The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1877-04-27
Women in the Legal Profession.

At a meeting of the bar OF Chicago,
held to take action in cOmmemOratiOn OF
the death of Miss Alta M. Hulett,
attorney at law, the following was one of
the resolutions adopted:
"Resolved, that although the legal pro-
fession has hitherto been almost, If not
altogether, considered as exclusively for
men to practice, yet we freely recognize
Miss Hulett's right TO adopt 1T as her
pursuit in life, and cheerfully bear testi-
mony to the fact that in her practice she
demeaned herself in any way unbecom-
ing a woman. She was always true to
her clients and their interests, but she
was equally true to her sex and her
duty; and if women who now are, or
hereafter shall become members of our
profession shall be equally true, its honor
will never be tarnished, nor the re-
spect, good will and esteem which it is
the duty aud pride of man TO accord to
woman be in the least diminished by
their membership"
Which, translated, means that men
are not only ready to welcome into one
of their own professions women having
the requisite intellectual qualifications,
but that the welcome will be the warmer
If the woman entering shall not leave be-
hind the more feminine attributes OF the
sex. Pertia did deliver judgment, but
the counsellor's cap became the pretty
locks it could not hide, and the jurists
cloak lent additional grace to the sym
metry and litheness of female youth.
The cardinal mistake which irrational
advocates of women's rights have made is
in libelling their actual intention by an
apparent pretence that woman in the
professions is to be something less of a
woman and a little more of a man. The
women who have successfully entered
the profession of law, medicine and jour
nalism, and those who, like Mrs. Liver
more, carry a finer culture than many
men into the pulpit, are the best answer
to the charge 80 hippantlv made that a
woman ceases TO be feminine when she
to- IS her brain to account in practical,
honorable and capable way. The vulgar
that she is womanly" darns
stockings. scrubs floors, and carries garb-
age: and she is womanly" who deVotes
herself to gossip, fashion, dissipation and
vice: while she is not "womanly" who
becomes a physician, a lawyer, a jour
nalist, a minister, turks only in heads too
stupid to understand their oV better
instincts, or too base to value in woman
that which is dearest in her to man and
most esteemed in her own eyes-the
power TO win and to keep mans love
his respect for her and her re-
spect for herself. There is no lasting
love without respect and, looking over
the face of society, who are the happiest
mates? Whose are the attractive homesE
What class of women make, by universal
the tendeTest and most faithful
wives, the devoted and efficient mothersf
Tho women between whom End their
husbands there is the closest bond OF in
tellectual sympathy. 1t is just as true
as it is old that - Every mans home
Is his heaven or his hell"-and that
home is most like heaven in which the
professional man finds in his wife the
bloom and sweetness of conjugal virtue
and q mutual consciousness OF mental
The greatest women of the world in
.yery age have been those who were
most thoroughly women in the tenderest
attribute of her sex. Mrs. Browning
aid this, in fact; so George Sand, who
N vainIy endeavorng to become man
N order to get bread, assumed the role
he deemed necessary for her necessities,
md in France at that time she may not
nave been far wrong;
True genius. but true woman dost deny
ThY WOmanS nalu eTWllu inhhlg ftpiHf
And break away the gauds and nrmlets worn
By weaker woman Ia captivity?
4 h. vain deniali that revOlted cry
Js sobbed in by n wOman's voice torlornl
Thy woman hair my liter, all unshOrn
rloats back dishevelled strength in agony,
Oisproving thy mans name! and while before
The world thou Ournest IN a pOet-hre,
Ne see thy woman-heart beat evermore
Through the large fame. Beat purer' he@l ana
higher. @"
Even George Sand could not change
ler nature. What good and bad men
owed in her was not her genius, but her
charms as a woman; and when she lay
1pon her death-bed it was not the mans
that nerved her for the
md, but the caress of children's curls
md their innocent and playful Prattle.
Women who are unusually gifted IN
Intellect, and whom necessity or choice
eads toward the professions, reed to be
,aught a little more than they have
,een that to be professionally fortunate
b " must obtain the esteem of the men
among whom they toll; and this esteem
3 to be secured and retained by their
yomanIy virtues. Possessing these
,bey can we'll afford TO despise the cow
,rdice and criticism of men who have
ust brain enough TO cavil at them'-