Litchfield enquirer., 1875-03-18

ClfSS OI WOLu6u SudA1 U0 gwen OSC1 GO dO- solute destruction. Necessary! wonder If such people realize that when they so assert that they are speaking against com mon sense and decency; that they are blaspheming against God. They are say ing that a God so all-wise, all-loving, has created woman with a brain to think, heart to feel, body to suffer, a soul to live through time and eternity-has crea- ted such being as this for the sole pur- pose of being given over to the absolute destruction of man; that by her absolute destruction other women may be saved from being trailed and soiled.
 It Is this idea, think, that lies under
 the action that society takes toward the woman when she has made one step over the strict line of virtue. The woman has made only one step; in many and many case how short that step has been. The
 woman has stepped aside in many case,
 want driving her, poverty urging her on, and, in many and many a case, with love powerful, unselfshness absolute. ven- ture to say, knowing what say from many
 sad and long look at the revelations of
 what have seen, that in all unselfishness,
 a woman is never half so near to heaven
 as in the hour the world calls her fall
 For her it is literally from heaven to
 earth, from earth to hell. Society says of
 this woman, ''She has taken this one step;
 drive her down. Since it is necessary for
 some such class to be in the world, and
 this woman has taken one step, drive her
 down eternally." She comes into the pale
 of society. She goes to the door of some workshop saying, 'Let me work; let me
 earn an honest living" She goes to the
 door of home, and says, ''Letm come in. l can harm no one. I am only anxious to
 gather to myself, quiet" They only turn
 her away. She goes into highways and byways among the outcasts of the earth,
 but they all turn her away. She comes
 into the respectable church and sits down
 in respectable pew, listens to respecta-
 ble pastor, and is shown to the door by the respectable sexton. One and all, men and women there together, turn her away
 worship of Him, who said, to the sister of
 such a one, ''Neither do condemn thee. !" l It Is necessary, says society, for such
 classes of women to be, therefore, storm
 the woman down who has made but one false step. She is clinging on the brink
 of an abyss. She is looking up with eyes full of entreaty and anguish, and she is crying with & voice that has come from
 the depth of her soul for help. Society
 says: Tear away the fingers; there is no | room in here; let her go into the abyss;
 it IS necessary for such women to live | down there for the protection of our wives
 and daughters.
 And men say out of this same false teaching. "Well, certainly you cannot
 mean to condemn men. You certainly
 cannot mean to hold mea to any strict
 line of rectitude in that? The woman IS
 already scorned, already tainted. You certainly don't mean to assert that the
 man now does any great harm to himself or any one else by going across that dark
 ened and stained threshold?"
 mean to say that, SO far as absolute
 rectitude and virtue are concerned, the man who goes across the broken thresh-
 old does a fouler deed than one who
 crosses threshold already untouched. ''The man is to be held to no account l ability for hurting this woman already mortally hurt, in substance says society; but ah! this woman at first only went a little way and had such little path to 1 retrace, and how many are they who by such processes of reasoning have been l driven away into desert space, where, living with no women about her, with on-
 lY men passing by her, the man is not to | be accused of any serious wrong if he | treats her as he finds her. It is like unto | a woman lying out on desert sands perish
 ing with an army marching through to get
 man reaches her, she, looking up from her | place, stretches out hands and lips and 1 voice to beg for a cup of water and bit
 of coarse bread to save her from destruc- tion; and the first man of the advance line
 with light laugh, with an oath perchance
 stoops, gathers up handful of sand, and | filings it upon her as he goes by, and the
 next man, seeing the deed of his comrade, repeats it; and the next man, seeing what has gone before, repeats it. And the army
 marches on The pile of sand grows and
 grows. The woman's prayer has resolved
 itself into silence. On the army marches, ] and one soldier and another and another
 gathers up the sand and filings it on the increasing pile as he goes by. The wo- | mans silence is turned to oaths and blas- phemy in her tortured suffering. and Ah!'' | they cry, "what language for a womani What creaturei What a vile wretch! She
 cumbers the earth; let us over her cover, " and more and more and more the sand falls down, until by and by last man passes, the last handful falls Monument and grave are built together over this wo-
 man. When the great Inquis1tor comes
 to make search for the great slain. which
 of those men, think you, will stand con- | demned = this woman's murderer - the | first man who, in answer to her prayer and cry for help, flung the first handful of
 sand, one of the men passing by, or the
 last man who dropped the last handful,
 through which her inspired soul was breathed out to bear its testimony at the
 bar of God? Let no man lay the fatter- ing unction to his soul that his act is a light and insignificant one, not to be ac- | counted because it is collective one As
 I said moment ago, the act seems to me, | touching the essence of absolute rectitude l manliness, virtue, an even more hideous thing than the other, since a man might
 be swept away by whirlwind, might be l carried away by strong tides out to sea but a man who crosses such a threshold 1 does 1t because he deliberately and with quiet brain and cold blood elects to make
 worse than brute of himself, and to drag
 mis erable women to one lower step of in- l fanny and degradation. All of this harm, all of this misery, all of these weights heaped upon woman, heaped upon child ren, heaped by society; and yet not truth l to be taught to men because their acts do I but:.concern themselves alone and them
 selves so slightly An, but the sword is two-edged, it cuts the holder when it cuts the victim.
 MANS wELL-BEING DEEPLY AFFECTED. Since men do what they do in this mat ter concerning women and children and
 society, what do they do to themselves?
 what effect has all this upon mans own
 well-being, mental, moral, physical? I
 wonder why fathers who have learned out
 of the bitter school of experience, why | older brothers who know the truth in
 many and many case in sorrow, why
 these never tell the truth to the boys, to
 their sons and any other brothers who are growing up about them. wonder why mothers, who protect their boys against
 every slightest harm other than this,
 never speak word to save themI Why | do fathers and mothers. why do those who
 through experience or observation know | ho fo1I r., kaI kIosa ~y~r1no -roon