Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1876-05-26

dTesSeS, nODDllnS on HlSn-neeIeu
shoes that pinch their feet into
Chinese deformitv, in bonds that
squeeze their waists. 1t is shameful,
we cry. But were the olden times
much simpler? In Smollet's "IIum
phrey Clinker," the picture Of socie-
ty one hundred years ago, we see
famous belle dressed for a ball. 81
was not six hours in the hands of the
hairdrcsser and ne stuffed my head
full of black tow that would have
made quilted petticoat.' And yet
it was the smallest head with one
exception.
The position of women is always
the test of civilization, and the great
illustration of its advancing sentl-
ment is the opening up of every op-
portunity of education. To day, as
stand in the ample halls of some
great school for girls, humming
with intellectual activity, as l think
of the daily use of that household. of
the libraries, Of the cloister of learn
ing, of the nuns immured, not for
solitary and useless worship, but
daily training to praise God by the
larger and still larger development
of the faculties He has given, I
reflect that if those girls had been
Greeks of the age of Pericles, instead
of Americans Of to-day, if they had
lived in what we are apt to call the
finest civilization, it would have been
simply accepted as an indication that
they were fitting themselves for
lives Of disgrace instead of honor. In
the Old times of Grace, the best edu-
Gated, the most accomplished wo-
men, women whose wit and intelli-
gence were like the ladies who are
the pride of society to-day, were for
that reason an outlawed class.
The lecturer then spoke of the first
attempts toward the higher cduca-
ton of women. He told how
young woman was mobbed in France
for attempting to establish a school
in which she might teach girls; re
ferred to the accomplishments Of
ladies' in the early days as consisting
OF nothing more than a knowledge
Of writing and arithmetic, and in
some few cases music and dancing.
Sometimes in those early days girls
were allowed to attend school when
there were not boys enough to fill
the classroom, and in summer girls
were in few instances permitted to
attend the boys school for n few
hours day. The city of Boston was
the first to give girls an opportunity
to gain a better education, and after
a discussion of three years it was de-
cided by the common council to es-
tablish a high school for girls similar
to that for boys. When the school
was opened its doors were actually
besieged by girls, and the city fathers
were amazed at this crowd of "fel-
lows of the other sex, you know
At the establishment of the school
the people were Mortified, and began
to make suggestions and to ask ques-
tions as to how far this higher educa-
ton was to be carried. The question
suggests itself to those city fathers:
Suppose, suppose that Boston women
should come to know more than
Boston men; suppose and suppose,
Mr.. President, there should be a
Board of Alderwomcn, instead of
Aldermen, who should rule the city?
AS the old deacon said, "Suppose and
suppose, tellowsinners, you should
wake up in the morning and find
yourself dead, what would you say
them"
Mr.. Curtis thought that Sidney
Smith would stand aghast could he
see how rapidly these views on edu-
cation had advanced. Schools and
colleges were being everywhere es-
tablished for women, and even in the
shadow of Cambridge University in
England there stood 4 female college
for which examinations were held
through the whole land. 1t was
argued by some, he said, that u wo-
man could not stand the strain Of a
college education, and it was wo-
man who replied: 81 would like
you to take 1900 Young men and
lace them, and hang ten or twenty
pounds of clothes upon their waists,
perch them on three-inch heels, and
stick 10000 hair-pins in their scalps,
and if they can stand this they can
also stand little Latin and little
Greek" Among savages, he said,
woman was regarded as little more
than child or a beast, and even
poets consider her rs only fit to at
tend to flowers and such other things
as that. He considered that compli-
ment was an insult to woman, and
in order to illustrate how woman
was sometimes compllmentcd and at
the same time insulted, the speaker
gave a very lively and very graphic
description of supper, at which
men, when half intoxicated, toasted
women, and then sang "We won't
90 home till morning" He reversed
this scene, and presented one of half
fuddled women toastlng men in the
same manner.
In answer to the question which he
said he presumed the audience would
put to him rs to whether home was
not the proper sphere of woman, he
said that for some it was, but every
woman had talants and certain facul-
ties which God had given her, and
which it was her duty and her place
to develop.