Smyrna times., 1876-05-03
Women Then and Now.

the benefit of the Young Women's Chris
tian Association. The theme selected by
the lecturer was "Women in Old and New
Times," and in the course of his discourse
he said:
The past is always the golden age. The
glamor of distance makes beauty moro
beautiful, and valor more heroic and
prosaic fate seems to have thrown us on the
lees of time and in the worlds decrepitude.
While we read, history and poetry seem
full of the heroic. Philip Sidney, bending
from his saddle to offer cup of cold water
to the wounded soldier, was hero. But |
see that gunner at Gettysburg, who, falling
wounded and tortured by thirst, called |
out: "Johnny! Johnny for the love of
God a drop of water ~ "Ah, Jenny, there
is not drop in my canteen, and if 90 to
get any the enemy will take the gun"
mo matter, Johnny, stand to your gum"
and when the line moved forward they
moved over Jemmy's dead body. Three
hundred years ago it would have been as
beautiful self-sacrifce as Philip Sidney's.
All that was best in the old times we have
now. So experience interprets history and
poetry, and the truth of to-day scatters the
glamor of the past. All ages have been
deplored. We see to-day appalling extra
vagance and luxury. They cry, "The
} dress of fashionable woman costs her
husband thousands of dollars 1t was not
so in the simple old times.'' Softly, softly,
Queen Elizabeth, happy owner of 5000
dresses, issued a proclamation against ex
travagance. We bewail degenerate
society-so sordid, so gross. Our young
men are only fit, it is said, to smoke cigars
and play billiards and talk slang; our
+ young women to be French dolls perched
G upon high-heeled shoes, pinching their
v waists almost to a vanishing point, piling
high upon their heads dyed tow and horse
G hair, making an affectaton of simplicity,
IS but were they simpler in the old times ?
IS Dick Steele, in his account of the mock
IS trial of young woman for wearing a
n monstrous silk petticoat embroidered with
n diamonds, says that when the judge ordered
| it pulled up with pulleys, it covered the
% place where the judges were sitting with
e a silken rotunda like St. Peters.
Y We cry out against political corruption
st and justly fear for the moral foundations O
n. the government. l have seen a man il
er the lobby of the Legislature brandsh banl
d bills and openly boast "That makes tn,
is laws y While l WINGED, l remembered
C. that in the time of Walpole the British
ul King bought men as he would launches o
ly meat. When foolish imagination sighs fo
re the old time, it forgets that the old tim
in was cruel, superstitious and gross. TIL,
r. men of the old time hated personal
be political and religious liberty; they wer
he times when the men died faster in the ope1
rs country than in the dirtiest lane of ou
er city to-day. The whole progress of civiliza
es ton is in the emancipation from the thee
lr- ries and manners of the old time. We d
nd not excuse our own age, but when we sig
We for return of the past let us remembe
nd that its greatest glory was the divine di:
ro- content with those times. One command
I ing and supreme indication of.the world
i'd progress is its higher estimate of womer
le. The position of woman is always the test G
ny, society. To-day as l stand in the halls c
ny some great school, filed with the hum
we industrious and happy life, l remembc
gin that the girl in the age of Pericles a
lot scholastic diligence would have bee
ose accepted as an evidence of evil design.
the golden age Of Athens the most accor
plished women belonged to an outlawe
ost class. Mr.. Curtis then huporously de
the cribed the discussions that were carried c
the in Dean Swift's time as to whether it wou
nee be prudent to marry a woman who hi
icb good natural sense, some taste, and W
, in able to read understandingly the literatu
lke. of the day. 1t was said that there we
ked radical objections againstan intelligent wifi
dis. that the natural levity of women needed
, of ballast of ignorance and stupidity. Al
ora such was the tenderness of the sex til
ith. the women consented to remain ignora
tual that they might be equal to their husban,
our This was slow to change. Not more tn
tier sixty years ago Sidney Smith spoke of t
will disparity between the knowledge OF m
the and women, and intimated that WON
heir should cultivate household duties TO [
ross exclusion of all other requiremer
and "That is an insulting idea of woman, {" s
4 of the lecturer, (which makes her har
man when her husband brings her home
, his bracelet and screaming when a mouse h
want across the floor. She is not the fine lad!
NAV the fashion-plates, but Hebe, joyous W
,ded health and pouring nectar, ftly MARI
the to Hercules, strongest of the gods. Is
Portia Shakespeare has drawn beaut
because wise young judge, less tr
feminine than Juliet whispering her
a., :, from a balcony?' Mr.. Curtis sketched
~ great caution with which Pilgrims
- - early settlers of New England dealt ol
~ little education to their girls, and il
-. strain of the keenest irony told how Bost
se trembling for the bulwarks of freed
80 opened high school for girls, and st
aghast at the immense attendance upo
'0- and the eager acceptance of its privile