"When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, And topples down the scales; but this is fixt As are the roots of earth and base of all: Man for the field, and woman for the hearth; Man for the sword, and for the needle she; Man with the head, and woman with the heart; Man to command, and woman to obey; All else confusion."
Woman is not content to remain separate and apart. She will give her love to some object, and desires to repose her faith in some person worthy of her regard. She lives for man. She dresses and studies for him. She acquires knowledge and accomplishments, which are known to please and to allure.
Woman, being by nature dependent, finds it easier to lay hold of the offer of salvation than does man. His independent spirit keeps him back. Woman has only to recognize her dependence upon One higher than man, and in doing this is obliged to do but little violence to her habits of thought and feeling, and no violence at all to such sentiments of independence as stand most in the way of man. Hence men shrink with horror from coming in contact with a G.o.dless woman. In their eyes she is monstrous, unreasonable and offensive. Even an utterly G.o.dless man, unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a woman without an excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. He would not intrust his children to her care.
Oh happy lot, and hallowed even as the joy of angels, where the golden chain of G.o.dliness is entwined with the roses of love, as one of our own poets wrote:--
"O, what is woman--what her smile, Her lip of love, her eye of light; What is she if her lip revile The lowly Jesus? Love may write His name upon her n.o.ble brow, Or linger in her curls of jet; The bright spring flowers may scarcely bow Beneath her step, and yet, and yet Without that meeker grace, she"ll be A lighter thing than vanity."
Thus wrote N.P. Willis. He felt that a woman, with Christ in her heart, was the _beau ideal_ of man. The home is her kingdom, and the heart of husband or brother is her throne. In that sphere her influence is the most potent instrumentality on earth.
Demosthenes declared that by this influence she can in an hour upset the legislation of a year of statesmanship. Her power is, however, through man, not apart from him.
This is the scriptural view. Nowhere do we read of woman as though she had a mission apart from man. We talk of men and forget women. It seems almost impossible to legislate for woman and forget man.
Mankind includes womankind, but womankind does not include mankind.
It may not be complimentary, yet it remains true, that the Scriptures fail to furnish us with a model woman.
Jesus was the model man; but Eve, and Mary, and Rebekah, and Rachel, were model women to none besides those to whom they were given as wives. This, perhaps, is well, for it would be injudicious to try and prove to any man that his wife should differ radically from herself.
III.
_Having considered the teachings of the Scripture and of Nature, let us listen to the Voice of Common Sense_.
Under this head we hesitate not to declare that the hope of woman lies in the recognition of the laws of G.o.d, and the laws of her own higher nature.
Look at the facts. Who demand the ballot for woman? They are not the lovers of G.o.d, nor are they the believers in Christ, as a cla.s.s. There may be exceptions, but the majority prefer an infidel"s cheer to the favor of G.o.d and the love of the Christian community. It is because of this tendency that the majority of those who contend for the ballot for woman cut loose from the legislation of Heaven, from the enjoyments of home, and drift to infidelity and ruin.
Our wives and mothers do not ask the ballot. Our young ladies do not care even to hear the question discussed. They believe that whatever hinders woman from being the helpmeet of man does her injury. It is claimed that woman needs the ballot to secure equal laws. This claim is urged, because, it is said, women are required to obey laws which they had no share in making. It is a mistaken notion. Woman has had a share in the legislation of the country. Her influence pervades society. Let her be true to temperance, and intemperance is restrained. Let her be true to freedom, and the pulsations of her heart find their way through the entire framework of society. Let her be true to her own glorious nature, and this attempt to uns.e.x and discrown her will meet with the swift and terrible condemnation it deserves.
Another has said, "The Amazons have often been met with the statement, that a large majority of the women do not wish to vote, and would not if they could. The truth of this statement is not denied. The advocates of the ballot confess that many n.o.ble women affect a womanly horror of being thought strong-minded," and to offset this tendency they declare it to be the "imperative duty of women to claim the suffrage." "Does this mean that women are to be coerced in this matter? that our mothers, wives, and sisters are to be punished for staying away from the polls? We have never supposed it the imperative duty of every man to vote. And we know that many of the most intelligent and upright do not vote. Such is the inexpressible nastiness of our elections, especially in the larger cities, that men of the cleanest morals think it right to keep away from them. The foulest portions of the men go first, stay longest, and stand thickest at the places of voting. How then will it be when the foulest portion of the women get packed into the same crowd, and drive modesty away by the foulness of their speech and presence? When the aggregate filth of both s.e.xes shall have met together at the polling stations, as it will be sure to do, we hardly think any chaste or modest home-loving woman will go near this stench unless compelled to do so."
It is because this scheme lifts the gate to the increasing wave of corruption and pollution, that we are surprised that so-called statesmen give their countenance to it. Give to woman the ballot, and this country is hopelessly given up to Romanism. The priest loses the man, but he keeps the woman. Give to the priests the control of the votes of the thousands of servants in the great cities, and there is an end to legislation in behalf of the Sabbath, the Bible, and the school system, temperance, or morality.
The right to vote implies the right to rule, to legislate, to go to Congress, and to take the Presidential chair. On this point hear Miss Muloch. "Who that ever listened for two hours to the verbose confused inanities of a ladies" committee, would immediately go and give his vote for a Female House of Congress, or of Commons? or who, on the receipt of a lady"s letter of business,--I speak of the average,--would henceforth desire to have our courts of justice stocked with matronly lawyers, or thronged by
""Sweet girl graduates, with their golden hair?""
Well has Gail Hamilton said, "How will the possession of the ballot affect in any way the vexed question of work and wages? One orator says, "Shall Senators tell me in their places that I have no need of the ballot, when forty thousand women in the city of New York alone are earning their daily bread at starving prices with the needle?" But what will the ballot do for those forty thousand women when they get it? It will not give them husbands, nor make their thriftless husbands provident, nor their invalid husbands healthy. They cannot vote themselves out of their dark, unwholesome sewing-rooms into counting-rooms and insurance offices, nor have they generally the qualifications which these places require. _The ballot will not enable them to do anything for which their const.i.tution or their education has not fitted them, and I do not know of any law now which prevents them from doing anything for which they are fitted, except the holding of government offices._ ... What can the ballot do towards equalizing wages, where work is already equalized without affecting wages, as is not unfrequently the case? There are shops of the same sort, on the same street, with male clerks in one and female clerks in another, where the former work fewer hours and receive higher wages than the latter.... Moreover, the question of female clerkship is not yet settled. There are conscientious, intelligent, and obliging shopkeepers, who say that female clerks are not satisfactory. Their strength is not equal to the draughts made upon it. They are not able to stand so long as clerks are required to stand. They have not the patience, the civility, the tact that male clerks have.... All the voting in the world can never add a cubit to a woman"s stature."
Woman is not naturally a law-maker. Even in our homes she desires the head of the house to lay down the law. Never shall I forget the influence exerted by the utterance in a convention of Sabbath school teachers. A paper was read, complaining that in a certain Sabbath school there was a lady superintendent, because no man could be found to take the place. In conclusion, the writer said, "We need a man in our town. We have things that wear pantaloons, but we need a man, to give direction to the school, and to attract the n.o.bler and better portion of community." It was an honest declaration, and voiced a truth. Every town, every Sabbath school, every home, needs a man.
Women of talent have tried to figure in politics and in the pulpit, but a sorry figure they have made of it.
Think of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in the train of George Francis Train, perambulating the country in favor of the ballot in Kansas.
These are the leaders; but let it not be forgotten that they sided against the ballot for the negro in hopes of getting it for themselves, and proved their utter worthlessness and untrustworthiness by trailing the banner committed to their keeping in the slime of a convention which went for the repudiation of the national debt, the defeat of the party of progress, and for the overthrow of republican liberty. Had woman possessed the ballot, and had the course pursued by the leaders of this movement exercised an influence over the majority, this wonderful victory over the rebellious spirits of the land had not been achieved; but, in its stead, the stars and bars would have resumed their sway, and the stars and stripes, which now kiss the breeze, and greet the rising hopes of uncounted millions, would have been furled in gloom and night.
It is claimed that the ballot will secure for woman social respect.
The claim is not well founded. Those who seek it lose social respect, because they step out of the path marked out for them by Providence and by Nature. Woman, in her sphere, is man"s good angel and helpmeet; out of it, she is man"s bitterest foe and heaviest curse.
There is an instinctive respect for woman in her proper sphere, which is of itself a power superior to any merely conventional position that a woman can build up for herself by her own hands, even through the aid of the ballot.
How natural to see woman waited on by man! Sir Walter Raleigh was praised because he cast his cloak into the mud to save the foot of his Queen from being soiled. As n.o.ble acts have been performed by many men, times without number. The uprising of gentlemen in the cars when a tired woman enters with a child; the disposition to lighten her cares and sweeten her joys, is everywhere considered manly.
Education is essential for her. She is the educator of the home, for she is its soul. If one must be ignorant, let it be the man, and not the woman. Many of our most intelligent men have had cultured mothers.
Very few sons ever grew to be learned whose mothers cared not for books. This fact is appreciated, and leads us naturally to conclude that if woman lacks social respect it is her own fault. If a woman prefers superficiality to thoroughness; music, drawing, and dress, to a knowledge of housework, an acquaintance with literature, and the endowments of common sense, simply because brainless men are disposed to seek out the effeminate and the frail in preference to the rugged and the well-endowed, then she must suffer the consequences. If a young lady, compelled to toil for support, will prefer the factory or the store, with its hot air and depressing a.s.sociations, to work in the home, because she hopes in the store or factory to secure the hand and heart of a husband sooner than elsewhere, she must suffer accordingly. But if woman will unite in securing a reform in this direction,--if the pure and the virtuous will say, Such a life as is offered me in the family is in harmony with my future well-being, and I will scorn the allurements elsewhere held out, and fit myself, by study, for companionship with the n.o.ble of the land, she will succeed.
If woman will respect herself, she will be respected.
It is not by clamoring for rights that have been conferred upon others; it is not by restless discontent, by partisan appeals, by stepping out of her G.o.d-given sphere, and by attempting to destroy the network of holy influences by which he ever has surrounded her; it is not by ridiculing marriage and casting scorn on motherhood, that she is to obtain the blessings she courts, but by tranquilly laboring under this heaven-imposed law of obedience. Woman"s weakness is trans.m.u.ted into strength when she opens her nature to the influences of love, and when she consecrates herself to the happiness of others.
Then it is she obtains a moral and spiritual power to which man is glad to do homage. Ambition, pride, wilfulness, or any earthly pa.s.sion, will distort her being. She struggles all in vain against a divine appointment. It is from the soul of meekness that the true strength of womanhood is derived; and it is because it has its root in such a soil that it has a growth so majestic, showering its blessing and fruits upon the world.
It was the sun and the wind that in the fable strove for the mastery; and the strife was for the traveller"s cloak. The quiet moon had nought to do with such fierce rivalry of the burning or the blast; but as in her tranquil orbit she journeys round the world, she gently sways the tides of the ocean. Woman"s influence resembles that exerted by the queen of night. In the conflicts of life she has little to do; but her influence is felt from the cradle to the grave, and the sphere of it is the whole region of humanity. Woman"s worst enemy is he who would cruelly lift her out of her sphere, and would try to reverse the laws of G.o.d and of nature in her behalf. They deceive woman who cause her to believe that she will find independence when she abandons the position a.s.signed her by her Creator, and reaches one against which her nature, the interests of society, and the laws of G.o.d contend.
Woman has her sphere and her work, and she is only happy when she finds pleasure in lovingly, patiently, and faithfully performing the duties and enacting the relations that belong to her as woman. She is not the natural head of society. Man, rough, stern, cold, and almost nerveless, is made to be the head of human society; and woman, quick, sensitive, pliant (as her name indicates), gentle, loving, is the heart of the world. As the heart, she has power. She rules through love, and finds the work set for her to do in the doors opening before her loving nature. She rules through love, and becomes a blessing greater than we can ever acknowledge, because it is greater than we can measure. Let woman take heart. She is not in captivity. The law of service is on her, as it is on man. Much of her service consists in suffering; much of man"s consists in toil. Before both there are fields of endeavor, white with beckoning harvests. In literature, in reforms, in ministering to the wants and woes of humanity, in making home more and more like heaven, woman has an open door set before her, which no man will desire to close. Let her enter it and work. There is a law of companionship far deeper than that of uniformity and equality, or similarity--the law which reconciles similitude and dissimilitude, the harmony of contrast, in which what is wanting on the one side finds its complement on the other; for,--
"Heart with heart and mind with mind, When the main fibres are entwined, Through Nature"s skill, May even by contraries be joined More closely still."
Such was the exquisite companionship of the s.e.xes as they were represented by our first parents, and such, however they may be momentarily disturbed, they will remain, as the ideal for all the generations of men and women. Let woman repose her trust in man, and then, lifting up her heart, she may sing,--
"Though G.o.d"s high things are not all ours, "Tis ours to look above; All is not ours to have and hold, But all is ours to love."