-
hind her, and the women of that time, like
those of ours, were as fond of dress and
display, and the same extravagances and
expenses that our moralists deplore.
Mr.. Curtis, in highly humorous tone, re-
lated numerous instances of the pretty follies
of women of the olden time, and said the pro-
gress of civilization was really the freedom
from the theories of those good old times.
One of the grandest results of this progress
was the evidence of the constantly increas-
ing position and estimate of women in mod
ern society, and great illustration of this
historical advance was the rapid opening of
every opportunity of education to women.
We point to the days of Pericles with
regret at our regeneracy, but the idea
pronounced by that great mind was
that women, like children, should be
seen but not heard. Through all ages
and all countries. from that time to this,
in their dealings with women, the sole
purpose of mankind seemed to be to de-
prive woman of the means of knowledge,
under the belief that with education she
would acquire contempt for her husband
and affection for every coxcomb whose
ideas in this respect correspondent with her
own. The wife of John Adams, one of
the most accomplished women of her age,
wrote that in her day the female education
was confined to reading and writing, and in
some few instances music and dancing.
This movement for education among wo-
men found root in Boston forty years
since, and created a profound sensation
among male bipeds because of the crowds
who sought intelligence. The more Ian
guages man has, the more a man is he,
said the sage; and the more knowledge
woman has, the better wife and mother is
she, says the common-sense of the age.
lApplause.l
In this country there were now three
hundred and thirty-seven collegiate institu-
tons, and in seventy-seyen of them, inclu-
ding the University Of Michigan and Cornell
University, both sexes were taught to.
gether. The great authorities of this coun-
try agree that co-education is better for
both sexes, and upon the very points that
seem at the first hearing the most objec-
tonable. Socrates considered that women
were intended only for good housewives and
fruitful mothers, and Chesterfield of mod
ern times spoke Of them as children Of
larger growth, without comprehensive
sense, and whom it was mans duty to
fatter and trifle with. Flattery he de-
scribed as the invariable companion of con
tempt, and he who fattered women most
scorned and despised them deepest. He
condemned the idea that women were
intellectually below men as a return to
the savage belief, and asserted that
the toasting of women's health by maud
lin festive-seekers at public banquets was
not much different from the drinking of
their health in her slipper, as was done
in England on notable occasion in years
past. Home, he willingly admitted was
the sphere of women, but education did
not unsphere her. 1t gave Nilsson and
Mott the power and wish to benefit the
world by the genius with which heaven in
spired them. He pointed to the characters
and career of Joan of Arc, Ida Lewis,
Grace Darling, Florence Nightengale, Mrs.
Stowe and thousand others, as evidence
of the genius, power, grace, and modesty
of womanhood, and concluding, eloquently
declared that woman graced home and rem
dered life beautiful, but they would be
thousand times better fitted for their posi-
tons of wives and mothers and Christian
women, by educating the talents which
God gave them for His own great ends.
[Applause.l -....