The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-01-16
TWENTY YARDS OF THE LATE
PANIC.

This is not discussion of the Woman
Question. Its confines are women's ex-
travagance in dress on one hand, and
the higher education of women on the
other. The conservative reader need
not be deferred by any apprehension of
the suffrage Flea and he or she who
sees the Woman Question radically
who constantly behOlds in the remote
and impOssible-future q revolution I'M
doing nature and wiping out divine
statutes-a revolution that is to demon
strate the superiority of little class of
mad theorists over God, and, hardly
less amazingly, over Matter, such a
mind viii not be indignant with an at
tempt to show that somewhat of radi-
calism may be urgently demanded, in
adjusting the privileges of women to the
rights of men.
Ministers do not often say very sensi-
BILE things on practical subjects. There
is no time and little room for robust,
vigorous and trenchant thought in
speculative theology, that includes
banking and stock speculations. In
handling the late panic, the evangelical
pulpits issued from their legal tender
reserve q curious sort of currency, with
Il scripture text in its face, its back
green, intended to be the religious les
son on the causes, the nature, and the
consequences of financial tempests
The spectacle they presented may be
illustrated by an imaginary parallel. If
n convention of gamblers held an active
professional convention in the Chicago
Exposition building, and that beautiful
structure were to tremble and tOtter and
fall, burying the multitude of criminals
in its ruins, the ministers should pro-
coed to make sermons ON the principles
of architecture, taking for their text the
psalm verse " NiSi DODlinus edit
caUerit dOm,tnl, ia UdHO LaGOrGUertlnt
QUi edifcdIR cam" Unless the Lord
build the house, in vain do the-con-
tractors worry. The reverend speakers
should enlarge then on the universally
of archItecture-civil,m military and naval
on the tendency of mankind to live
in simple truth, to live in houses and
the various kinds of these, their cost,
with and without easements, the apprO-
pirate furnishings, the harmony to be
observed between carpets and frescOes,
and the unity of the upholstery with the
style of the exterior, including the pat
tern of the fence-pickets; all this should
be detailed with the dignity and force
inseparable from the office of a modern
into a succinct history of architecture.
There were the pyramids of Egypt and
of Mexico, the cairns of Britain Fol-
lowing these, perhaps cotemporaneous
with them, the Druidical temples, the
dolmens of Brittany, the Notifications
of MycenR, and the mounds of Arizona
and Central America. Then the simple
DOric pillar, and the multiform varieties
of styles with which Imagination and
luxury have adorned religion and beau
titled the public places and the woods
the distinctions being properly noted
among entablatures, colonnades, cor
Noes and capitals. This could be am
plitied sufficiently to occupy all but the
final five minutes of the discourse and
the word of God might be alluded to
with gloves on during this innate. The
sin of gambling should form no portion
whatever of the Discourse, precisely as
the sins which induced the panic, and
the direct lesson of simplicity of life to
be derived from its consequences, formed
no part of the discOurses of these rever-
end gentlemen on that very recent
event.
One of this class was exceptional in
what ne said. He walked through his
Sunday school, rejecting on the panic.
and observed that the children were at
tired in satIns and laces and silks and
he uttered in his sermon the reflection
that this observation gave These
children are taught nothing of the vir-
tue of self-denial The little girls whom
he saw before him are to be the young
ladies, the wives, the mothers of his
church gaudy milliners' miniatures of
all the Sunday schools are to be become
the women of all the churches while
these churches last. Few of them have
the faintest perception of the virtue of
self-denial.
JAY Cooke himself Will not dissuade
us that self-denial is at the bottom of
the panic. No need of financial permu-
talons to prove this. Every man knows
1t IN ms own breast; every woman in
hers. Extravaganza caused the panic
Womens extravaganza bears a large
portion of the responsibility, and men
are ready enough to tell their wives so
and fathers and mothers to tell their
daughters. Let those who cry ont
now that the roof has fallen-ask them
selves whether this extravaganza of wo-
men is not an effect instead of cause.
Are not women just what men have
made them?
They are.
Women attire themselves gorgeously
because men demand that they shall do
so. This demand does not consist of
an injunction to spend money. 1t comes
upon women in the requirements of So
ciety, IN the obligations of tradition, in
the necessities of sex. The modifca-
tiOns of fashions are as irresistible by
women, as that sex is now socially
placed, as the incoming tide is irresisti-
ble by the sand on the beach. Men
make the fashions men manufacture
them ; men indorse their patronage and
purchase after manufacture and the
great bulk of men not engaged in evolv-
ing bonnet-frames and cutting dresses
and shipping the models and the new
materials to the four corners Of the uni