Year: 1875

betrayed of their sex from ultimate
abandonment if they were not afraid oi
compromising their reputation by being
seen in their company. But if they
withheld from dissolute men any recog-
milton not strictly due to common hu-
manity, they might give sympathy and
encouragement of their own sex without
fear of being misunderstood. I would
not--and~ in the faith Of our common
Savior, say it, would not withhold
from any Of Gods children, male or fe-
male, tho generous consideration needed
to save them from pit opened up by
despair. But I would have women feel
that o virtuous, intelligent women is
safer from contamination and reproach
in kindly efforts to reassure o betrayed
and sorrowing woman, than in handy
ing smiles and compliments with vile
men. In the latter case they shame
every womsnly instinct Of purity and
goodness; In the former they are en-
shrined in the divine bene6cence. IT
vile men are not tolerated in their vile
ness, there would be fewer OF the class,
and the average young men, instead OF
glorying in base conquests, would blush
at being suspected of doubtful attention
to women of any GLASS" .n


"Thy discussion, friends, takes me
back to memorable event in my seven
teenth year. The isolation of the small,
inland village In which was born, while
it preserved me from contact with the
arts and shams of metropolitan society,
favored course OF reading and study
for which I found abundant opportunity
in choice old English library. With
an Unborn faith in the inherent power OF
womanhood, true to itself, to compel
respectful consideration and regard from
men, it had not escaped my notice,
that in every department Of literature,
woman was a subject of smothered or
outspoken contempt, or OF halt pat
ronizing recognition, the more odious
for being based on assumed inferiority
of the sex. The professed and courtly
admirers of women in the abstract, out
ragged my womanly self-respect by their
unexceptionally fulsome adulation. The
few women whose genius and opportu-
mites had conspired to place them on an
intellectual level with the intelligent
men of their age, were not, in the pop
ular estimation, women to be loved and
honored as women, but exceptions to
the rule of mental inferiority, to be
analyzed and classified as lusus nature.


"I had fumed over Blackstone's legal
status of women in the domestic rela-
tions; chagrined and sorrowful, had
listened to the sugar coated dwellings
of the Christian pulpit on the subjec-
ton of women as the weaker vessel"
only to anchor my faith in the God i'm
posed responsibilities of woman, as de-
manding for her the highest order of
human intelligence and corresponding
freedom of will, which'(I inferred) cre-
ative wisdom must have bestowed,
though no Galilee of the social world
had, as vet, proclaimed the infidel truth
and brought OH himself the ban Of
mother church. ...-


ct had noted the more than social
tolerance OF unprincipied men, in con-
trast with the condemnation--without
abatement of penalty or reoommenda-
ton to mercy-of their victims. And
forced to the conclusion that women
themselves were mainly responsible for
this unjust and unwise discrimination
q discrimination resulting in the degree
dation of women and the decentralization
of men-destructive of the chivalrous
spirit of protection in the latter, and
sowing distrust in the confding nature
of the former it was only natural that,
with no fear of Mrs. Grundy. I should
have resolved to cast my individual in
fuence against social condition re-
voting alike to christian principle and
womanly self4respect. At this period
of my life occurred the event to which
/ have referred.


GA young man, with whom had
been much associated in family friend
ship of long standing, had trailed his
manhood in the dust, and I had come
to his mother and sisters In their humil-
iation--fearing to be reproached, hardly
hoping to be forgiven for the course
felt to be in the line of duty---and said;
Dear friends, you know my resolve
never to associate on equal terms with
young mon guilty of conduct which ex-
cludes women from the society of the
virtuous. And now my trial has come
in the home Of my dearest friends. If
for love of thee, I abandon it forever,
and with it self-respect and womanly
influence, which in view of my human
obligations, I have no right to surren-
der, tell me, dear friends, must I for
felt your love-


"Away, through the vista of years,
as if breaking in upon the wierd voices
of the untried future, hear the re-
sponse of the truest Of mothers and the
tenderest Of friends: Be true to your
resolution, Ethel, and God will bless
you; / want my sons to be made to feel
that if they would have the respect and
society Of virtuous women, they must
be virtuous themselves. And, over
come by her emotion, the aged mother
left her three lovely daughters and my
calf in eilapna and In faoru