in affrighted; priest finds a place by an atheist; and the last inch of standing-room is full. Five, ten, fifteen minutes the thunder-storm binds together this heterogeneous company by the pressure of a common necessity; and the thoughts from so many diverse brains, and feelings from so many hearts, concentrate into one common desire and impatience. So the whirling eddy of a stream sweeps against snag, driftwood, and shavings, valuable timber and worn-out trees, bits of chips, fragments, and here and there some precious waif lost long ago up the river. For one moment they revolve together in the circle of the pool, the next the snag gives way to the current, and every thing that floats is carried over, and presently slips away in its separate direction to its separate destiny. So the

rain is over and done; the life that has revolved in common for the space of a single beating of the heart, breaks up divergently; the fellow-prisoners, released from their temporary association, float away from each other on their separate ways, as easily as if the loosest ties had never united them. And to my perfidious memory, not only the Porte Cochère, but the individuality of the entire Passage du Commerce begins to fade and dissolve into unmeaning clements. Bound together by the spell of an attentive fancy idling a summer's afternoon, these elements break the slight girdle of unity, and float off into separate insignificance, as the idler leaves behind him the secluded street, the Quartier Latin, and mingles in the undistinguishable roar, rising from Baron Haussmann's new Boulevards.

MY DEAR DAUGHTER: You say to me, in reply to my last, that the case, for the present and the future, does look very much as I have stated it, but that the whole past history of woman seems to contradict the idea that she was intended by God to take that place in the management of affairs which reason and common-sense now suggest; at least, that your mind demands some solution of the problem of her nonentity during past ages, before you can step resolutely forward in the newer way now pointed out to her.

To this I reply, that it is true, certainly, that women have been not only greatly dependent upon men during all these years, but subject to them, and in nowise the master-minds of the world, so far as appears; but it is difficult to see how this could have been otherwise during a period of physical supremacy. Considering the disabilities she was under, by reason of the pains and cares incident to her motherhood, it is not

II.

surprising that she should call for protection, in days of violence, and that man should best express his regard for her by assuming the office of protector. If he had been a perfect man, he would have accepted and used this office as a privilege, rather than a right, and have seen to it that these mothers were well cared for, in every respect, while abiding in their nests, just as the father-bird, with cheerful assiduity, ministers to his mate during her periods of confinement and seclusion from the leafy world. And since these human mothers had mental needs as well as physical, the fathers, had they been the perfect men we have supposed, would have brought to them all the means of culture that came to themselves, and cheerfully shared with them their soul's food as well as their crust of daily bread; and by degrees this culture would have taught women that there were many ways by which they themselves could add to the family wealth, without neg

lecting in the least any family duty. The two thus brought together as partners and fellow-workers, as well as parents, would have had a common motive for making the most judicious expenditure of their united gains for the comfort of the whole household. But these men were not only imperfect themselves, but they ministered to equally imperfect women; and while they, by reason of their strong arms and broad use of the world at large, were tempted to become headstrong and domineering, their wives and mothers were equally tempted to make their need of protection a ground for unthinking dependence; and since the acquisition of knowledge required serious exertion, and man was best pleased with woman without it, she easily surrendered to him the fresh springs of knowledge which his industry was from time to time discovering.

This is a dark picture for woman, certainly, and unattractive; because we all instinctively admire strength, wherever we find it-whether in a strong right-arm or an active brain. The conqueror has usually carried the day over the conquered, in all past history, let the virtues of the vanquished be what they may. But there are several modifications of the above picture, which are generally overlooked, and which go far toward restoring our respect for these apparently feeble creatures, who seem to have resigned both their bodies and their souls to the control of man. In the first place, they have had no written history as yet; the trumpet being in the hands of man, he has naturally enough used it to sound his own conquests; and these have filled the pages of history. To the eye of God and overwatching angels, no doubt, there has ever been a supplemental page to these many-volumed records; and therein are noted heart-triumphs and victories of spirit among women, which rank them high among the great ones of the earth, and make them mates indeed of their wedded ones, however exalted in name or station. And by reason of this moral growth, gained through sorrow and submission, they have really made great

er intellectual progress than is at first apparent; since the activities of the heart not only lead the way to knowledge, but are, to some extent, knowledge itself. Many a poor slave has found his way to a deeper insight of God's own truths than his most instructed master; and these are the high things, which, to know, is life eternal; and we have the assurance of one of the wisest men of ancient times, that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

And, once more, this servitude has not, after all, been so complete and so debasing as at first sight might appear; because these women have been, all along, the mothers of these men, and their power over them, through their mutual affections, and quite aside from that of endowment, has been very great and very clevating to both parties. This power of motherhood has not been sufficient, as we have seen, to stem the tide of man's selfishness, and compel him to share his advantages with woman, whose disabilities of body have prevented her seeking them for herself; nor to save him from a love of domination, that brought to him as great injury as to her; but it has always been a real power, nevertheless; and when the true history of mankind lies before our eyes, either in this world or the next, we shall recognize it as the great civilizer of the human race-the divinest agency, indeed, by which it has been preserved from utter destruction. All this is dimly foreshadowed in that solemn word of prophecy, uttered in the infancy of a race to whom sin was an experiment and its curse a blessing in disguise. "Cursed be the ground for thy sake, O man-in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." “ Thy desire shall be unto thy husband, o woman, and he shall rule over thee." What are these but epitomized history, as it lay spread out before Him with whom there is neither beginning nor ending, and whose great heart of love had already conceived that grand restoration implied in the bruising of the serpent's head by "the seed of the woman?”

Toil to man and subjection to woman; bitter experiences these-curses truly, but regenerative, nevertheless; and at last a Deliverer, the Son of a Virgin Mother, whose exulting song, "From henceforth all nations shall call me blessed," was but a vibration of the chord touched in Paradise itself.

Welcome, then, blessed privilege of motherhood, with all thy anguish, care, and sorrow; in thee, at last, lies the purification of our race, and abundant compensation for ages of suffering and subjection and an unwritten history; not only because of thy Son, "who taketh away the sins of the world,” but because of thine own innermost power of sympathy by which thou subduest all hearts to thyself. Let no man fear, then, to trust to woman the guidance of her own life in all the ages to come. He who condescended to be born of her, knew well the sanctuary of her heart, wrought by His own word of power, and into which He also must enter, and that it would be to His human nature, as to all the race of man, the Holy of Holies, out of which sanctifying influences must forever flow. Accordingly, we find that the child Jesus, while "increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man," was still subject unto his parents, and that his anxious but reverent mother "kept all his sayings, and pondered them in her heart," wherein she but led the way by which all mothers, in all times, may hope to come to the knowledge of all truth, both that which pertains to this life and also to that which is to come.

Following, then, the history of Christian civilization, which, by every showing, had its beginning in the advent of our Lord, insomuch that the years themselves are called by His name, I come to this conclusion: that a national government, whose legislative and executive functions are performed by men alone, has not yet fully emerged from the barbarism of ancient times, and has before it a work of regeneration as serious as any that has marked its progress since the organization of nationalities.

Let me illustrate. Families governed by fathers alone, or mothers alone, are less likely to be well governed than those where their joint authority controls. Boys need the mental and moral influence of mothers, and girls of fathers, that their respective natures may be developed to a full and harmonious completeness. Just so a nation needs a governing power which shall represent the thought and feeling of both men and women; and the same infelicities must attend a national government, by one sex alone, that would attend such a family government. Is it not after the slow but sure fashion of the family, that God is training the world to a right understanding of true national glory and happiness? Christianity first introduced to man the doctrine of individual liberty and individual responsibility; and the two are indissolubly connected; so that a woman who has come to desire the fullest freedom of thought and action for herself, must, whether she will or not, accept the divinely-appointed and correlative responsibilities of a free moral agent; and no man can attempt to limit her activities in any direction, without assuming a prerogative of Deity itself. "What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

How vital and integral a part of early Christian teaching this idea of personal freedom was, is remarkably illustrated to my mind by the direct results of it, in ameliorating the condition of women during these eighteen hundred years now past. Missionaries in heathen lands are never weary of calling upon the women of all Christian countries to rejoice over their emancipation from bondage, and are full of narrations of the degrading customs still prevailing among the peoples they are trying to Christianize. But every step in this onward way has been one of hesitation on the part of woman, and the subject of ridicule and opposition on the part of man; and I now suppose that this sense of modesty, which is to keep a woman from going to the polls, or performing any public duty, is the same thing that led her to shrink from ap

pearing unveiled in the presence of any man save her own lord and master, in the sanctuary .of his harem! But the years will be few now before she shall have learned wiser discriminations and come to more ennobling judgments.

It is not, however, by reason of her virtues alone that woman should desire to take part in political government: she is a wrong-doer as well as man; there are few crimes which she may and does not commit; and by every principle of justice and right feeling she ought to be tried by her peers-by a jury, one half of whom shall be of her own sex; and I have no hesitation in affirming that our court-rooms will find themselves honored rather than disgraced by the presence of women there, in the character of judges, counsel, and jurors, so long as women are liable to be brought there as culprits and litigants, or even as witnesses. Indeed, it is one of my chief hopes for the future that the day will come when men will choose to associate with themselves, in the performance of all the more perilous duties that have heretofore been assigned to them alone, their wives and mothers, who, by nature, are less tempted than themselves to serious defections from virtue. To mothers as well as fathers should be intrusted the management of those numberless cases of wrong-doing which call for moral legislation and penalty; and nothing will do more to hasten the day of moral purity than a general conviction that boys and young men should be taught to avoid as carefully sights and sounds of contamination as their young sisters, and that modesty is by no means an exclusively feminine virtue.

Once more you say to me that there does seem to be some force in the assertion, that if women would vote they should also fight; and I reply, once more, that in nothing is the dominance of the physical over the mental more shown than by that very argument, which, as you say, is usually the first that comes from the lips of all young men. And the force of it is this: one of the chief duties of man, and of

governments made by men, is war-making-all things would go to ruin if that were not attended to; therefore women, who are not fighters by nature, should not aspire to government. No doubt this has been the case hitherto, and therefore women have been, of necessity, less influential in upholding the hands of government than they are preparing to be in the future; because this power of force is rapidly giving way to the power of the spirit, wherein all have ever been equal before God, and are destined so to become in the sight and judgment of man.

But the true answer to those who think that a government has a right to withhold suffrage from women because they are not inclined to be soldiers, is this, that the duties belonging to the citizen are many and various, and should be required and fulfilled according to his or her superior capacity for the one or the other; and as certain classes of men are considered more valuable to the community in the capacity of clergymen, physicians, judges, etc., than in that of soldiers, and others are considered incapable of military duty by reason of age or infirmity, so, if the whole class of women are really thus disabled, or are needed in other capacities, the state is no sufferer by such apportionment, but shows its wisdom the rather by calling upon each child of the state to serve wherever he is most valuable.

It is to be said, moreover, that in these days of humanity, the sanitary department of war-making is scarcely less important than the fighting; and there can be no possible objection to committing the practical management of this to woman. Indeed, this has been done during our late war; and few would urge that she should not be enfranchised because of any failure in the performance of the very arduous duties there committed to her.

I seem to see much farther than this, however, and am prepared to say, that the day of unjust wars will never cease until women have a voice in deciding when war shall be undertaken and for what cause. It is a monstrous mistake

to suppose that the burdens of men as soldiers will be increased when such power of decision has been placed in their hands. Every one of these women is daughter of some father, to say the least, and has, pretty surely, husband, brother, or lover, besides, to whom the call may come to arm himself for deadly fight; and this call brings greater anguish to her than to the hero who girds himself for battle. We all know how much easier it is to endure pain and encounter danger for ourselves alone, than to sit down quietly and see one, to whom our hearts cleave, going out into the darkness alone; and one of two things will certainly happen in the days to come in this land-either wars will be fewer, or women will insist on sharing the dangers and privations of them, more than ever they have done before, with those they love.

If you should suggest that many most unjust wars have had the sympathy of woman, and have even been greatly sustained by her, I reply that, upon examination, it will be found, I think, that in all these cases there was great ignorance of the true state of public affairs among the women, such as could never have existed had they been responsible lawmakers themselves, or practically interested in questions pertaining to government and the general welfare of the state. Without some such stimulus and education as this implies, they have been and must forever be, so far as I can see, children of passion rather than of reason, and the appeal to arms will always strike such minds with less of dread and more of welcome than any other; just as uncultured nations have always rushed eagerly to battle, and disdained any other arbitrament than that of the sword. It is one of the boasts of modern civilization that wars are becoming less frequent under the influence of education and increased intelligence; and we read of the period when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruninghooks, with the accompanying conviction that it is the enlightened mind of universal man, led by the Spirit of VOL. II.-45

God, which is to usher in that glorious day.

But you will not, I trust, my child, conclude from all that I have said, that it is my opinion that when the right of suffrage is granted to women there will be an end to political troubles. So far from this being the case, I look with anxiety to the immediate results of such an experiment, and have only hope in the long future. And my hope is based on moral grounds purely, viz., the, to me, immutable doctrine, that personal responsibility is the best educatory scheme that God himself has been able to devise for erring man. Starting with this, and allowing, as I think we must, that women constitute a large branch of the human family, I urge that they should be put upon their responsibili ties anywhere and everywhere that human activities come in; and I see no place where a limitation could be made without relieving them by so much of an obligation that they owe to themselves, their families, and their God.

Look at the popular objection, that if women were voters this moment, the state of parties would remain the same, the numbers in them only being doubled. This might be so at first, perhaps, but soon that party most nearly representing justice and morality would certainly be the gainer. But suppose it were not so. What I affirm is, that both parties and all parties, when made up of active men and women, will represent a higher grade of thought, feeling, and action than they now do. Granted that the men and women of a family will always vote alike, now and forever: the men will not vote precisely as they would have done had there not been an intelligent discussion of the principles of political and moral economy in the family; and thereby we have made the great gain of which I speak.

If you say, let the women influence the men in the right way and by the methods suggested, without actually becoming voters themselves, I reply, you call upon them to perform an impossibility. No human being ever goes thoughtfully,