Year: 1869

Him who spake as man never spake. At
this season taooers rarely remind us Of those
beautiful words, yet no one who walks our Z
streets fails to be reminded of; them, by the
ladies he meets at every step-fowers they
are-beautiful flowers -splendidly arrayed
and redolent of sweetness often delicate
and fragile as their sister children of earth.
Is it strange that we who deem the mission
of flowers done when they have made earth
beautiful and ladened its zephyrs with
odors should ask whether woman-loyely
woman, regally endowed of intellect--has nor
higher missioh4 4no more enduring workg
Are they but flowers and should they not
toil9 Gentle reader, do not suppose us to
undervalue beauty and adornment. We have
a chivalric regard for woman, but with all we
feel that the present position assigned to her
degrades her. Our system of education, our
forms of society do not assign her the posi-
tion that God and nature assign her. Surely
if woman is to be but flower, born only to
please the eye and crafty the taste, when
like her type she has bloomed, faded and
died, she moulders to DUST and has no record
of a life that is animate with deeds, with
toil--her own toll, that has made the world
better and proven her life divine and a power
on earth for good. Our views may be
deemed old fashioned-even old .togy-but
we confess to a very low estimate of the ed
ucation or training at this day accorded to
ladies. In our estimation-we may err-but
for us it lacks the purpose to fit for the du-
ties of her life For us all human life has
high offices-offices that in their perform
ance do not degrade but ennobe and adorh
life with beauty and fragrance aPove that
of flowers. We are not now about to attack
our female Seminaries and Colleges, but it is
to our purpose now to speak of them as shot,
houses where our human flowers are shut up,
often at the peril of their whitening, while for
all the real ends ofexistence they had better be
roaming over the hills of their homes at their
own sweet wills. These hot houses-and
we mean no injustice-are but receptacles
without bottom into which unreasoning men
of wealth cast their money, and have their
daughters positively untitled for the earnest
life that God and society open up to their
activity. There is indicated by nature and


providence position and work in the
world for each accountable being to fill and
perform, and for this we insist their educa-
tion should fit them. If il be only to bloom
and array herself, then let woman stay by
the flowers of the field but if she shall be-
come worthy of her gifts and Immortality
then let her be educated for it and be held
to account for its earnest accomplishment
Let it not be said that they toll not, but let
society and the world have the blessed bene-
fit of it. Our notions are not at all Napole-
onic and we do not consider it woman's first
office to rear men as food for the demon of war,
but while many of her sacred duties belong
to her in the relation of wife and mother, as
the centre and glory of a christian home, vet


her relations and their consequent duties are
not limited by these. We are allowed to
judge of her sphere when we have ascertain


cd the gifts and graces of intellect and af-
fection with which her Creator has endowed


her. And more than this, there is world


around her that needs so much to be done
for it-just such acork as she can dot is
adapted to her-lies within her sphere-by
it earth and humanity would be made bet
ter-God would be pleased-the Savior of
sinful men initiated. Can we doubt that
the hand that bestowed its gifts of grace on
her did not also lay before her and about
her this work that daily invites her to toll
How many hearts that caress vanities-
minds that waste their heavenly powers on
nonsense-hands that do no good, are found
in every community. Yet they do not heed
or hear the incessant cry, "why stand
ye here all the day idle ?" But perhaps we
should deal tenderly with such. 1t is not
their, fault as much as the fault of society as
now and in the past constituted, and the
fault in the education forced on them. HUI
manity-its great need and demand cannot
afford to lose the benefit of the proper exer-
else of all these powers thus held in abey--
ancc by an artificial and irrational conven-
tional law Is it not now the proper time
to bring up and discuss the great question is


labor degradation? Now when great
moral. social, organic. changes are going on
around us-while the late political convu-
sions are upheaving the foundations of old
notions, should not attention anew be,
given to the question whether nature and re-
ligion did intend that toll is not the proper
sphere of wonlan-that earth has not work
for each one of them-work needed to be
done--the neglect of which tits that so fills
our world with misery and woe2 Our esti-
mate of woman is SO very high, not of her as
flowers arrayed in beauty and grace, but of
her as an immortal, nobly and lavishly en-
dowed, that we would not see her finish her
course and appear before her God without
bearing in her hands the fruits of whole
life spent as Eternal Wisdom may have or
dained in sphere adapted to her. Would
that our words, the echo of the holiest wishes
for her good, could reach and influence the
women of the South to ponder this matter.
We admire flowers. We worship beauty in
its perfect FORM Beauty arrayed in grace
makes earth endurable, but He who was love-
ly was most lovely in His toll and doing
good to others. We dare not hope to revo-