Year: 1869

we nave never been aDlo CO see bH0 JuS- tice or expediency of withholding the bal lot from any class of sane, mature, moral and intelligent citizens, whatever their sex or color, It has also seemed to us that the sphere of woman is at present. too confined, making her burden where she might be help-meet, discouragiDg mar riage, and encouraging extrayagance and frivolity. Nevertheless. we plead guilty to a certain i'll defined dislike to her public appearance in the role of political agita- tor, imagining, as men are apt to do, that there must be something unfeminine in woman's doing what we had never seen her do. Consequently, it was more to see what the woman's rights woman looks like, to watch her demeanor rather than to hear her arguments. that we concluded to at tend the Convention assembled in Hartford. last week. ,.s,4s.es

 Those who have been in. the. habit of picturing the woman agitator las q shrill- voiced, brazen visaged, obstreperous fe- male, taking especial delight in outraging the proprieties and !scofing at religion and the marriage relation, must have seen with amazement the decorum and propriety of the opening session of that convention. The first look at the stage must have satis. fled every spectator that woman does not in the least unsex herself in speaking ear nestly, forcibly, modestly, to 9 large audi ence on great question. We presume the ladies who occupied the stage at Rob- ert's Opera House would have seemed equally lady-like in the parlor, they could not have seemed more so. The first glance assured us, as it must have assured every one, that they were in no sense ''out of place. " Their style of dress was simple, tasteful, evidently intended to discourage the an noyance of particular description. As we looked at the ladies on the stage and in the audience we could not help thin king they suited each other admirably "a sensi- ble, in telligent body of women, ,met for bus mess not for show.

 It seems to us that the only position in which women have hitherto been allowed to speak in public-as actresses tend ed to increase the prejudice against their appearance in any such capacity. We are apt to forget that the rant, the unnatural ness. the coarseness of the ge-player, is no less conspicuous in the actor than in the actress. In the course of our limited experience, we have never seen an actor that seemed gentleman, and but one ac- tress that could really personate the lady Rachel. It is but fair to state, however, that we have never seen Edwin Booth, ,Ris- tori, and many others who are probably exceptions to the general rule. We be- lieve the difficulty of the position to be such that few, even of those who are la dies and gentlemen, can appear such on the stage. Hence we should greatly dis. like to see wife or daughter becoming an actress or even an opera singer. Regard ing pulpit or platform speaking we have coma to exactly the opposite conclusion.

 Not one of the ladies who took part in such of the exercises of the Convention at Hartford as we saw, was lowered in our estimation by the part they took, but rather raised; and such seemed also the of the large audience present, hostile to the movement though many of them evidently were. Miss Anthony, who often says things in the, keuolution that we dislike to hear lady say, was never in the least unlady like, or undigniGed on the platform. We state our personal i'm pressions because we believe that we are dealing with matter of feeling and pre-

 judice rather than of reason or argument.

 Becoming complete convert to the propriety of woman's public speaking, we

 would like to have seen more examples ol

 her ability in that line than our limited time allowed. There was nothing nove in Miss Anthony's style of address -she talked after the manner of strong, sound thinking speakers of any sex; but Mrs Livermore gave us a foretaste of style ol eloquence distinctly feminine. Her quiet. touching, forcible oratory seemed to strike a chord hitherto untouched in the breasts of her auditory; and we felt suspicion stealing over us that in the eloquence that appeals chiefly to feeling and sympathy in that of the pulpit, particularly-man would find his superior in woman.

 . The audience was just the audience for such meeting; unbelievers for the most part, judge, yet willing to see and hear, and able to comprehend what they saw and heard. There was large sprinkling of ministers, several from Litchfeld county, just returned from the Conference at Rock vile. They had borne their testimony. three at a time, in that mornings Courdnl against the movement, and then had come, like honest thinkers. to hear what their opponents had to say. The profession was we'll represented on the stage as we'll as on the floor, and the charge of irreligion can not with any justice be made against the Connecticut woman s rights demonstration. Among the noted opponents of the move

 mant nresent wa noticea Dr Henry md