Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-09-27
Daily - eagle
WOMAN AND HOME.
INTERESTING REVIEW OF THE PROG
RESS MADE BY WOMEN.

Literary women-A Prophecy or House
keeping of the Future.
Never since civilization took its first feeble
steps. maynard yet ever onward, have wom-
en- occupied the favorable position which they
do at present-favorable for their own special
development, and favora BILE for the race.
In the earlier, the purely savage state, they
were perhaps as much the equal OF their
mates as the iioness and tigress are now; in
deed, science intimates that they were some
thing more. Be all that as it may, civiiiza-
ton had to take an apparent step backward
and downward in order &c bring them any
where near another and better sort of
equality. AS the more beautiful among them
were sought, pampering and indulgence made
them tenderer and weaker Doubtless, till they
lost equality and became dependents With
that they were easily made the spoil of war,
the capture from the hostile tents, slaves,
whether kindly or tyrannically entreated,
and with hardly more chance OF deepening
their natures or charging their souls than
they might have had were the Mohammedan
faith the true one-the faith which teaches
that they have no souls. There was but one
way then tc any happiness or comfort for
them, but one way to win any hearts desire
Cor themselves or their children, and that
was through the good will OF the chief, the
master, the lord, or that of his favorite, and
that good will had to be obtained at any cost.
Helpless and weak, tinlid as helpless weakness
makes one, their only arts were love and cum
ming, and where one of these would not
swer it had to be supplemented 10y the other.
If the masters nature had in it elements of
Justice, the cunning was not needed; but that
was probably not too frequently the case.
Through all the subsequent regimes ever en-
larging and ennobling, women have not en-
tirely succeeded in Kidding themselves of the
whole of the effect OF this stage of their exist
ence In the race, ana slyness and subtlety are
traits against which many of theui-but,
thank heavenl not all-have yet to struggle.
Civilization had gone very far indeed before
women left this condition OF subsection. Only
In separate and not altogether admirable in
stances were they free from it even SO late as
the time of the best Greek conditions. 1t was
q nominal freedom that they had in Rome,
where one wife was the rule, but where the
freedom OF divorce was a multiplying and de-
stroying Offset 1t was in the Hebrew life
that women first received any Que share Of
recognition at q time when the narem, or the
zenana, or its equivalent was nearly every
where else the rule. There one wife took
pre-eminence over coucubines.
The poetical and sacred character of wom-
Hnhood had been recognized in Miriam, in
Deborah, in Anna; and in the custom of the
one wife the initial point of the real family
had started. But civilization seems to work,
like leaven, through the whole lump, and not
In separate parcels; for just as we have at the
time of the European renaissance without
any known communication renaissance of
the same sort in the islands of the farthest
east, SO the custom Of having but one wife
presently prevailed in Rome and in many
other places, as if by common consent. Won
en then with the Germans were a sort of
priestesses; they ruled iii way strongly
as il by force. Expeditions were undertaken
ut their will were abandoned if they forbade,
and their blessing was striven for.
But great as advance had by this time be-
come greater vet was the advance that
rhivalry and the spirit OF the cruSades eff
fected. There had doubtless been individual
love and worship before; but now it was
general, so to speak; no one beautiful woman
was SO much to be reverenced as womanhood
itself This half poetical, half religious rev
erence extended to the whole SEX was not so
ennobling to women as to men themselves;
1t did men vastly more good than it did the
feeble women mewed in cages and receiving
IN aims of worship. The act of worship was
ennobling to the worshiper, and once lifted
to the plane where be could see the real
worth of woman, man has not receded, and
every advantage that she has since gained
has been given TO her by the man who might
have withheld it,
1t was, then, among the people of a pure
and grand religion, where moral law exist
ed of the straishtest sort, that woman first
rose from the mere dust, respecting herself
as she received respect, feeling her first thrills
of aspiration. And it was under the develop
ment of this same religion in its loveliest and
Hottest life that she became the object of
tender regard. that she ceased to be slave,
that the world was opened to her to use ac-
cordingto her powers, and in the lines marked
out by her OWE nature, its limitation here is
boundlessness there.
1t is under the reign of Christianity that
woman has come to her full opportunity and
hes taken her place beside man; it is under
the benignant law of the leader whose first
recorded word after the stone had been rolled
from the sepuicher was woman" that she
can go forward sun, ana In moving take
with her her son and her sons sons. 1t is un
der this dispensation that it has come to be
understood that
The woruan's cause is mans; they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or Sodlile bond or free:
For she that out Of Lethe scales with man
The shining steps of nature, shares with man
His nights, his days, moves with him 70 one goal
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands
Ii she be small. slight natured, miserable,
How shall men grow?
-Harper's Bazaar.