The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-05-26

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The marriage relation, she concluded, was
a partnership and no one had ever heard
| of partnership where one OF the members
| owed obedience to another.
general discussion of the paper fol-
| lowed, in which Mrs. John Cushing stated
as her opinion that home life and Juvenile
morals would be much better were the
father love developed to such an extent
that the so-called head of the family could
| bring himself to make companion OF his
boys. He should join in their sports in
stead of smoking cigars while they smoked
cigarettes.
Miss Sarah Hamlin was next heard on
Home Influence in History"
In the face of so much that has been said of
| the new home, the woman, the new
times. she began, it seems almost absurd to say
anything of the old home, the old woman, or
] the old times. That task, however, has been
assigned to me. Is there anything in the
history of the home that can interest us to-
! day? l think there is. From whatever point
| OF view we look at history, the home has been
at the foundation of nations, and at the source
| OF individual and natural life.
Go back, if you please, to one of the earlier
| homes of humanity-in the hills of Asia, in a
| far distant, prehistoric age, before the separa-
/ ton of the Aryan people into those great
waves of emigration which swept over Europe
| and some of the countries of Southern Asia.
In the wreckage which has survived we find
! the people are those words which pertain
| clusiVely to the home and the home relation;
and, then, understand, the words are ldenti-
cally the same in all the great languages or
modern and ancient Europe, and also in the
! languages OF Persia and India to-day.
The speaker traced the progress of the
Aryan wave In India and the wisdom
! which eliminated in that great work, the
Rig-Veda. In all the vedas, she said, is
declared the fact that husbands aud wives
were the joint rulers of the households;
that child was a golden child, the choicest
treasure of the family.
You will say now that the mighty have
fallen and that the bright gold of ages has
dimmed. Somewhere in these ages, after the
veda, appeared a woman-hater, the frst
Schopenhauer of the world. He made the
laws that declared the husband to be the
home and declared that no woman could be
saved except through her husband; and no
woman could reach the life to come except she
had done her duty earth according TO the
teachings of Manu-. The reward of a woman in
India who followed the directions of her hus-
band and did his bidding well in this world is
of man who had not lived as he should was to
be born again in the life to come as a woman;
and no man in India but breads such fate.
The speaker drew beautiful pictures of
the Hebrew home in the hills of Judea and
that other home On the banks of the Nile.
From the latter home Moses drew that
knowledge and power which fitted him 10
be the deliverer OF his oppressed race, its
greatest law-giver. The violation of the
home, taking history for it, she continued,
The Greeks and the Troians fought for ten
mortal years through the misdeed of Paris.
The home life of the Greek people, as far as
their appreciation of home extended, was the
true home life. The Greeks fell when the ideal
of the home became corrupted and when Greek
men introduced in its cities the hetairIe from
the cities OF Asia Minor and the isles of the
Let US pass on to Rome. In the days of the
republic Roman families were the homes OF
Roman kings, and when to be Roman
matron or to be a Roman father was the high
est honor possible. They had such families as
the family OF Cornelia, the mother OF the three
Graceful, and they had there in the center of
the city, as sample of the home, that altar of
Vesta, whose fires were kept constantly burn
| ing, the purest element as the symbol of the
home and its virtues. Rome began to decay
when the ideal of the home was prostituted in
the time of the Caesars.
The ideal of the home passes all through
history and establishes its relation to the
state. 1t is the place where the civic virtues
obedience to the laws of home. The parents
learn self-government, which prompts them to
be worthy citizens, where they learn high
solves and heroisms, which go to the making
OF the state, and where they learn considers
ton for others.
simple pacific virtues The true citizen is one
who is active in the state and who carries the
virtues of the home into the state. He is ready
to devote himself aud sacrifice himself, if need
be, Tor the commonwealth.
Now the new home that is to come, that must
be, ought TO embrace within itself all that is
best in the old home and must contain that
which is terminated from the past. The new,
the ideal home, is not the new home alone, but
also the old home. 1t is not the home of our
Imagination, or the home which we think, so
far, has been unworthy of the promise of the
dom of God, and that kingdom begins in the
hearts and the lives OF each one OF us.
Mrs. Laura de Force Gordon arose to
state her pleasure at the remarks delivered
by Miss Hamlin, and to say that she fully
believed that all the conditions of life that
have been were necessary for each grade of
civilization which has gone before.
But" she continued, II do not believe
we should be satisfied with any condition,
and for myself, l do not believe in the
present conditions of the home. l think
that we should look to higher condition
of things than is possible under the present
training women and children receive in re-
gard to the home. The present modern
home is hotbed of unrighteousness, and I
will prove 1.-THE modern home, Mrs.
President, of intense seltishness and that
is anti-Christ. Instead of this the home
should be as broad as Gods universe. The
world, in the language of one of the women
on that platform, should be our home"
Several others present joined in the dis
cussion, all being unanimous in commenda-
ton OF the thoughts suggested by Miss
Hamlin.
1.-The Sister in the Family was the sub
iect OF the next paper, written and read by
Miss Agnes Manning. She said:
"As look back across the pages of his
tory read constant story of wrong to tho
sister In the family. The Roman despised
the sex though they had a woman in
charge of the Sibylline book. Though they
despised the sex, yet their oracles spoke
through the women. The Greeks went so
far as to deny TO woman the power
of love. 1t was one of the sharpest
arguments of the ancients, however, that
they placed women on an equality with
men on the most important occasions.
Even st. Paul was brought up in the old
school of contempt for women, and he was
a hard convert. st. Peter was another
woman-hater, but he became a convert.
Take the Chinese as an illustration OF the
condition of the women of the presentd day in
some countries. They are bought and sold
in marriage and cannot eat at the same
table with the male members of the family.
The Saxons made slave traffic of their
women"
'In truth mems ideas with regard to
woman have been singularly in common
in all ages. She has always been good
| annnoh 70 00Nly and n Unrly m