The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1888-02-22
Within a stones throw of this building

| years at that post. She had left the touch o
refinement on multitude of the young. Sh
had, out of her slender purse, given literall.
| hundreds of dollars for the destitute VIII
came under her observation as q schoo
teacher. A deceased sisters children wer
thrown upon her hands, and she took care
them. She was kind mother to them, whil
she mothered the whole school. Worn ou
with nursing in the sick and dying room o
one Of the household, she herself came to die
She closed the school book and at the sam'
time the volume of her Christian fidelity: anC
when she went through the gates they cried
''These are they who came out of great tribu
lation, and had their robes washed and made
white in the blood Of the Lamb"
Queens are all such, and whether the world
ackno Wedges them or not, Heaven acknowl.
edges them When Scarron, the wit and
ecclesiastic, as poor as he was brilliant, was
asked by the notary what he proposed to
settle upon mademoiselle. The reply was:
"Immortalityl The names of the wives OF
kings die with them; the name of the wife OF
Scarron will live always" In higher and
better sense, upon all women who do their
duty God will settle immortality! Not the
immortality of earthly fame, which is NOR.
tai but the Immortality celestial. And they
shall reign forever and ever! Oh, the opportu.
ity which every woman has of being queen!
The longer / live the more l admire good
womanhood. And I have come to form my
opinion of the character Of a man by his ap
probation or non-appreciatfon OF woman.
II a man has depressed idea of womanly
character he is bad mau, and there is no
exception to this rule. The writings Of Goethe
can never have any such attractions for me as
Shakespeare, because nearly all the womanly
characters of the great German have some
I'D &,,ry sf,,Ia ic
with her clandestine scheming, and his
Mignon of evil parentage, yet worse than
her ancestors and his Theresa the brazen,
and his Aurelia of many intrigues, and his
Philina the termagant, and his Melina the
tarnished, and his Baroness, and his Count
ess and there is seldom a womanly charac.
ter in all his voluminous writings
that would be worthy of residence in
a respectable coal cellar, yet pict-
till all the literary world is compelled to sse
No, no! Give me William Shakespeare's idea
of woman; and see it in Desdemona, and
Cordelia, and Rosalind, and Imogen, and
Helena, and Hermione, and Viola, and Isa-
bella, and Sylvia, and Perdita, all Of them
with enough faults to prove them human,
bnt enough kindly characteristics to give us
the authors idea Of womanhood, his Lady
Macbeth only dark background to bring
out the supreme loveliness Of his other female
characters.
Oh, woman Of America! rise to your op.
portunity Be no slave to pride, or worldli-
ness, or sin. Why ever crawl in the dust
when you can mount throne? Be queens
unto God forever. Hail Vashti!
Again: want you to consider Vashti the
yelled. Had she appeared before Ahashuerus
and his court on that day, with her face un-
covered, she would have shocked all the deli
cacies of Oriental society, and the very men
who in their intoxication demanded that she
come, in their sober moments would have
despised her. As some flowers seem to thrive
best in the dark lane and in the shadow, and
where the SIN does not seem to reach them,
SO God appoints to most womanlY natures
a retiring and unobtrusive spirit. God
once in q while does call an Isabella
to throne, or q Miriam to strike the tim
brel at the front Of host, or Marie An
toinette to quell French mob or Deborah
to stand at the front of an armed battalion,
crying out: Up! up! This is the day in
which the Lord will deliver Sisera into thy
hands" And when women are called to such
outdoor work, and to such heroic positions,
God prepares them for it; and they have iron
in their soul. and lightnings in their eye, and
whirlwinds in their breath, and the borrowed
strength of the Lord Omnipotent in their
right arm. They walk through furnaces as
though they were hedges Of wild flowers, and
cross seas as though they were shimmering
and all the harpies Of
hell sink down to their dungeons at
the stamp of their womanly indigna-
ton. But these are exceptions. Generally
Dorcas would rather make garment for the
poor boy; Rebecca would rather fill the
trough for the camels; Hannah would rather
make coat for Samuel; the Hebrew maid
uo1111 rot q NQQ-
mans leprosy; the woman of Sarepta would
rather gather few sticks to cook meal for
Elijah; Phoebe would rather carry
a letter for the inspired Apostle; Mother Lois
would rather educate Timothy in the Script
ures. When see a woman going about her
daily duty-with cheerful dignity presiding
at the table; with kind and gentle, but
firm, discipline presiding in the nurs-
cry, going out into the world with
in the footsteps Of him who went
about doing good-I say: This is Vashti
with veil on" But when 1 see woman
of unblushing boldness, loud voiced, with
tongue of infinite Glitter clatter, with arro-
CANT look, passing through the streets with
masculine swing: gayly arrayed in a very
hurricane of millinery. I cry out: "Vashti
has lost her veiltn When see a woman
struggling for political preferment, and re-
and thinking the offices of wife, mother and
daughter Of no Importance, and trying to
force her way up on into eonspicuity, say:
"Ah, what pity! Vashti has lost her VEIL"
When I see a woman Of comely features,
and of adroitness of intellect, and en-
dowed with all that the schools can
do for one, and of the bigh social
position, yet moving in society with super
ciliousness and hauteur, as though she would
have people know their place, and All unde-
fined combination Of giggle, and strut. and
rodomontade, endowed with allopathic guam
titles of talk, but only homeopathic infintesi-
mails Of sense, the terror of dry goods clerks
and railroad conductors, discoverers of sig
niicant meanings in plain conversation,
prodigies of badinage and innuendo-I say:
"Vashti has lost her veil"
But do not misinterpret what I say into q
depreciation Of the work Of these glorious
and divinely called women who will not be
understood till after they are dead, women
like Susan B. Anthony, who are giving their
life for the Improvement Of the condition of
their sex. Those of you that think that
women have under the laws of this country
an equal chance with men are ignorant Of
the laws. A gentleman writes me from
Maryland, saying: Take the laws of this
state. A man and wife start out in life full
Of hope in every respect; by their joint efforts,
and, as is frequently the case, through the
economic ideas of the wife, succeed in ac-
cumulating fortune, but they have no
children; they reach old age together, and
then the husband dies. What does the law
of this State do theni 1t says to the widow:
"Hands Off your late husbands property; do
not touch it; the State will find others to
whom it will give that; but you, the widow,