Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1874-01-01
Mrs. LivermOre'S Lecture.

Mrs. Livermore began by saying that
about thirty years ago Margaret Fuller's
:" Woman in the Nineteenth Century ;"
awakened much discussion, and that she,
buving the book, was struck with two mot
toes upon the title page, the one contra
dieting the other The one was, " Frailty,
thy name is Woman" and the other, " The
Earth awaits her Queen" The one was the
record of the former estimate of woman,
in many cases too true an estimate; the
other was prophetic of the woman of the
future.
In times past woman has been altern-
atelv the slave and idol of man; now
drudge and then doll. But to-day the
work and the place of this half of the hui
man family is coming to be carefully CON
sidered and presents itself as the problem
of the age.
Everywhere, in politics, in society, in
the Industries and in religion. the - woman
question " to-day thrusts itself forward.
Whether welcomed or unbidden, it is
found present. In religious assemblages
it stalks up the aisles. and what shall be
woman's work in the church must find an
answer.
Not in this country alone is the question
assuming shape, but in its various forms it
is pressing itself home in all countries. In
England, in France, and in Germany is
this true: not in each case with like
phases, but everywhere in some one of its
manifold aspects. In Germany it is greatly
a question of womans place among the
laborers, and of her pay for doing like
work with men. There are women found
engaging in the worst kinds of labor,
working in the field, and with the beasts.
In India evenly the aid of woman boards
of missions, the condition of woman is I'M
dergoing slow, but sure improvement. So
all over the world in various degrees of
advancement toward a new order of things
and new place in life, women are leaving
the ways that have had their day.
But those now grown to womanhood
J have their places fixed in the world; they
are bound by their education and habits in
great measure to the present order OF
things, and by love and duty to ways OF
life that forbid their entering upon new
duties and activities. We hear much o.
the g coming man," but we must remem
Der that his mother must precede him
His education will lie with the mother, anC
| the young girls of to-day are to be the
wives and mothers in the next generation
. A question of moment is, then, "Wha
shall we do with our daughters?" TIL,
lecturer said she was speaking of thu
D great middling class, and not of upper ten
: dom, or the lower strata
1t is true that women are not as health,
as men As class they are farther from
the standard of health attainable by then
y than are men from their right standard o
n health. Health is the first necessity 70
d useful and pleasant life. Gods best eli
: to those whose health is utterly gone GU
h from them, is to suffer them to die. Nov
IS physicians when pressed for an answer
d admit that there is no necessity in the na
a ture of things why women should be S
l. much more affected by nervous and kir
bred diseases than men are.
e The successful women who are dom
e great work in the woman question ar,
r with one exception in excellent health
y Mrs. Stowe, now sixty-one, Mrs. Mar
p Mitchell, the astronomer, and Harri,
y Hosmer, as also Charlotte. Cushman. Elis
beth Stuart Phelps had grown 50 niue