The Indianapolis journal., 1884-05-03
AS TO WOMEN ORATORS.

AS TO WOMEN ORATORS.
Great and indignant resentment has re-
Gently been experienced il equal suffrage cir
cles because divers women orators have been
adversely commented upon for talking too
long when presenting their cause to congress
ional committees. Various outraged cham
pions of the sex have arisen to remark that
| women have right to keep men waiting,
because men have kept women waiting ever
since the Garden of Eden; which, indeed and
in truth, is no argument at all To begin
with, if chronicles are to be relied upon, it was
woman who inveigled man into the Garden of
Eden escapade; however ungallant it
may appear, We must, III justice
to irTefutable facts, beg her to remember that
in foisting Adam out of good job by her
Establishments, she grossly outraged his best
interests, and marred the fortunes of his en-
tire life. When he might have continued to
be an eminent citizen, and in time have at
tanned the glory of bronze statue, through
her beguilements be became a degraded
tramp, wanderer on the face of the earth,
SO far as heard from, no woman ever made a
motion to restore to Adam his lost inherit
ance. On the contrary, she mounts the plat
form, every chance she gets, to cast upon the
| winds wall for her own lost rights and the
| Justice due to her. Unparalleled audacity!
| Really, under the circumstances, woman
| should be truly thankful that she stands to-
| day as well in public opinion as she does
| Every candid woman, tracing carefully and
| conseientiously the fortunes Of her sex, from
position in communities now, taking into con-
sideration her unfortunate start, is fit subject
for heartfelt gratitude and earnest self-con-
! graduation.
| Recognizing, however, the extreme folly of
endeavoring to make women admit that man
is and has been for ages, the abused one, the
defrauded one, with firmly established claims
to larger liberality, and plenty of it, it must
still be urged upon the woman-orator that his
intellect however feeble and debilitated from
long years of oppression is still able to put
forth an occasional suggestion worthy of
her consideration. There is nothing the
woman-orator, and especially the one en-
gagged in breaking the way to extended
political rights for her sex, should arrange
with such exquisite attention as the accurate
! a.,J ofh har a
moment in which she discourses of her wrongs,
after the time allotted to her has expired, is
that much lost to the cause. Man has always
| cherished hallucinations to the effect that
woman has no idea of time, and therefore, an
| irresistible tendency to talk forever. With
out admitting them, surely no one can so
| effectually prove the fallacy of these accusa-
tations as the equal suffrage orator. 1t should
| be one of her ambitions to demonstrate to
skeptcal man that the platform woman is a
business woman, with proper valuation of
time, and, above all, with sufficient self
control to abridge what she has
| to say, if time demands the sac
riice. When this is done a double stroke
is made, and not only one point gained, but
many. Man is an inpatient animal, and no
appeal to his mind will ever succeed if admin
stered at the expense and fatigue of his body.
| Dear to the woman orator are her opinions, Or
as Gail Hamilton puts it, 'It is pleasant to
say things when you think you have things to
say" but dearer, pleasanter, and in the end,
wiser is it, to convince man that the platform
woman is not an ill-regulated, uncontrolled
and wandering meteor, but constant, we'll
ordered radance-gving star.