Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1901-08-21

. especially encourages wives and
mothers; text, Genesis j., q, Male and
female created ne them.
In other words, God, who can make no
mistake, made man and woman for a
specific work and TO move in particular
sDheres-man to be regnant in his realm,
woman to be dominant in hers. The
boundary line between Italy and SwitZer-
land, between EnglaGl and Scotland, is
not more thoroughly marked than this
distinction between the empire masculine
ana the empire feminine. So entirely
6issImar are the Gelds to which God
called them that you can no more COM
pare them than you can oxygen and
hydrogen, water and grass, trees and
stars. All this talk about thu superiority
of one sex to the other is ali everlasting
waste of ink and speech. \ jeweler may
have a scaio so delicate shat he can weigh
the dist OF diamonds, but where are the
scales so delicate that you can weigh in
them affection, sentiment against senti-
ment, thought against thought, sou
against soul, mans word against wo-
mans word2
You come out with your stereotyped re-
mark that man is superior to woman in
intellect, and then | open on my desk the
swarthy, iron typed, thunderbolted writ
ings of Harriet Martineau aud Elizabeth
Browning and George Eliot. You come
on with your sSereotyped remark about
woman's superior ity to man in the item
of affection, but l ask you where was
there more capacity 20 love than in John
the disciple, and Robert McCheyne, the
Scotchman, and John Summerfield. the
Methodist, and Henry Martyr, the mis-
sionary? The heart of those Lien was
so large that after you had rolled into 1t
the hemispheres there was room still left
to marshal the hosts of heaven and set
up the throne of the eternal Jehovah.
deny to man the throne intellectual. l
deny to woman the throne affectional.
No human phraseology will ever define
the spheres while there is an intuition by
which we know when a man is in his
realm and when a woman is in her realm
and when either of them is out of it. No
bungling Legislature ought to attempt to
make IA definition or to say, This is the
line, and that is the line"
My theory is that if woman wants to
vote she ought to vote and that if a man
wants to embroider and keep house he
ought to be allowed to embroider and keep
house. There are masculine women, and
there are effeminate men. My theory is
that you have no right to interfere with
any ones doing anything that is right
eous. Albany and Washington might as
well decree by legislation how high a
brown thrasher should fly or how deep a
trout should plunge as to try to seek out
the height or the depth Of woman's duty.
The question of capacity will settle final
~ the whole question, the whole subject.
When woman is prepared TO preach,
she will preach, and neithsr conference
nor presbytery can hinder her. When
woman is prepared to move in highest
commercial spheres, she will have great
influence on the exchange, and no boards
of trade can hinder her. / want woman
to understand that heart and brain can
overflow any barrier that politicians may
set up and that nothing can keep her
back or keep her down but the question
of capacity.
Wonan's Best Rights.
| know there are women of most I'M
desirable nature who wander up and
down the country, having no homes of
their own or forsaking their own homes,
talking about their rights, and we know
very well that they themselves are fit
neither to vote nor tit to keep house.
Their mission seems to be to humiliate
the two sexes at the thought of what
any one of US might become. No one
would want to live under the laws that
such women would enact or TO have cast
upon society the children that such wo-
men would raise. But / will show you
that the best rights that woman can own
she already has in her possession; that
her position in this country at this time
is not one of commiseration. but one OF
congratula ton; that the grandeur and
power of her realm have never yat been
appreciated; that she sits to-day IN Il
throne so high that all the thrones of
earth piled on top of each other would
not make for her a footstool Here is the
platform on which she stands Away
down below it are the ballot box and the
congressio.i Al assembage and the legisla
tive hall.
Appreciation of Her Rights.
Woman always has voted and al
ways will vote. Our great grandfathels
thought they were by their votes putting
Washington into the presidential chair.
No. His mother. by the principles she
taught him and by the habits she ineul-
Gated, made him president. 1t was Il |
Christian mothers hand dropping the
ballot when Lord Bacon wrote, and New
ton philosophical, and Alfred the Great
governed and Jonathan Edwards thun-
dered of Judgment to come. How many
men there have been in high political sta
ton who would have been insufficient to
stand the test to which their moral prin-
cipIe was put had it not been for wife's
voice that encour ged them to do right
and a wife's prayer that sounded louder
than the clamor of partisanshipi Why,
my friends. the right Of suffrage. as we
men exercise it, seems to be a feeble
thing You, a Christian man. come up
10 the ballot box. and you drop your
vote. Right after you comes lbertine
or sot, the offscouring Of the street. and
he dr0ps his vote, and his vote counter
acts yours. But If in the quiet of home
life daughter by her Christian de
meanor, wife by her industry, mother
By her faithfulness. casts a vote in the
right direction, then nothing can resist
it. and the Influence Of that vote will
throb through the eternities.
Ny chief anxiety, rhen. is not that
woman have other rights accorded her,
but that she. by the grace OF God, rise
up TO the appreciation Of the glorious
rights she already possesses. / shall only
have time to speak of one grand AM all
absorbing right that every woman has,
and that is to make home happy That