H I T 
BY 
MARY E. WALKER, M. D. 
“ We live in deeds, not years.” 
* * * * * 
“ They most live who think most, 
Feel the noblest, act the best.” 
“ Strength and wisdom only flower 
When we toil for all our kind.” 
NEW YORK: 
THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY, 
117, 119 and 121 Nassau Steeet. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
MAltY E. WALKER, M. D., 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
Anderson & Ramsay. Printers. 28 Frankfort Street, New York. TO 
MY PARENTS; 
And also TO THE 
PRACTICAL DRESS REFORMERS, 
The truest friends of humanity, who have done more 
for the universal elevation of woman in the past dozen 
years, than all others combined. You, who have lived the 
precepts and principles that others have only talked—who 
have been so consistent in your ideas of the equality of the 
sexes, by dressing in a manner to fit you for the duties of a 
noble and useful life. You, who have written and spoken, 
and been living martyrs to the all-important principles 
involved in a thoroughly hygienic dress, and thus given to 
the world an indisputable proof of your unflinching integ- 
rity. To You, in a word, who are the greatest philan- 
thropists of the age, this second Dedication is made. 
And also TO MY 
PROFESSIONAL SISTERS, 
Of whatever School or Pathy, and all women who are 
laboring for the public good in any capacity. 
And lastly, 
TO THAT 
GREAT SISTERHOOD, 
Which embraces women with their thousand unwritten 
trials and sorrows, that God has not given to men the 
power to comprehend, I dedicate this work, in hope that 
it will contribute to right your wrongs, lighten your bur- 
dens and increase your self-respect and self-reliance, and 
place in your hands that power which shall emancipate 
you from the bondage of all that is oppressive. PREFACE. 
“My -words I give unto you.” 
§N presenting my book to tlie public, I have 
only to say, that a combination of motives, 
some of which have been the incentives in 
most other persons, have induced me to wield the 
thought-sender. 
Were I to delay its publication until I had 
“ fashioned it to the taste of the critics,” thousands 
of women would suffer agonies in the waiting, that 
will gladly accept it in its imperfect condition, and 
rejoice that there are hearts that think of them in 
the silent hours when none but the great Sympa- 
thizer listens to the earnest prayer for strength. I 
make no pretensions that I have said everything 
that may be said upon the interesting subject of 
Marriage, or that what I have said, is entirely new, 8 
PREFACE. 
or purely original; I have used my own language, 
and express my ideas in my own way, without 
attempting to exhaust the subject, which has 
claimed the attention of every human being to some 
extent, in some period of their life, if that life has 
been matured. 
If the reader is induced to think calmly and rea- 
son profoundly on this important subject, I shall 
feel that much has been accomplished in the social 
world. I launch my frail barque into the stormy 
and fathomless sea of critics, prepared for whatever 
is to be. I shall be as pleased with the appreciation 
of a generous public as most persons. In cases 
where I shall be treated severely, I shall be con- 
soled with the thought, that the critics are earning 
their bread, and that they are more capable of dis- 
playing their talents in “ unkind cuts,” than in cull- 
ing what little of merit it may possess. 
As to myself, the “good time coming” has not yet 
arrived, when an individual can speak of the little 
personal pronoun /, without being gravely charged 
with the criminal offence of egotism, notwithstanding 
the fact, that one is better acquainted with said pro- 
noun than others can be, however extensive the ac- PREFACE. 
9 
quaintance may have been. But next to self, is the 
Phrenologist. 
The following was given by S. It. Wells, of the 
Phrenological Journal, 389 Broadway, N. Y. 
MARY E. WALKER. 
You should be known especially for your great 
activity, energy and executiveness; also for faith, 
hope, and trust, in Providence; next, for your firm- 
ness, decision and self reliance; next, for your pow- 
ers of observation and reflection. 
You are both a good looker and a good thinker. 
You remember all that you see, distinctly, as well as 
your thoughts and experiences. Names, dates and 
minor details, may escape you, but facts, principles 
and important details, never. 
You should also be known for your kindness, 
sympathy, and willingness to make personal sacrifi- 
ces for the benefit of others; also for your con- 
structiveness, planning power, and even for your 
inventive genius. You are full of resources; failing 
in one thing, you readily try another and another, 
till you ensure success. 
You should also be known for your ability to en- 10 
PREFACE. 
dure privations. Yon could get along without food 
or sleep longer than most persons, and hold up un- 
der hardships; indeed, you are adapted to emergen- 
cies, and would excel in any hospital or prison ser- 
vices. Educated for it, you would be able even to 
perform surgical operations without flinching or 
fainting. 
You may appreciate property and know its worth, 
but you want it simply to use, and not to hoard. 
You could not be wasteful, though you may some- 
times be generous to a fault, but you are probably 
known for economy, for mechanical ingenuity, for 
prophetic forecast, for intellect, stability, force of 
character and propelling power. 
It would be natural for you to desire all the rights 
and privileges, at least all the opportunities enjoyed 
by the other sex, that you could go the world over, 
acquiring knowledge and applying it in all direc- 
tions. 
You have much of the missionary spirit; the de- 
sire to do good, and confer favors on all you meet 
and you should be no less known for integrity, and 
true sense of justice, and a desire to do right under 
all circumstances. PREFACE. 
11 
You are naturally religiously disposed, though 
your views would be broad and liberal, not narrow 
or sectarian, nor are you superstitious or bigoted. 
You would worship God under all circumstances, and 
express gratitude for all things. If disappointed, 
you regard it simply as a blessing in disguise, and 
make the least of your trials, instead of the most of 
them. 
In temper, you hold no malice, encourage no vin- 
dictive feeling, but you rather forget and forgive an 
injury, than punish the offender; still you would be 
a stickler for justice, and would insist on right and 
justice being done in all cases. 
Socially, you are warm-hearted and loving, and 
though you deny yourself the pleasures of the so- 
cial circle, you are always happiest when surrounded 
by those you love. If suitably mated, you would be 
happy as a wife. If a mother, you would be very 
kind and indulgent to children. As & friend, you 
would be always true, standing by those who are 
worthy, even in the most trying circumstances, and 
would almost sacrifice yourself on the altar of your 
friendships. 
The love for home, is the same, though you can 12 
PREFACE. 
make yourself almost at home everywhere. The 
love for home and for friends may he called as strong 
as that for kindred. Because one was born in the 
same family, or bears the same name, it does not 
make him nearer to you than others. 
Although cautious, watchful, guarded and mindful 
of danger, you are free from timidity, and have not 
that shrinking, hesitating feeling, that declines re- 
sponsibility, but on the contrary, where duty calls, 
there you go without regard to consequences; but 
you would not be reckless, heedless, nor even care- 
less, but would be 'prudent, as a general thing; and 
though you would-drive a fast horse, you would hold 
a stiff line, and steer your course with both judg- 
ment and cautiousness. 
You have great tenacity of life, and would hold on 
when others would let go. Your recuperative pow- 
ers are the same; a little rest, simple food and re- 
pose, puts you all right again, after great exposure. 
The appetite is good, and you enjoy the luxuries of 
the table, but you eat to live, rather than live to eat. 
You are naturally extremely sensitive to blame or 
praise, nor would you be likely to do anything which 
would let you down, either in your own estimation, PREFACE. 
13 
or in the estimation of others : still jon hold your- 
self accountable to Heaven rather than to persons, 
and when you think yourself in the right, you pur- 
sue a straightforward course, without regard to what 
may be thought or said of you. 
You have the happy faculty of conforming or 
adapting yourself to all persons, even to the taking 
on* of the ways and manners of others. You can 
imitate, do what you see done. 
You are also joyous, hopeful, mirthful, playful, and 
very fond of fun; will not only enjoy a joke, but 
create it, and would be quick at repartee. You are 
almost hilarious in your nature. 
You can measure well by the eye, and judge of 
sizes, forms, proportions and distances; can keep 
the centre of gravity in riding, climbing, or march- 
ing ; would be a correct accountant if accustomed to 
figures; would be systematic and methodical. 
You are fond of music; will enjoy it highly, 
though you may not compose it. You would be 
ready as a writer or a speaker, and if trained to it, 
would excel in composition or in conversation. 
You can reason well; comprehend persons, as well 
as facts and details; can criticise, compare, eluci- 14 
PREFACE. 
date, and make your knowledge available on all oc- 
casions ; but if you excel in one tiling more than in 
another, it is in your ability to discern the motives 
of strangers, even at the first interview. You can 
read them as others read books, and know even at 
a glance whom to trust and whom not to trust. 
This power is intuitive, and introduces you at 
once to the innermost thoughts and feelings of those 
whom you meet. It is a sort of psychological im- 
pression, and when you heed it, it will guide you 
correctly. 
If you marry, select for a companion one who is 
healthy, intelligent and religiously disposed; one 
with whom you may be an equal, for you never will 
consent to play second, nor be held hi subjection, 
but you must have equal rights and privileges in all 
things. You cannot bear restraint, nor are you 
inclined to dictate. You simply wish to be free, and 
to place your accountability between yourself and 
your Maker, rather than to man. CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER I. 
PAGE. 
Love and Marriage, 17 
CHAPTER II. 
Dress Reform, 57 
CHAPTER III. 
Tobacco, 85 
CHAPTER IV. 
Temperance, 98 
CHAPTER V. 
Woman’s Franchise, 108 
CHAPTER VI. 
Divorce, 137 
CHAPTER VII. 
Labor, 147 
CHAPTER VIII. 
Religion, 168 H I T. 
CHAPTER I. 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
SHERE is nothing of greater interest 
to all classes of people, in all times 
of'life, than Love and Marriage ques- 
tions—because all people are affected, directly 
or indirectly, either by their own, by those 
with whom they are associated in every day 
relations, or by the ties of consanguinity. And 
yet there is nothing that society meddles with 
so much in an unhealthful manner, thus pre- 
venting clear and dignified thought and action 
in a healthy direction. 
The affections need cultivating, guarding 
and guiding. It would be sophistry, to say 
that anger, malice, revenge, or any of the so- 
called unamiable traits of character, should be 
allowed to be exercised without reason to re- 
strain them, on the ground of naturalness ; and 18 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
yet there is a class of people who openly,—and 
a still larger class who clandestinely, live out 
the belief, that if one is pleased with another, 
the love element of our being should he exer- 
cised without restraint ; and such a vast num- 
ber have so little of Love, and so much of ex- 
citability of sexuality, that great wrongs are in- 
flicted on soul and body, to an incalculable 
extent. 
The grossest people, those not far removed 
from the animals, cannot understand that there 
can be, that it is possible in human nature, for 
a soul love, unmixed with sensuality ; they 
cannot comprehend the existence of a deeper 
and purer element than they possess them- 
selves ; and yet, if they were to reason upon 
the subject, they would believe that, as others 
possess various gifts vastly superior to their 
own, why not the pure love element ? 
That some are born with greater musical, 
mathematical, logical and artistic powers or ca- 
pabilities than others, no intelligent person will 
deny • but that cultivation makes all of these 
more perfect and useful, is equally true. Sup- 
pose we apply the same to Love. Observa- 
tion must teach that the most affectionate and 
loving, have so cultivated themselves, that they 
can Love without a mixture of what is usually LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
19 
termed animal passion, and unless married peo- 
ple have this kind of cultivation, the time must 
come when they will become weary of each 
other, and desire nothing so much as to be 
anywhere but at home. 
Every faculty of our being is capable of cul- 
tivation and of restraint—and our reason and 
observation are for the purpose of assisting 
and inducing action in effecting these designs, 
of correcting the evil, and cultivating the good. 
Combativeness and destructiveness, and all 
the passions of the brain, are all good in their 
places, and were all designed for a wise pur- 
pose, just as much as Love. 
The most truly logical on the Love and Mar- 
riage question, live the best lives and obtain 
the most substantial and permanent blessings 
of earth. 
The few, 0 the lamentably few, cases of ob- 
servation, teach us this truth ! But away down 
in the depths of the soul, where no false rea- 
soning can ever penetrate, we see, we hear, we 
feel, the evidence. 
True conjugal companionship is the greatest 
blessing of which mortals can conceive in 
this life—to know that there is supreme in- 
terest in one individual, and that it is recip- 
rocated. Everything sinks into nothingness 20 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
without such an assurance, for all that earth can 
give without it, is but as “ sounding brass and 
a tinkling cymbal.” Nothing can make an indi- 
vidual more wretched than to lose confidence. 
It is not simply that which is lost in the one 
person, but the distrust that is felt in all hu- 
manity. 
The deceived, who has placed implicit trust 
in one so nearly related as is one conjugally, 
can not soon and easily (without much evi- 
dence) trust those with whom there has been 
but an ordinary or general acquaintance. 
The most beautiful stories of faithfulness ; 
the most charming poems, with heart and soul 
richness ; the sweetest and tenderest songs, 
seem but a solemn mockery of a once believed- 
to-be reality. 
Love is ever placed upon a pedestal, with 
pictures of cheating lies and living sepulchres. 
Try as hard as the poor victim can, to tear all 
down and trample under the feet of. forgetful- 
ness, the “ Nevermore ” of the “ Raven ” is in- 
tent on drowning every other thought of sound, 
and every possibility of confidence in mortals. 
And then, as if to test the capacity for en- 
during and suffering, the world heaps its scorn 
upon the poor subjects, driving them into a far 
deeper gulf, when, but for such treatment, LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
21 
while struggling so hard to try to feel that 
there was a little Love in the world, souls to 
society and themselves, might have been saved ! 
Is any one who has caused such depths of 
sorrow, capable of Love and fit for marriage ? 
There is no need of a pause for a reply. In 
every pulsation of your heart, there - is an un- 
mistakable no ? 
Tupper has beautifully expressed his ideas 
on this subject, in the following words : 
“ Love is an angel mind breathed into a mortal. • 
Love is the devotion of the heart, in all its grandeur 
Is a sordid man capable of Love ? 
Hath a seducer known it ? 
Can an adulterer perceive it ? 
Or he that changeth often, can he feel its purity ?” 
The polygamists, whether in Utah, Oneida, or 
scattered about the world generally, under 
moral or religious canopies, all fail to compre- 
hend the meaning of true affection. But the 
polygamists and the communists, who openly 
in their life declare Love and lust to be one and 
the same, and that they have rights that are in- 
alienable in passional directions, that their re- 
spective societies designate, are a thousand 
fold better than the people outside, who are 
preaching morality, and practicing the most 22 
LOVE AND MARRIAGEL 
underhanded and trickish measures, to accom- 
plish the same results under their false colors, 
not only, but cruelly thrusting others out of so- 
ciety, who are their victims, as soon as they 
are tired of them, or have made new conquests, 
or are forced by publicity to take such a step. 
As men are the makers of general laws, so 
are they of social laws, and this one they 
keep rigidly, when the victim has been their 
own. 
We have often heard it said, that men always 
love women, and are their natural protectors, 
because of their great strength, and great Love. 
Some men love women as children love dolls, 
and, as a natural result, treat them just as dolls 
are cared for. They dress them in all the finery 
they are able to procure, pet and exhibit them 
until the clothes become old, and the beautiful 
color of the face is gone, and the eyes are con- 
tracted and dim, and then, like worn out dolls, 
they are thrown aside for neighbors’ dolls, or 
for some beautiful images in the show windows 
of false society's market. 
In the thousands of such cases, that are all 
over our country, is it to be wondered at, that 
a looker into the condition of society as it is, 
cannot believe that there ever was anything 
approximating anywhere near genuineness in LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
23 
the affections, between the so-called husbands 
and wives ! 
Such cannot sing the soul-satisfying ballad— 
“Let us grow old together,” for they do not 
desire to do so ; like the few who can sing in 
the spirit, finding beauty and charms in wrin- 
kles, that are entirely wanting in the unde- 
veloped faces of rose and lily colored smooth- 
ness. 
There is more depth in the old tear-dimmed 
eye of affection, than in the soul-piercing glance, 
from the most beautiful and brilliant eyes of 
youth. Those whose love shall- have been con- 
stant and faithful, until age shall creep upon 
them, will assuredly find a calm and peace that 
shall be in itself true happiness. 
The masses will sometime realize that there 
must be stability in the affections, or there can 
be no true Love ; and if there is no reliability 
in the affections by having the love concentrat- 
ed on some one object, a man (as a rule) can- 
not be fully relied upon, in any of the duties 
of life, for the fortress of the soul is sooner or 
later captured by the enemy. 
It is well known that a married man, whose 
affections are properly exercised and directed, 
succeeds much better in life than the single, 
unstable lover. 24 
LOVE-AND MARRIAGE 
There cannot be love without respect, and 
there cannot be respect unless there is implicit 
confidence. 
How wretched are two partners in Ordinary 
business relations, when confidence is wanting ! 
But how much more wretched, aye agonizing, 
where it is a life partnership, and confidence 
and love are both wanting! No jealousies 
ever creep in, where there is that amount 
of confidence which should exist between the 
married, and nothing is more absurd than to 
say that “ the affectionate are always jealous,” 
for it comes from a lack of confidence, instead 
of an excess of affection. 
“ Love worketh no evil.” 
Thousands of women have been accused of 
being jealous, when they were not so at all, for 
they were sorrowing over a husband’s infidelity. 
They could not prove his vileness, according 
to the codes of man, but it was proved to 
them, in the severing of the invisible mag- 
netic cable, which can never again be so 
united as to possess its former strength and 
power. 
It is impossible for one unfaithful in the 
Marriage relation, to come into the presence of 
the other without feeling a consciousness of 
that unfaithfulness, and appearing unworthy of LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
25 
the confiding one, who trusted all and was de- 
ceived. 
Law, man-made law, very soon dissolves 
other partnerships, where there is nothing but 
filthy lucre in the case : but when the heart and 
soul, and the dearest interests of a life-time are 
in the question, quibbles are found to chain 
both soul and body for years and years and 
years, until their effects open an early grave, 
for a body whose soul has been matured, by 
great and deep wrongs and trials, so that no- 
thing of an earthly nature can hold it any 
longer. 
Many of our States have laws compelling 
married people to live together, when the 
wife perfectly loathes the very sight of her 
husband, and one after another child is given 
an existence, that is hated by both, before it is 
born. Each parent sees traits of character in 
their children, that have been inherited from the 
other, thus arousing still greater repugnance to 
their children, (if possible,) and but for public 
sentiment and law, would as soon deprive them 
of their unwelcome existence, as they would a 
viper that comes unasked and undesired into 
their presence. The children are wretched, 
having a most unhappy organization, fit for 
any sort of misdemeanor, or crime. Still, 26 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
there are people who wonder how such ter- 
rible crimes could ever have been committed 
in a Christian country, as are recorded daily. 
There are members of churches, who so read 
the Bible, as to make out that it is the of 
wives to submit to all sorts of oppression, in 
a Christian manner, while husbands outrage 
every sense of common decency, to say nothing 
about their sworn obligations to love and cher- 
ish their wives. 
Paul’s injunction to obey their husbands is 
taken to mean the women of to-day, instead of 
in the lifetime of Paul, when he saw that the 
men were so corrupt and tyrannical, that in 
the treatment of their slave-wives they would 
only be much more abusive if, they did not 
treat their husbands as the lords they assumed 
to be. Paul’s advice was in quite a different 
age, and to quite a different people, and was 
given as advice, and not . as a command of 
God. It was 170 years after Christ’s birth 
before there was any religious ceremony in 
marriage. 
Untold wrongs to wives are perpetrated all 
over our land, under cover of a false construc- 
tion of “the words of the Book of books,” 
which, if rightly understood, would induce all 
mankind to live out the principles of humanity, LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
27 
but another name for giving to every numan 
being, rights and liberties that are fully guar- 
anteed them by their having an existence. 
Any law or custom that deprives a being of 
individuality, in any of the relations of life, 
contravenes the great laws of Deity, thus 
bringing evil results, as the legitimate conse- 
quence. 
Men and women should enter into the social 
contract of marriage, as equal and life-long 
partners. No young lady, when she is being 
courted, and flattered, and petted, for a mo- 
ment supposes that her lover can ever be so 
brutal as for a moment to ever wish her to be 
his slave, and the idea of his assuming the 
position of master or tyrant, is to her perfectly 
preposterous. She feels that, as she is entitled, 
by her intelligence, her purity, nobleness, and 
worthiness, in every respect, to be treated as 
an equal and individual in all the relations of 
life, that she will be treated accordingly. But 
she can have no guarantee of any better usage 
than the law compels. 
0 how terribly wretched, beyond compari- 
son, when woman realizes that her purity and 
affection, and all her worthy traits of character, 
fail to bring the appreciation she has a right to 
expect! and she too, tied for life to one whose 28 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
own soul was annihilated, the hour he deemed 
the law gave him the possession of another 
soul! Too true, lamentably true, that there 
was but one soul in the twain ; the one possess- 
ing it in reality, and the other possessing it by 
law ! 
“ What God hath joined together, let not 
man put asunder.” 
The Bible has no command that is more sa- 
cred than this ; not even the one “ thou shalt 
not killand it matters not how forgiving the 
injured party may be, the penalty must be felt, 
not only in this life, but that which is to come. 
The soul that sinneth, must suffer, and the inno- 
cent are brought to suffering through the ini- 
quities of the guilty. 
Men, the protectors of women, usurp the 
power to make laws that oppress your mothers 
and sisters, a thousand-fold worse than human 
language can express, and then you call it sa- 
cred marriage, when it is only legalized vil- 
lainy ! 
A woman may see her husband kill another 
person, which may be the work of but a few 
moments, and law makes her a competent wit- 
ness against that husband ; but she may see 
him disregard his marriage obligations, any 
number of times, and her husband can laugh LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
29 
her in the face, with a paramour in her own 
house, who shall drive her from her own room, 
and yet law says she is not a competent wit- 
ness against her husband in such a case. She 
may suffer untold agonies in her pure soul, and 
yet be compelled to live with him, or be post- 
ed, or be called jealous and fault-finding, and 
exacting, when, if there was a real cause for 
leaving him, why does she not prove it ? 
You call such, sacred marriages, and a 
woman is a free lover, or a some terrible crea- 
ture, if she ever leaves a husband for his infi- 
delity, if she cannot prove it, when you have 
made a law for the purpose of preventing her 
from proving his iniquities. He may, under a 
very smooth face, be one of the vilest men liv- 
ing, and his wife suffer a thousand agonies, that 
are a thousand-fold worse than murder, and yet 
your laws let her suffer, while she might be free 
from the villain, if law gave her as much a 
right to protect her marriage purity, as it does 
to witness against the crime of murder, which 
is but a play of indiscretion, compared to the 
great physical and moral wrongs, that are al- 
lowed in the marriage relation, without the 
power to free herself, under the laws of some 
of our great States that have so much regard 
for the sanctity of marriage, that it closes nearly 30 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
every avenue of freedom from the guilty party 
of the terribly perverted institution. 
There can be nothing more beautiful, than 
the true marriages that are so rare, in the great 
mass of the so-called “ what God has joined to- 
gether,” when He has had nothing to do with 
the matter, any more than suffering their con- 
summation and continuance. 
But there can be a beautiful confidence, 
where soul reads soul, appreciatingly, and nei- 
ther tries to deceive the other. Such, and such 
alone, are truly married, and must recognize 
and practice the great and beautiful laws of 
true marriage. 
It has been said that the “ truest men and 
the truest women, are those who are the most 
under the influence of each other.” 
But the usages of society are such, that it is 
not an easy matter for the truly congenial to 
understand each other. Many a man has mar- 
ried, who supposed that he, above all others 
in the world, was preferred for a husband, 
when nothing could be farther from the 
truth. 
Were it not impolitic for women to confess 
this truth, few could be found who would not 
admit that, if they had been as free to select a 
husband, as men are to select wives, they would LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
31 
not have married as they did ! But women’s 
failure to come to the confessional on this sub- 
ject, does not prevent every individual of ob- 
servation from seeing, not only, the ill-as- 
sorted marriages on every hand, but the terri- 
ble results which crop out in the shape of affin- 
ities, communities, desertions, and murders of 
various kinds, beside a host of evils too numer- 
ous to mention. 
Society pays a premium to women for being 
deceitful, by being sure to abuse those who 
dare to be honest and frank. 
A woman does not dare to show the least 
preference for a man, until he has made the 
first advances, and young men are taught 
that such a course is unladylike, and bold, and 
to be beautifully feminine and charming, she 
must carry on a course of gauzy deception, 
pretending she does not care especially for him, 
until he will seek to win her regard, and even 
then she must keep up a little deceit. 
Men talk about the great intuitive powers 
of woman, and declare her superior to them in 
this intuition, yet they ridicule the idea of so- 
ciety allowing her to exercise this intuition in 
the selection of a husband. We are far behind 
the people of Persia, for there was a time when 
the women were authorized by law to select 32 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
husbands for themselves, if they owned a hut, 
or a fishing boat. 
There should be perfect freedom for woman 
to select a partner for life in a straight forward, 
honest and honorable manner. 
Queen Victoria has set the world a praise- 
worthy example, instead of intriguing and de- 
ceiving. 
Noble men must feel themselves highly hon- 
ored, when they realize that society is in such 
a condition that honesty in lifelong interests, is 
almost unknown. But men themselves are to 
blame for this condition, for just as long as 
woman is politically a slave, having no voice in 
making the laws by which she is governed, and 
compelled to pay taxes to carry on man’s gov- 
ernment, she must of necessity do the best she 
can in her slave chains. 
The time is not distant when, women as 
wives, and mothers, and sisters, will be equal 
with men in all the social, and political rela- 
tions of life ; and then men themselves will be 
astonished that they could have opposed what 
was really for their own interest, as well as 
that of women. It was many years before men 
could understand that an intelligent and well 
educated woman was a better wife and com- 
panion than an ignorant one. LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
33 
Women cannot be deprived of God-given 
rights, or of Republican rights, without men 
being sufferers as well as women. 
We could not understand how much disad- 
vantage the whites labored under, in conse- 
quence of the slavery of the blacks, until the 
slaves were freed, and the scales, one after 
another, fell from our eyes. 
The oppressor is of necessity a tyrant, and 
the oppressed are always slaves, and as slaves 
they feel that slavery is not the natural condi- 
tion of one human being, and if there is not a 
revolt, sooner or later, there is a constant 
study to gain advantage by the science of de- 
ception. 
Slave deceives master, and master deceives 
slave. So in the marriage relation in thousands 
of instances. The fault is in the perversion of 
the institution, and not the institution itself. 
And men and women are both required to 
make laws, which shall be just to both, and 
not in the least oppressive to either, before the 
generality of marriages will be the beautiful 
companionship that our Heavenly Father in- 
tended. 
That there are but few nations that are in a 
degree just to women in their courting and 
marriage relations the following will show. 34 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
There is no criterion by which one can judge 
so correctly in regard to the broad, liberal and 
just ideas of the people of a state, or a country, 
as by a knowledge of their Marriage customs, 
and vice versa. 
The facts that are contained in this part of 
the chapter, have been gathered from different 
sources, for the purpose of contrasting them 
with the social and national laws in the various 
States of our Union, and as they were gleaned 
for that purpose alone, the author neglected to 
note the different sources from which they 
were obtained. The greater part of the same 
were found in extracts from letters of travellers, 
who witnessed such customs, and it would be 
impossible to give the credit to the sources 
due. Those from various books, in libraries 
and elsewhere, were noted down for the same 
purpose as just stated, and in most instances 
without attempting to remember the writer’s 
name. 
The reader will observe that in some coun- 
tries, Marriage is positively a religious rite, 
while in others, their religion has nothing to do 
with the matter, but in many, that it is a com- 
bination of legal and religious ceremonies, and 
in still others, of neither. 
In the United States, the laws are so various LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
35 
in the different States, and among different re- 
ligious sects, that our country represents not 
only a few beauties, but many absurdities. 
In some States, a couple cannot marry with- 
out a license, but a justice of the peace can 
join their hands and ask them if they will live 
as husband and wife, and when they respond 
“ yes/5 he pronounces them such, and it is 
legal. In other States, New York, for in- 
stance, a Marriage is perfectly legal, with the 
ceremony just stated, without any license, it 
matters not what time of day or night a couple 
call for such ceremony. Indeed, it is still easier, 
for a simple declaring in presence of witnesses, 
that they will live together as husband and 
wife, at any hour of day or night, renders the 
marriage lawful, and it cannot be annulled, 
except for crim. con. (adultery). 
The Jews in our country live up to their 
ideas of not committing the sin of marrying a 
Gentile; they control their own Marriages 
in their churches, and acknowledge no power 
out of the church to grant divoices, unless they 
divorce the couple first in the church of their 
own faith. 
Roman Catholics must be married by a 
priest of their own church, and a divorce is 
never granted under any circumstances. 36 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
In the State of Kentucky, a Marriage is 
not legal unless a license is procured, not only, 
but a man at hand who will go bail in the sum 
of $200, that both are fit persons to marry, no 
matter what their ages are, even if they are 
heads of families. 
A marriage is legal in some States, if the girl 
is but twelve years old, and the boy fourteen, 
while in others, the woman must be eighteen, 
and the man twenty-one. But such children 
Marriages will not be suffered, when women 
are enfranchised, and have a voice in the mak- 
ing of the laws. Congress ought to make 
general Marriage laws, and no State ought to 
have the power to legislate in matters of the 
most vital interest to the people of every State. 
Frauds and deceptions of every grade are 
constantly perpetrated, resulting from the dif- 
ferent Marriage laws of the various States, 
and although women and children are great 
sufferers, still men are occasionally victimized. 
Only a few of the Absurdities that might be 
mentioned in our dear native land, have been 
presented to the public, in the light that they 
really deserve ; but enough has been said to 
prevent so much boasting about “ our institu- 
tions being superior to those of all the rest of 
the world,” when they are far from being sim- LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
37 
ply just, and are in reality, in some respects, 
greatly inferior to some of those of other coun- 
tries. 
No pretension is made to give the reader all 
the Beauties and Absurdities of the Marriage 
relation all over the world, but only such as are, 
in the modest estimation of the writer, some of 
the most prominent ones. 
The Quakers marry themselves, with their 
promises to each other to live as husband and 
wife while life lasts. This is usually in their 
own churches, but sometimes at the bride’s 
house, before a number of witnesses, who sign 
the marriage certificate or contract. 
In England, when a marriage engagement 
is made, the couple, and all their friends, are 
not only free to speak of it, but they consider 
it a duty which they owe society, that an hon- 
orable engagement may be known, in order to 
prevent any others from placing their affec- 
tions on the affianced. It often occurs that 
they are engaged several years, and if they 
finally conclude to break their engagement 
they are free to state the fact without seek- 
ing to injure each other. They do not sit up 
late at night, but they visit in the drawing- 
room in the presence of the family, or at least 
the mother. Few who are engaged, ever go 38 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
to any place without a third person, and no 
couple could be in public alone, without people 
supposing that they were engaged to be mar- 
ried. 
A Marriage must be solemnized before twelve 
at noon, to make it legal. The ceremony is 
usually performed in church.. When they 
start upon their bridal tour they throw an old 
slipper of the bride out of the carriage. The 
bride submits to the tyrannical custom of prom- 
ising to “ honor and obey.” 
England is not the only country that would 
do well to import the Marriage ceremony from 
Sicily, where they promise to ‘‘Love and cher- 
ish”* each other. Neither is it the only coun- 
try that still has the barbarous law, that if a 
wife flees from her husband, he can have her 
arrested and compel her to live with him ! In 
the time of George the Third, about the year 
1772, an act was passed in Parliament to pre- 
vent all Marriages of the princes over twenty- 
five years of age without the approval of that 
body, and another to prevent princes marrying 
under twenty-five without the consent of the 
King. Without the consent of the authorities 
just mentioned, the Marriages were pronounced 
null and void. 
A woman’s name is as dear to her as a LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
39 
man’s is to him, and custom ought, and will 
prevail, where each will keep their own names 
when they marry, and allow the children at a 
certain age to decide which name they will pre- 
fer. It would make no more confusion in 
families than where a man’s widowed sister 
is keeping house for him with her own and 
his children together, or where a widow with 
children marries a widower with children. 
That some women are well satisfied to have 
their identity perfectly swallowed up in Mar- 
riage by losing both surnames and Christian 
names, when they have been guilty of no 
crimes, to make it desirable to hide them, is 
indeed wonderful. 
Miss Jane Jones is lost in Mrs. John Smith. 
Who would dream that she is the same person 
she was an hour since ? A woman must be 
called Mrs. to let all the world know she is 
married, and if there is a necessity for this, why 
not call a man Misterer for the purpose of en- 
lightening the world as to his condition? 
Let men and women stand as equals. We 
believe in men’s rights as well as women’s, 
and if there are any advantages to be gained 
by the titles of Marriage, let men share them 
as well as women. 
In France, ifra gentleman asks a lady to 40 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
dance with him more than once at a social 
party, he is considered to be in love with her. 
An unmarried gentleman does not sit near 
an unmarried lady, in company, but as soon as 
he seats her after having danced, he takes a 
chair near another gentleman or a married 
lady, although the couple are attentive to each 
other while dancing. The marriages are in 
the Roman Catholic faith, and the husband 
takes the wife’s name if she' desires him to do 
so. There must be four witnesses to a Mar- 
riage ceremony, and there must be two distinct 
ceremonies, one of state and one of the church. 
In the interior of Africa, Dr. Livingstone 
found that in the marriage relation the man 
took the name of the woman, and was bound 
to go and reside in the native village with 
the wife, if she chose to have him. He is bound 
to provide her mother with firewood for life. 
If the Marriage is not a pleasant one, the wo- 
man alone can have a divorce, and the chil- 
dren belong to her. 
The men have several wives, but the first 
one is the one by whose name the husband is 
called. 
The wives allow polygamy, as the husbands 
are on such a low plane, that it would be use- 
less to attempt to prevent it, although they LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
41 
have an equal voice in making the laws. The 
men ask their wives before engaging in any 
occupation or job of labor. 
On a small island near Mull and Iona, on 
the northwest coast of Scotland, a race of peo- 
ple live, who subsist mostly on fish, wild birds’ 
eggs, and oat meal. The marriage portion of 
a bride is an iron kettle, and a long rope. 
The latter is made on the island, and used for 
the purpose of swinging under the shelving 
rocks, and securing the birds and fowls’ eggs. 
The young men are said to marry for the sake 
of being supported. 
The marriage of people belonging to the 
Brahmin class, living in Calcutta, is very com- 
plicated, and occupies five days. 
The first day is devoted to washing the 
bridegroom and bride in the sacred waters of 
the Ganges, and to various ceremonies in- 
tended to guard them against the influences of 
the evil eye. The second day the two fathers 
join their children’s hands, and pour over them 
seven measures of water, seven of corn, and 
seven of milk, while the officiating Brahmin 
reads the portion of the law which treats of 
conjugal life and its duties. A cord is then 
put round the bridegroom’s shoulder, and a 42 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
great ring, typical of marriage, is fastened to 
the neck of the bride. 
On the third day, the bride and bridegroom 
march seven times round the sacred fire. On 
the fourth day, they dine together in public. 
On the fifth day, an offering of rice is sacri- 
ficed, the only religious ceremony except suttee} 
to which a woman is admitted. The ceremo- 
nies terminate by a triumphal procession. 
In Sicily, marriages are according to the 
rites of the Greek Church. The bride is richly 
dressed in the ancient costume of gold and sil- 
ver brocade, ornamented with precious stones. 
She walks to church with the bridegroom, 
leaning on his arm, while just before them, a 
number of musicians walk leisurely along, en- 
livening the occasion with music. A boy in a 
long white robe accompanies the wedding par- 
ty, carrying on his head a basket containing 
two nuptial crowns, and two wedding rings, 
one of gold and the other of silver. 
At the moment the Priest gives the gold ring 
to the man, and the silver one to the woman, 
the crowns are placed on their heads, and they 
promise to love and cherish one another all their 
lives. The Priest then blesses a goblet of wine, 
and the bride and bridegroom both drink from 
the same glass, and divide a morsel of bread. LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
43 
The Priest lays his hands upon their heads and 
pronounces the blessings of the church upon 
them. The veil which hides them from the gaze 
of the spectators is withdrawn, and the cere- 
mony closes with a grave dance in the church, 
the music being from the organ and orchestra. 
The Priest and his clerk take part in the dance. 
In Prussia, the minister gives his services in 
marrying people, and makes the bride a pres- 
ent. 
In the good old times, a Persian girl who 
owned a little property—a hut or fishing boat— 
was thereby authorized to select a husband 
herself. If she wished to commence her search 
for a husband, she hung up her blue apron in 
front of the door of the house, and posted herself 
behind it. The young men of the village passed 
by the apron one by one in a long procession, 
dressed in their best Sunday*clothes. As soon 
as the right one appeared, the girl rushed out, 
threw her arms around his neck, and within 
three weeks there was a wedding. 
In Syria, a few years since, 3,000 Christian 
girls were carried off to Turkey, and sold as 
wives, the sale being the only marriage cer- 
emony. 
The ceremony of marriage in Java is very 
curious. The bride and bridegroom are brought 44 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
before the -Dukum or Priest, in the house they 
are to inhabit. They make an obeisance to- 
wards the south, then to the hearth, or fire- 
place, which is to be the scene of their domes- 
tic bliss. The third obeisance is towards the 
earth. Next, they raise their eyes to the upper 
story of the house for a few moments, after 
which the Priest says a long prayer, asking 
for a blessing on both husband and wife. The 
wife then goes through a ceremony indicative 
of her humility and willingness to serve her 
husband in all things, by washing his feet in 
public ; after which the friends make them 
presents of household implements, in return 
for which they offer their friends betel nuts. 
Among a tribe of people called Kocch, that 
live on the hills in India, as soon as a couple 
are married, the bridegroom goes to live with 
the family of the ''bride, and all his property is 
made over to her. In the island of Celebes, 
men were allowed to marry as many wives as 
they could support, just as they are in Utah, 
under Brigham Young. 
In Hungary, they do not marry very young. 
The gentleman pays marked attention to the 
lady for three, four, and sometimes five years. 
The gentleman employs an agent to exchange 
rings with the lady, and ask her hand. The LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
45 
lady’s father, in the presence of several wit- 
nesses, gives his consent. On the wedding 
morning, the young man’s friends repair with 
joyous shouts, to the house of the bride's father, 
for the purpose of carrying off the bride, whom 
they conduct to church with the bridegroom. 
After the ceremonies at church, the pair are 
escorted to the bride’s home, amid firing of 
pistols, guns, and all the village artillery. 
The nuptial house is generally found closed, 
and stones are hurled at the door. When the 
door is opened, a table is seen, sumptuously 
covered with viands. The heroes of the occa- 
sion are seated with their intimate friends, and 
the whole company observe deep silence, while 
the blessing is asked. The proceedings termi- 
nate with a dancing party. 
On the Sunday morning preceding a mar- 
riage in Bretagne, every invited guest sends a 
present to the young couple. On the bridal 
day, a band of music leads in a procession of 
friends who repair to the bride’s house, where 
the door is immediately opened by a man with 
a wand in his hand, who points out to the par- 
ty, in a long rhymed speech, that there is a cas- 
tle somewhere in the neighborhood, where so 
gallant a company cannot fail to be well en- 
tertained. The bridegroom has also brought 46 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
his poet, who gives verse for verse, and com- 
pliment for compliment. 
When the company demand the bride, the 
wrong person is brought forward. First an old 
woman, then a child, then a widow, and after- 
wards one of the bridesmaids. When this 
sport has continued until the patience of the 
company is exhausted and the bridegroom’s 
poet's poetry, the real bride is brought forth to 
greet her betrothed, amidst the shouts of hap- 
piness that are heard from the party. 
In Ireland, at the fair of Galway, it is a cus- 
tom for all the marriageable girls to assemble 
and to tempt all wanting wives, by their capti- 
vating charms, to be made more happy for life. 
Says an American gentleman of the highest 
character, who was an eye witness, and invited 
by a nobleman to go and see these girls :—“ At 
twelve o’clock precisely, we went, as directed, to 
a part of the ground higher than the rest of the 
field, where we found from sixty to a hundred 
young women, well-dressed, with good looks 
and good manners, and presenting a spectacle 
quite worthy any civil man looking at, and in 
which I can assure my readers there was no- 
thing to offend any civil or modest man’s feel- 
ings. There were the marriageable girls of the 
country, who had come to show themselves, on LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
47 
the occasion, to the young men and others who 
wanted wives ; and this was the plain and sim- 
ple custom of the fair. I can plainly say that I 
saw in the custom no very great impropriety— 
it certainly did not imply that, though they were 
ready to be had, anybody could have them. It 
was not a Circassian slave market, where the 
richest purchaser could make his selection. 
They were, in no sense of the term, on sale ; 
nor did they abandon their right of choice ; but 
that which is done constantly in more refined so- 
ciety, under various covers and pretences—at 
theatres, at balls and public exhibitions, I will 
say nothing of churches—was done by these 
humble and unpretending people in this 
straightforward manner.” 
The Marriage ceremony in Turkey is as fol- 
lows—A man sends his negro Eunuch to com- 
pel a woman he fancies to come to him—after 
an examination by the future husband, she is 
turned into his harlem if* she suits him. A 
man is allowed seven wives in one house, and 
can have as many times seven as he has houses 
in different towns. When he becomes tired of 
a wife she is turned out to go her way. The 
Eunuch is master over these unfortunate wo- 
men, acting like a shepherd dog, keeping them 48 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
herded together, and not allowing any one but 
the Turk to see them. 
These women have no education, and are not 
required to do any work. The one that can 
master the rest is the favorite with the Turk. 
It is lawful for him to kill a wife if she violates 
his rules. 
In Russia, the marriageable women are put 
in market once a year, and the men walk 
about and view them, and when one is seen 
that is fancied, a card is put into her hand— 
she hands hers to the admirer, and the court- 
ship commences. 
In Greece, a man will not marry so long as 
he has a marriageable sister. The youngest 
son believes it his first duty to see his sisters 
all provided with husbands. 
In some parts of South America, many do 
not marry until they have raised families. 
They can marry and have their children bap- 
tized, and they inherit the property. But if 
this is neglected, the property all goes to the 
church, and the family is left destitute. 
Among the Nestorians, on the wedding night, 
the bridegroom gave the bride a kick with his 
foot and commanded her to pull off her shoes 
as a token of her submission. 
It has been stated by Plutarch that the LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
49 
Spartans always carried off their brides by a 
feigned force, in order to make it a legal Mar- 
riage. A Spartan woman appeared in public 
until she was married, but ever after she wore 
a veil. 
In ancient Assyria all the marriageable young 
girls were sold in a public place at auction, and 
all the women were provided with husbands. 
Those who were very handsome sold for large 
sums, and the money was divided among the 
plain-looking ones. 
A tribe of people in Barbary called Nasa- 
mones used to marry by drinking out of each 
other's hands. The parents arranged the match, 
and the bride’s face was unveiled by the hus- 
band for the first time on their wedding day. 
It has been stated that in some country the 
young lady rides a fleet horse, and if she de- 
sires to marry, she allows herself to be over- 
taken, but if the wrong suitor is likely to over- 
take her, she drops a golden apple, and while 
he is picking it up, the one she wishes to mar- 
ry is allowed to overtake her. 
Hon. I. S. Diehl, the celebrated Lecturer on 
Oriental and Bible Lands, relates many curi- 
ous customs, among which are the two follow- 
ing: 50 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
In Armenia the young woman is brought to 
the mother of her affianced, who,- in an angry 
manner, throws her a bundle of infant’s clothes, 
places a little one in her arms and watches the 
Miss, who nervously dresses the babe, and if to 
the satisfaction of the future mother-in-law, she 
is allowed to marry, but if not, she is sent 
home to take fresh lessons in the art of baby- 
dressing. 
In some places, the Circassian women are 
taken to a market and sold as wives to the high- 
est bidder. Among the Circassians, a young 
woman is put on a horse’s back, and compelled 
to ride over the plains until caught by some 
man, the catching being the only Marriage 
ceremony. It sometimes occurs that the hus- 
band is a speculator, and as soon as she is 
caught, he sends his property on another 
equestrian tour, and sells her to the successful 
capturer. 
In some of the German states, a young wo- 
man lives with her affianced mother a year be- 
fore her marriage, that she may learn all about 
household matters. 
In Persia, the business of the bridegroom is 
transacted by an agent, and the contract is one 
of barter. The wedding festivities at the bride’s LOVE AND MAURI AGE. 
51 
house last for ten days. On the last clay the 
bridegroom sends the bride her trousseau, 
which consists of rich jewels, dresses and some- 
times slaves and attendants. All sorts of 
wealth is displayed, and sometimes a great pre- 
tension is made, by carrying empty boxes. 
The bride is brought to the husband’s house 
mounted on a camel, or a horse. 
The Marriage itself is entirely an affair of 
bargain and sale, as the bride is taken in' con- 
sideration of a certain dowry. Now and then 
the husband objects at the last moment to 
ratify the engagement he has made, and when 
his bride is brought home to him, refuses to 
receive her, stating himself unable or unwill- 
ing to pay so much. Then follows a long 
scene of bargaining, always, however, ending 
in a compromise, for it would be a great disgrace 
to the bride to be sent back. The marriage is 
seldom intended to last the lifetime of either 
party. 
Marriages in Norway are usually solemnized 
in winter, when the peasants are comparatively 
unoccupied. A week before the ceremony is 
to take place, messengers are sent around to 
invite the proprietors and servants of neighbor- 
ing farms. The room in which the ceremony 
is to take place, is decorated with green boughs. 52 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
After a substantial breakfast, the betrothed 
couple are brought forward by their relatives, 
and seated in state in the great room, where 
the priest blesses them, and when the prayers 
are finished, proceeds to a table, on which is 
placed a large plate. Addressing the company 
generally, he recommends the couple to their 
notice. The relatives then come forward, and 
deposit bright neiv crown pieces in the plate ; 
then come the rich neighbors, who contribute 
according to their means, and lastly, the poorer 
friends, who each throw in their mite, towards 
setting up the household of the new-made wife. 
The festivities are kept up for two or three 
days. 
In Arabia Felix, the wives were all in com- 
mon. When a man entered a house, he left 
his staff, at the door as a sign that the woman 
was engaged. 
In Persia, they formerly believed that mar- 
ried people were happier after death than sin- 
gle ones, and so if a person died single, they 
would marry some one to the corpse before 
burial. Some people hired persons to be es- 
poused to their relatives who had died single 
and were buried without having been married. 
In India, on the Malabar coast, among.some 
of the lower classes, a man can have but one LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
53 
wife, while a woman may have three husbands. 
All three contribute to the support of the chil- 
dren. 
In the mountains of Jamaica, among the 
Maroons, when a girl is old enough to marry, 
her parents make a feast, and if a young man 
agrees with the girl to live together, they are 
considered married. 
In Silesia, the peasants celebrate their Mar- 
riages very pompously. The bridal procession 
is headed by musicians, and the wedding cor- 
tege and horses are gaily decked with ribbons. 
On the Marriage morning, the bridegroom pre- 
sents himself at the house of the bride, and, 
after an infinity of prayers, refusals, and cajol- 
eries, the bride is brought forth. She is con- 
demned to listen to a long list of rules for her 
future conduct and carriage. Then she gives 
her hand to her betrothed, and he lifts her into 
the carriage. As they proceed to the church, 
the guests eat cold provisions, and drink 
brandy. 
After the ceremony at church, the party 
proceed to the bride’s house, where, for three 
days, they have dancing. Their guests are 
given roast meat, cakes, beer, and spirits. 
After the three days have passed, the bride 
departs in her husband’s wagon, often seated 54 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
on the top of a pile of furniture, which is her 
dowry. The first person who meets her in 
her new home, gives her a piece of bread. 
When the Egyptian bride leaves her parents’ 
home, for the dwelling of her husband, all her 
female friends and relatives accompany her, 
veiled like herself, and march under a dais, 
preceded by musicians and tumblers. The 
tumblers walk just before the ladies, and go 
through with various gymnastics, some of which 
consist in their standing upon their heads. 
After a sort of triumphal progress, the proces- 
sion stops at the house of the future husband. 
Here the visitors are received, and the bride is 
conducted to the nuptial hall, where the hus- 
band, who has never seen his bride’s face, 
though the marriage ceremony is over, is wait- 
ing to receive her. 
The husband then advances, and lifts the 
veil that has hitherto hidden the features of the 
bride, and so perfect a command have the Mus- 
sulmans, in general, that they seldom betray any 
sign of pleasure or dissatisfaction at the beauty 
or plainness of the ladies upon whom their 
choice has fallen. The only male spectators 
of this ceremony are the brothers and father 
of the bride, for in Egypt the women are so 
jealously guarded, that no men are allowed to LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
55 
look at them from their infancy, except their 
nearest relatives. 
In Siberia, the bride is required, on her 
arrival at her husband’s home, to invite guests 
to a dinner prepared by herself, and if pro- 
nounced good, it is a recommendation which is 
above all things to be desired by a woman. 
In Japan, the bride’s teeth are made black 
by some corrosive liquid to show that she is 
married. The laws allow men to marry all 
relatives except sisters. 
In India, the Hindoo widows are not allowed 
to marry, however young they may be. The 
very day a girl becomes a widow, her col- 
ored clothes, silver and golden ornaments 
are all taken off. Henceforth, she has to 
dress in white, and wear no ornaments of 
any kind whatever during her lifetime. Her 
daily meals are reduced to one, and that 
is prepared in the simplest way possible. She 
is strictly prohibited the use of any sort of 
animal food. Each widow is required to cook 
her own food, and to abstain entirely from 
food and drink two days in every month. On 
the fast days, when the burning sun dries *ip 
the ponds and scorches the leaves of the trees, 
these poor victims faint and pant in hunger and 
thirst. If they are dying on the aku thusty 56 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 
day, a little water will be put on the lips 
merely to wet them. They have no hope of 
ever changing their widowhood in the world. 
A recent change in the law, however, now 
allows the marriage of widows, and a learned 
Brahmin, the Principal of Calcutta Sanscrit 
College, is earnestly engaged in redeeming 
their condition, by introducing the system of 
widow marriage. 
Among some tribes of the North American 
Indians, the suitor enters the wigwam of the 
squaw he wishes to marry, and proceeding to 
the farthest corner of the room, commences 
throwing a few kernels of corn at the object of 
his affections, and if she retreats to another cor- 
ner, and returns the throwing, his addresses are 
acceptable, but if she leaves the wigwam, he 
returns to his own. In another tribe, living 
near civilization, the lover leaves a violin near 
the door, and if it is taken in by the squaw, 
he returns and entertains her with music. 
We come lastly to the happy bride in New 
South Wales, where no clothes are worn. The 
Marriage customs in this place are as brutal and 
savage as the people can well make them. A 
man, desirous of adding a gin or wife, to his es- 
tablishment assembles a certain number of his 
particular friends, with whom he sallies forth to LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
57 
dog the footsteps of some neighboring tribe. 
With admirable patience the marauders watch 
for a favorable opportunity. When at length 
one arrives, they throw themselves upon the 
family, whose alliance their chief is anxious to 
secure, put all its members to flight, excepting 
the bride, whom they seize and hold fast. 
Frantic with fear, she struggles and yells, 
but her cries are silenced by blows with a 
heavy club, and faint and bruised, with her 
flesh on her back torn, and the blood covering 
the wounds, she is dragged through the bush. 
Her husband is the master of his slave and 
wife, all in one, and she is compelled to do all 
the disagreeable work, and the slightest dere- 
liction of duty is visited by a severe administra- 
tion of club law, from “ her protector” CHAPTER II. 
DRESS REFOE M. 
SHAT the style and cut of the covering 
of the “ mortal coil ” has had its in- 
fluence in the marriage relation, from 
the days of our first parents until now, no one 
will deny. That the Dress of women has ever 
been just what it should be, in order to protect 
the person, and allow freedom of motion and 
circulation, and not make the wearer a slave to 
it, was not approximated, until some of the 
Women Physicians of America took the subject 
in hand, and directed its arrangement in ac- 
cordance with the laws of health, and the ne- 
cessities of life. It is a well known fact, that 
the opposition brought to bear, is in proportion 
to the importance of the subject to humanity. 
And hence as Dress Reform for women is of 
paramount importance, it can be readily seen 
that the ignoble have ample reasons for oppos- 
ing what will throw barriers in their path— 
what will remove the easy facilities for monster 
vices. DRESS REFORM. 
59 
Everything that makes woman in any degree 
independent of man. and, as a consequence, 
independent of marriage for support, is frowned 
down by a certain class of individuals. But 
wThen it makes them independent in marriage, 
their opposition is unbounded, and they really 
seem to feel that they are doing “ God ser- 
vice ” by persecuting those who are trying to 
save their physical, and by saving the physical, 
improving the mental strength. 
Strange it is, that men do not understand 
how much better it would be for them, in many 
respects, if women were all dressed in a hygie- 
nic manner ; but as they are not, they actually 
do all in their power by tongue and pen, to 
oppress those who dare to dress hygienically. 
There is no doubt that the ignorance of the 
real principles, and the crude and incorrect 
ideas of many, induce some people to pursue 
the course just indicated. But time’s surgical 
instruments will remove the scales from the 
Saul’s eyes, and they will be as zealous in 
sustaining, as they are in persecuting. 
To elucidate the effects of fashionable Dress 
upon the marriage relation, we need only say, 
that, as far as the expensiveness is concerned, 
that many men will not marry, because the 
voluminous and numerous Dresses, with their 60 
DRESS REFORM 
other paraphernalia, requires a small fortune 
to replenish the ever changing fashionable styles. 
Young men are often heard to say that “ if 
a wife’s clothes did not cost any more than their 
own, they could afford; to marry.” It is but 
natural that honest young men should be afraid 
to marry, when they see their friends so em- 
barrassed in consequence of the extravagance 
of their wives in Dress. The lessons inculcated 
by failures in business as a consequence of 
having a fashionable wife, are learned and pon- 
dered over, until the youthful affections have 
waned, and the years of adaptation have passed. 
It is not only silly that an immortal mind 
should be absorbed for half a lifetime, on fash- 
ionable follies, to be arranged on the “ casket” 
that contains this invisible piece of immortality, 
but it is a sinful waste of time and energies ; 
both of.which are essential in many directions 
that are at present overlooked. The thousand 
perplexities of fashionable Dress, wear so upon 
the temper of a woman, that she cannot be 
amiable. A new garment*is scarcely finished 
before a later fashion has made its appearance, 
and something new, or an alteration in the old, 
suggests itself, and the devotee of fashion, if 
she is poor, is nervous over the expense and 
labor, that are unending ; if she is rich, over DRESS REFORM. 
61 
the stupidity of dressmakers, and their slowness 
in finishing their work, even with the sewing 
machine to hasten the finishing of dozens of 
tucks and puffs and ruffles ! 
So much of the nervous energy is expended 
on Dress, and dressing, and carrying the bur- 
densome stuff, that a morbid sensibility is in- 
duced which women cannot prevent. At the 
exhibition of‘this, men lose their patience, 
believing there is no necessity for a woman 
ever to be so nervous and easily annoyed at 
little matters. Not only does the husband 
and father suffer from this continuous irrita- 
bility, but the children that are and those that 
are to be, partake of the same. 
It is time that parents felt the responsibility 
that rests upon them, in regard to the trans- 
mission of highly wrought susceptible organiza- 
tions to their children, that make them so 
wretchedly sensitive to all sorts of earth-life in- 
fluences. 
Let a horse be compelled to wear a harness 
that is uncomfortable, and with all his great 
strength of nerves, but a little time will elapse 
before he is so restless that his driver feels 
obliged to seek out and remedy the irritating 
cause. But if a human being writhes under 
something that injures the nervous system, 62 
DRESS DEFORM. 
others are not as careful as they should be, to 
ascertain the cause, and hence the censure under 
which many poor wives labor. 
The effects of Dress upon woman’s physical 
being specially are such as to injure the happi- 
ness of the marriage relation. Few young 
women are to be found, that are fit for mar- 
riage, because they have been dressed in such 
a manner that weakness if not mechanical dis- 
placements have resulted. 
Scarcely a woman can be found old enough 
to marry, who is not afflicted with some ail- 
ment produced by wearing an unhygienic 
Dress. From the crown of the head to the 
soles of the feet, the women are unhealth- 
fully attired, and as there can be no happiness 
without health, it is obvious that the marriage 
relation as well as every social relation is embit- 
tered when there is no necessity for the same, 
unless there be a necessity for pleasing a viti- 
ated taste, to the exclusion of health. 
Nearly every roof covers a debilitated wo- 
man. No one will, for a moment, harbor 
the idea that God intended such a condition. 
Even half civilized or savage life is better in 
some respects than those professed-to-be high- 
est enlightened conditions of society. To illus- 
trate : In China the women compress the feet, DRESS REFORM. 
63 
but they allow freedom of the chest. In India 
they wear heavy anklets, but they do not 
wear long or heavy skirts, injuring women 
as women, and posterity also. In Kamschatka 
they do not tie up their hair, and put weights 
of false hair on their heads, crazing them with 
pain or benumbing the whole cranial sur- 
face. 
In Turkey, the fact is recognized, that the 
women’s limbs are flesh and blood as well as 
the men’s, and are therefore susceptible to the 
influences of the weather, .and need to be as 
well protected ; and hence the custom of the 
sexes dressing nearly alike. Those who would 
find fault with the men of that country, for 
allowing the women to dress like them, (instead 
of wearing our most fashionable clothes, or 
rather those of Paris,) would immediately be 
credited with weak or bad motives. 
As women are distinct, separate individuals, 
in the marriage relation as well, as out of it— 
as they are sharers of the great labors, and the 
greater sorrows and burdens of life, there are 
as great or greater reasons, why they should be 
as hygienically dressed as men ; and their 
minds and hearts and consciences, are capable, 
and will direct them right, just as soon as the 
way is opened and woman has sweet liberty to 64 
T)RESS REFORM. 
live up to her noble womanhood, without being 
hampered and cramped in this direction. 
The credentials of i4he consciousness of the 
stinted growth of the mental interior, are visi- 
ble in the faces of the women who are carrying 
the terrible burdens of Dress, that does result 
in so much of real unhappiness in the marriage 
relation. A husband has no more right to 
dictate about the cut of his wife’s clothes, than 
has the wife to interfere with her husband’s, 
and it is time that the barbarous ideas of men 
assuming such prerogatives, were swept away, 
and the inherent right of woman to dress as she 
pleases established. 
God has either given noble capacities to 
woman, or He has given her power to receive 
them, for the fact is evident that she is iny>os- 
session of them, and has a firm disposition to 
appropriate the same, even if against the ex- 
press wishes of men ; believing as she does 
that powers for good were not created to 
moulder unexercised. 
Thousands of the wrongs to woman, would 
be prevented, if women dressed in a hygienic 
manner, and those wrongs that are not at all 
to be legislated upon, because they are beyond 
the sphere of human legislatures. One of the 
great sources of unhappiness in the marriage DRESS REFORM. 
65 
relation, results directly from the chilling influ- 
ences that freeze up the sympathies of wives, 
that have been so overburdened with their 
clothes, that they could not cultivate the flow- 
ers of beauty in the garden of the soul, where 
the chilling winds of nervousness were con- 
stantly blowing away all beautiful sentiments. 
If men were really what they profess to be, 
“ the protectors of women,'7 they would never 
arrest one for dressing herself in a comfortable 
and health and life saving manner. They 
would not attempt to compel women to dress 
so that the facilities for vice would always be 
easy, but would sanction a Dress that is quite 
the reverse, and no man would attempt to in- 
vade the family circle of his neighbor. But 
until the “ good time coming77 comes, when 
women can dress hygienically without being 
martyrized, thousands of wrongs and sorrows 
must result every year, that are perfectly need- 
less, aye, agonizing! 
The idea that “ women cannot be distin- 
guished from men,7’ is a piece of bosh that was 
remedied according to the ideas of the men in 
the latter part of the fourteenth century, by 
compelling the women to always carry a distaff 
in one hand, so that there should be no mistake 
in regard to the sex. 66 
DRESS REFORM. 
A vast amount of the many troubles of mar- 
ried life, results because of the illness of wives 
who are debilitated by Dress. So alarmingly 
great has this “ general debility ” become, that 
there is not a thoroughly educated M. D. to be 
found, who does not know that there is scarcely 
a woman who is not a sufferer from the wearing 
of long Dresses, even if they fall but to the 
ankles. There is a weight and swaying motion 
that nothing can overcome. There is an excess 
of clothing on some portions of the system, and 
a deficiency on others. No women are dressed 
in such a manner that the warmth is equally 
distributed, except the Dress Reformers, and 
such alone are attired in a manner that will not 
produce or aggravate mechanical displacements 
of the abdominal and pelvic viscera. 
The greatest sorrows from which women 
suffer to-day, are those physical, moral, and 
mental ones, that are caused by their unhygie- 
nic manner of dressing! The want of the 
ballot is but a toy in comparison! .But time 
and a seeming propriety, prevent the author 
from making full elucidations and comparisons 
in this book, as it is for the general reader, and 
is not for women exclusively. 
The wretched manner in which little child- 
ren are dressed before they have a personal DRESS REFORM. 
67 
control of their clothes, is figured up by sex- 
tons to the tune of many thousands every year. 
In 1860, 300,000 deaths occurred before the 
age of five years! In the same year, 77,309 
deaths resulted from consumption, and inflam- 
mation of the lungs ! 
Has .Dress nothing to do with the happiness 
of'the marriage relation, when the parting of 
friends, who died of dress or the improper 
arrangement of Dress, fills the soul with an 
amount of sorrow that is almost insupportable? 
There are those who seem to care very little 
about life, only as it serves them to display a 
beautiful face, and thus with open eyes to 
the suicidal manner in which they dress, con- 
tinue to violate hygienic laws, and very soon 
destroy what Aristotle called “one of the most 
precious gifts of nature ;” what Theophrastus 
called “ a mute eloquence what Diogenes 
called “the most forcible letter of recommen- 
dation ;” what Plato called “the privilege of 
nature;” what Bion called “a good that does 
not belong to the possessor, because it is im- 
possible to give one’s self beauty.” 
It is however possible to preserve beauty, 
even after the frosts of age shall have appeared, 
if one shall have dressed in a hygienic manner, 
and also to preserve an increasing beauty of 68 
DRESS REFORM. 
mind, that must always be an accompaniment 
of one who is in good health and aspiring after 
what is better and nobler than the fashiona- 
ble follies of Dress, that covers all sorts of evils, 
and creates thousands of sorrows in the home 
circles. 
Let our clergymen of cdl creeds, imitate the 
Pope of Pome, and come out boldly, and talk 
in fitting language against the evils of so much 
Dress. His Holiness concluded a long letter 
as follows, in exhorting women to “cultivate 
their minds ; cultivate their hearts ; cultivate 
virtue ; for all of glory cometh from within,’’ 
and not from Dress. 
Again we assert that, from the crown of the 
head to the soles of the feet, women are dressed in 
an unhygienic manner, while men assume all the 
comforts and conveniences of Dress that they 
desire, without any one saying unto them, 
why do ye thus ? We may, in our Christian 
enlightenment, talk of the absurdity of the 
Chinese pinching and deforming women’s feet, 
but if we had a particle of real modesty we 
would never mention it in the face of the facts 
of outrages a thousand-fold worse. 
It is stated that the most fashionable Amer- 
ican belles have submitted to the removing of 
the little toe on each foot, for the purpose of DRESS REFORM. 
69 
being able to wear a very small shoe. It is a 
fact that all of the vital organs of women are 
so compressed by stays or corsets that health 
is impaired and life shortened, not only, but the 
lives of their children are monstrous disap- 
pointments as it regards length, and in all 
other respects. Woman’s “ make up” gener- 
ally after having been given from her mother 
a feeble constitution, is one mass of ever- 
changing absurdities. 
THE HEAD. 
There is no way the hair can be worn with- 
out injury, save in a perfectly free and flowing 
manner, except it be to plait the same, and let 
it fall without being a weight or burden on the 
head. There are numerous cases of those in 
comparative health who cannot endure even the 
latter mode ; indeed they cannot endure the 
weight of the hair, if it fall longer than men’s 
usually does. Astonishing as it may seem, the 
weight causes an intense pain, as though a heavy 
weight was attached to the hair. 
Coarsely organized women cannot understand 
this, any more than men, but such women do 
very well understand what a relief it is to be 
freed from chignon, extra braids, frizzes, curls, 
rats, mice, combs, pins, etc. etc., and they almost 70 
DRESS REFORM. 
without exception complain of pains in the 
head, which result from the wearing of these 
extras, and the compression caused by tying 
of the hair, and the strings and elastics to keep 
the same arranged. 
Many an 0 dear! escapes the lips of women, 
who, before going out, must perform the head 
gearing labors, that they declare are so tire- 
some. The first thought is the arranging of 
the hair, and the constant thought afterward, 
is to be careful not to get it disarranged ; and 
the head must be held just so, and there is a 
constant feeling of being all fixed up, which 
one cannot get out of their brains, as long as 
the fixings are painfully reminding them of 
their presence. 
Who can reasonably expect that a woman 
can be of an amiable disposition who is under- 
going a species of torture, at the very citadel 
of where dispositions are manufactured ? Who 
can reasonably expect that the mother will be 
able to give everything that is desirable to her 
children in nature, when she is herself having 
the mental quality producer in torture all the 
waking moments of the months that she is giv- 
ing being, life, soul, to a little immortality ? 
Dress up the heads of lady Floras, lady 
Greys, lady Temples, or any other of the great DRESS REFORM 
71 
horse raisers ; let them be in absolute discom- 
fort all through their lives from the same tor- 
tures that the mothers of human beings wear 
on their heads, and we would soon see the re- 
sults in their ladyships’ colts, in their disposi- 
tions and intelligence. Of what use or value 
is a magnificently formed horse that is wanting 
in intelligence, and with a balky disposition ? 
The balky traits are the mental ones that are 
inherited, and generally from the mother. 
The mass of men have long since learned 
how to treat the animal, and it is to be hoped 
that in the course of a dozen or twenty cen- 
turies more they will learn that the hap- 
piness of the marriage relations of their chil- 
dren depends upon principles not far remote 
from those already learned in the animal king- 
dom. 
THE BODY. 
1. The first great principle in the clothing 
of the body is, that there shall be perfect 
freedom of motion. 
2. The second, that there should be an 
equal distribution of the clothing. 
3. The third, that the arrangement should be 
such that as little of vitality should be expend- 
ed in carrying it about, as is possible. 72 
DRESS REFORM. 
There are no women in the world who live 
these three principles, except those who wear 
the American Reform Dress in its perfect con- 
dition, as we shall describe on another page. 
It will be readily seen, from the facts we bring, 
that no woman can wear the ordinary long 
dress, falling to the ankles, and live the princi- 
ples we here set forth; for arrange it as best 
one can, all of the above principles are but 
partially carried out. 
FREEDOM-OF MOTION. 
In the first place, there cannot be perfect 
freedom of motion, when the dress reaches to 
the ankles, as there is a resistance to overcome 
at every step, as a feeble woman always feels 
most sensitively. If hoops are worn, there is 
the atmospheric pressure to overcome to a great 
extent in front, when walking against the wind, 
and the same to resist when walking from the 
same. If hoops are not worn, then the same re- 
sult, with the annoyance of the clothes hitting 
against the ankles and legs, and often being 
caught between the ankles and knees. To train 
oneself in such a manner that the ordinary re- 
sistance may be in a measure overcome, produces 
that extra swing, or those extra motions of the 
body that are called “ womanly,” but which DRESS REFORM. 
73 
would soon be manly enough, if men carried the 
burdens of dress in the same way that women 
do. 
Take the strongest horse, and put bands just 
in front of his back legs, and see if he would 
not make the same uncomfortable movements. 
If sex had anything to do with the extra moves 
of the body in walking, why do we not see it 
in the horses ? or why do we hear so much 
about women wearing Reform Dresses, walking 
so much like men ? (if they had not worn the 
ordinary Dress until the terrible habits were 
almost unalterable). 
One cannot labor and suffer in a freedom-of- 
motion-obstructed Dress for years, without be- 
coming fixed in habits of motion that such ob- 
struction produces as a natural consequence, 
and the very grace of a trailing Dress, that we 
hear lauded so much, and for which so much of 
life is sacrificed, is produced by the extra pain- 
ful moves of a tortured body. The same moves 
in a Reform Dress would be as ridiculous as 
they would be in a man. Taste is vitiated, and 
the great laws of easy and healthy reproduction 
are ignored when such absurdities are practiced 
by women, and lauded by men. 
There is not perfect freedom of motion of 
any part of the body. The arm sizes are either 74 
DRESS REFORM. 
so small that the arms cannot be reached above 
the head, or in any direction without wearying 
them, or they are cut so far off the shoulders 
and down on the arms, that the same result is 
produced, and the great mass of women cannot 
arrange their hair without resting their arms 
many times, for in spite of will, they fall pow- 
erless by their sides, because of the compression 
where the waist ends, and the sleeve begins. 
The waist being tight also, or at least a snug 
fit, is one cause of the tired sensation of the 
arms. 
The snug fit of the waist of the Dress or cor- 
sets, prevents freedom of motion, of respiration, 
digestion, assimilative circulation of the blood, 
and of the nervo-vital fluid. It prevents the 
freedom of the muscles of the lower part of the 
chest, and the upper part of the legs ; produc- 
ing a weariness of the bony structure, both at 
their origin and insertion. 
When there is perfect freedom of Dress, 
there is in respiration, a gentle motion of even 
these muscles, as well as of the intercostal and 
abdominal muscles. But the great mass of 
women have so paralyzed them, that one not 
well versed in the science of the human system, 
would scarcely believe, that, from their present 
condition, they were ever designed to need the DRESS REFORM. 
75 
freedom of Dress that is so evident to the 
physical philosopher. The very length of th'e 
Dress produces these results if it is not tight 
around the body, for it must be remembered, 
that, even if the clothing is all suspended from 
the shoulders, the pressure upon the muscles 
there, press upon other muscles below, and 
they in turn upon others, and so the very, same 
results are produced, only to a less extent, and 
requiring a longer time to feel the deleterious 
effects. 
There cannot be perfect freedom of motion 
with the stockings arranged as they are ;—the 
wearing of elastic bands either above or below 
the knee to keep them in position, prevents a 
perfect freedom of the motion of the legs, and 
even if the strap of Demorest notoriety is worn 
and fastened to a band from the waist, or to a 
waist itself, there is a want of freedom above, 
a compressing of muscles that injure a woman, 
as such, in a thousand-fold ratio. 
The shoes are wretchedly constructed, pre- 
venting a freedom of motion by compressing 
some portion of the feet. Instead of the Horace 
Greeley style of the shoe being made to fit the 
foot, the foot is compressed so as to fit the 
shoe. The high heels are not only ob- 
jectionable on account of the want of freedom 76 
DRESS REFORM. 
of motion when they are worn, but a few words 
must here be added in regard to the women?s 
weaknesses that are produced by placing the 
body in the wrong position and thus aggrav- 
ating those diseases and displacements that are 
peculiar to women, wearing the ordinary style 
of dress ; a full explanation of which, cannot 
be given to the public, save in a work especi- 
ally devoted to the causes and preventives of 
the terrible conditions of the women of civiliza- 
tion. 
EQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF CLOTHING. 
The clothing should be equally distributed 
over the body, in order to enjoy perfect health ; 
and when we realize how much of wretched- 
ness is caused in the marriage relation that is 
the direct result of sickness of wife and chil- 
dren, we shall be prepared to understand what 
Dress Reform and Marriage have to do with 
each other ; and when we go still farther, and 
show how much the equal distribution of the 
clothing of woman has to do with the morals 
of the world, both in marriage and out of it, 
the great hearts of the philanthropists will 
work with new zeal in a reform that is para- 
mount in importance to anything before the 
Christian world. But the moral part of this DRESS REFORM. 
77 
part of the subject cannot be fully discussed, 
save in the woman’s book, alluded to ; the 
logical mind will, however, draw conclusions 
that cannot be far from the truth. 
Not only is it necessary that the clothing 
should be equally distributed over the limbs and 
body for comfort, but the necessities of the 
circulation of the blood are such, that there is 
a demand for the same. There must be a cer- 
tain and uniform warmth of the blood, not 
only to circulate well, but to gather up the waste 
material of the system as it courses its way. 
Chilblains and corns are caused because there 
is not a freedom and warmth of the circulation, 
so that the waste material can be gathered up 
by the blood, and thrown off through the vari- 
ous means that Nature has provided for the 
purpose. 
If some part of the body is chilled, that 
part cannot throw off through insensible per- 
spiration the worn-out particles that are con- 
stantly being eliminated by that process. And 
if the opposite extreme is the case, as where 
there is a heated condition of some portion, it 
cannot get rid of its effete material because 
there is a congested condition. There cannot 
be a local disease of any part of the system, 
(save by injury) unless there is a disturbance 78 
DRESS REFORM. 
in the circulation of the blood, and if we will 
compare facts of the past with those of the 
present, we will find that there never was so 
many cases of rheumatism and neuralgia in 
the legs of women as while large hoops were 
worn. The limbs were so poorly protected, 
and the cold air circulated so freely around 
them, that the arterial blood was chilled before 
reaching the extremities, and then, in the re- 
turning venous circulation, running up against 
the laws of gravitation, the red rivers were 
wearied and dammed in their course. 
Cold expels the blood while warmth invites 
it ; and if the lower extremities suffer from a 
deficiency of the life current, the other parts 
of the body must suffer from an excess. 
Hence those who habitually have cold and 
chilly surfaces, have internal congestions, as in 
agues or chill fevers. Those who have flushed 
faces are troubled with cold feet, and before 
these subjects were as well understood as now, 
physicians believed, and enforced such belief 
with the lancet, that in all congestions there 
must of necessity be too much blood in the 
patient, instead of being an inequality in its 
circulation. 
The various theories of the all healers, point DRESS REFORM. 
79 
directly to the equalizing of a disturbed circu- 
lation, although the advocates of Russian and 
Turkish baths, of movements, of electricity, of 
exercise, etc. etc. seldom explain, and do not 
always know, how much the wretched inequal- 
ity of the distribution of the clothing of women 
has to do with the diseases and debility, not 
only of themselves, but of their little ones who 
do not live out half their days. We will go 
farther, and affirm, that, to an astonishing de- 
gree, are the men of the country indebted to 
their mothers for the great liability to conges- 
tive and nervous diseases (as they are popu- 
larly termed) from which they suffer. To that 
mother whose clothing was not properly and 
equally distributed over her system as child, 
maid, and wife. 
This is a big subject, and comprehends what 
is meant by “ the sins of the parents being vis- 
ited upon the children,* whether they intend 
them as sins or not. This is especially true as 
regards the mother, for in a large sense, she 
gives or takes as she will, whether she is intel- 
ligent or ignorant, and the children are thrust 
into existence with what she gives, and without 
what she fails to give, sometimes, aye often, 
resulting in life-long agonies to her. 80 
DRESS REFORM. 
VITALITY SHOULD NOT BE EXPENDED BY DRESS. 
It should be the object of Dress to save vital- 
ity, instead of expending it, in the foolish and 
wicked manner that fashion dictates. And 
especially should this be true in regard to the 
Dress of women ; for those who are, or are to 
be the mothers of the race, need all that the 
best of dressing can save. 
To be a mother, to give life to an immortal 
being, to say what sort of a body shall hold the 
casket that contains an emanation from the 
Deity, is a trust not to be lightly thought of; 
and the conditions of a good giving, to be in 
any way departed from, because of the applause 
of the thoughtless, or the scorn and contempt, 
and neglect of those who look upon life from a 
low standpoint. 
Nothing but a thoroughly hygienic Dress, 
worn all through young girlhood, womanhood, 
and wifehood, will save the vitality of women 
for the various duties of life, and especially for 
the high duties of a maternity that shall do the 
greatest credit to herself and her children. 
By a properly arranged Dress, the vitality may 
be saved from climatic influences, that would 
otherwise have the most baneful effects. 
The study should be to arrange it in a way DRESS REFORM. 
81 
that will require the least expenditure to carry 
about. It is just as absurd to have skirts fall- 
ing to the ankles of women, as it was in the 
ancient days of warriors, to have their horses 
covered with blankets, so long that they could 
not move back without stepping upon them. 
But the absurdity is nothing to be compared 
with the loss of vitality to women, in the wear- 
ing of the flowing drapery. 
No man would keep an ostler who would be 
so cruel as to leave a heavy harness on his 
horse all night, or all day when not in use, and 
yet the proportion of vitality would be less, 
that would be lost in the horse that was treated 
thus, than in his wife, who wears a flowing 
dress all day. In a word, a woman in the or- 
dinary Dress, expends more vitality in wearing 
such Dress, than a horse does wearing his har- 
ness, even if it were never removed, except to 
curry and bathe him. 
The machinist calculates how little power 
will serve his purpose, and if a ten horse-power 
engine will do so, he is not so absurdly foolish 
as to get one of 'twelve or fifteen horse-power 
to do his work just for the sake of having it 
seen that he has an engine of such power. He 
would be thus throwing away two or three 
horse-power for the sake of appearance to 82 
DRESS REFORM. 
those who are neither wise or scientific,' hut 
are fond of show. And yet a machinist who 
did thus, would be two or five horse-power 
wiser than the woman who expends half or 
three quarters of her vitality in needlessly car- 
rying about the surplus clothing that all women 
do carry, who are wearing the ordinary Dress 
that is thrust upon woman, as one that is “ be- 
coming her sphere,” forgetting that Christ and 
the Apostles, and the Catholic Priests, and the 
Japanese and Chinese men wore, and those 
now living are wearing, Dresses that fall to the 
ankles, and sometimes even longer. 
Woman expends so much of vitality in car- 
rying about drygoods, it is no wonder that she 
is twitted of her littleness in everything else; it 
is no wonder that she is unable to do, and un- 
willing to attempt to do, anything out of the 
line of her drygoods avocation, for the chains 
that bind her are so strong, that exertion is a 
task that cannot be fully appreciated by men. 
The nerves are the conductors of the vital or 
nervo-vital power that pervades all through to 
such an extent, that the. point of a pin cannot 
be inserted anywhere without wounding a 
nerve, just as it is impossible to do so without 
puncturing a blood vessel. The nerves are 
given off from the brain and spinal column, and DRESS REFORM. 
83 
as the power derived from them is the great 
mover of the human piece of mechanism, it is 
simply a matter of economy and duty not to 
waste such power, when all that makes life de- 
sirable is so seriously affected by a wasteful 
and extravagant expenditure of this animal 
electricity. To save this for a better purpose 
than hauling drygoods, would be wise, while 
there are plenty of horses, oxen and mules, that 
can be employed for the purpose. 
The expenditure of so much vitality as 
women lose, not only does not fail to injure 
themselves, but does not result in any possible 
good to any human being. The saving of the 
vast amount worse than throwji away, would 
be of permanent benefit to the possessor, and 
to all persons with whom associated, and 
especially in the marriage relation. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE AMERICAN REFORM DRESS. 
The linen is made with high neck and loose 
waist, and whole drawers, and long sleeves with 
wristbands attached; thus making a complete 
undersuit in one garment. The drawers are 
folded over the ankles and the stockings adjust- 
ed over the drawers, thus keeping the ankles 
warm and also keeping the stockings arranged 
without elastics or other bands, or any troub- 84 
DRESS REFORM. 
lesome or injurious arrangement, most of which 
impede the circulation and produce varicose 
veins, and weariness in walking. 
The pants are made like men’s, and are 
either buttoned to the waist of the undersuit or 
are arranged with the usual suspenders. The 
dress is made to hang free of the body, the 
waist and skirt of one piece like a sack coat, 
and falling to the knees ; thus preventing it 
being stepped upon while descending stairs, 
or of becoming soiled in rainy days—but prin- 
cipally because of a needed relief to women 
from its shortness. Thus, for general wear but 
three garments are required. 
Woolen, and canton flannel, and silk may be 
made the same as the ordinary linen under- 
suits (with the exception of wristbands) when 
the season makes more clothing necessary, and 
these can be worn either over or under the 
linen; thus giving the required amount of 
warmth, without great expenditure of vitality 
to carry the clothes about, or of money to 
purchase them. 
The time is coming when every woman will 
dress in this style, for the advantages are too 
evident, to be much longer overlooked. CHAPTER III. 
SOBACCO poisons the happiness of 
domestic life. It has not only pre- 
vented some marriages, but in many 
cases destroyed the happiness of the marriage 
relation. 
There is nothing in creation that is • so 
loathed by those who do not use it, as is To- 
bacco in its various preparations. And still 
those who suffer from its fumes are often, from 
various reasons, heard to say that it is not dis- 
agreeable. Many young ladies have seemed 
to be indifferent as to gentlemen smoking in 
their presence, when it was not only disgust- 
ing to them, but their whole physical frame 
suffered from its poisonous effects. It was not 
only a dread of offending those whose esteem 
they desired, but an undefined sort of a hes- 
itancy, at commencing the discussion of a sub- 
ject that they were not able to bring any argu- 
ments against, save their own disgust and bad 
physical effects, which they divined would be 
TOBACCO. 86 
TOBACCO. 
called “ only a notion,” and they be censured 
with a desire to dictate. 
Many a lady has married a “ mild Tobacco 
user,” who was not herself aware of the depth 
of her disgust for the weed, until she found the 
restraints of society thrown off by her hus- 
band, and Tobacco used freely by him. 
Some young ladies, while receiving the ad- 
dresses of their affianced, dare to argue the 
case, and almost invariably are assured, that 
they “ will use no more Tobacco after mar- 
riage.” 
But sad it is for poor human nature, that 
has contracted this habit, for the husband finds 
how next to impossible it is, to dispense with 
what he has become habituated to, and cen- 
sures the wife with a want of love for him, if 
she is unwilling he should promote his happi- 
ness by simply smoking ! If it is disagreeable 
to her he will not smoke in her presence. The 
young trusting wife, who believed when she 
had forsaken all for him, and he had promised 
not to “ smoke any more,” that he would keep 
his word, especially when it was only to leave 
off smoking, began to realize that he thought 
more of his Tobacco than his wife, more of 
his Tobacco than his promise ; and she be- 
gan to regret having married. She could not TOBACCO. 
87 
meet him with a smile, for when there are no 
smiles in the heart, there can be none in the 
face. 
The husband thinks he has got a very self- 
ish wife, and besides, she does not smile as she 
used to, and he has been deceived in her 
genial soul. 
The wife’s eyes are often dim with tears, as 
she says half aloud—0! I wonder if the men 
are all so selfish, that they will smoke, when 
they know how sickening it is to their wives? 
His breath is so bad, and his clothes are all full 
of the odor,.and even in the washtub, and in the 
ironing room, one cannot pass the doors with- 
out catching something of the odor ! 0, if he 
only would not smoke, or if I only could endure 
it! But my heart is broken—he, yes, he prom- 
ised so faithfully that he 11 would not smoke 
any more!” and now, when I am married to 
him, and must stay, I am to be tormented all 
the rest of my life with Tobacco! 0 dear, dear, 
what would I give if I were only single again, 
and at my own home, where I would be out of 
all traces of Tobacco ? 
Years pass away, and one child after another 
is added to the family, with such susceptibili- 
ties, that the poor mother has but little sleep 
or rest. Every little noise awakens and frigh- 88 
TOBACCO. 
tens them, and their little hearts will throb with 
fear at slight causes. 
One who could see no other species of intem- 
perance but that of intoxicating drinks, and see 
no necessity for a total abstinence from any- 
thing else, would wonder how it happened that 
a little child should be so nervous. While one 
fully understanding the terrible effects of To- 
bacco upon the system is led to wonder how it 
can be possible, that intelligent men can see the 
results of Tobacco-using, on wife and children, 
and never trace such effects to the true cause. 
One person cannot sleep with another, who 
uses Tobacco, or even in the same room, with- 
out feeling the effects of the poison. There is a 
lassitude, a general debility, a want of energy, 
an irritability, a defective memory ; all of which 
are the results of the poisonous Tobacco, with 
which the air of the room is filled, being con- 
stantly exhaled from the lungs, and also thrown 
off by insensible perspiration. I am aware that 
some will attempt to reason that it is only the 
carbon that produces these effects, and will 
■bring in the sophistry of two or three physicians 
(who are slaves to the pipe) to prove that the 
poisonous Tobacco is “ brain food, and does not 
injure any one when used properly in a mod- 
erate mannneiv’ Such false teachings however TOBACCO. 
89 
are not believed by even the most ignorant and 
vile, for they have too much reason not to see 
the baneful effects, but are too great slaves to 
break their weedy chains, just as are the men 
referred to, who try to defend their own vile 
habits. 
The most scientific people in this country and 
abroad, deprecate the use of Tobacco on the 
ground of its injurious effects. 
It is really painful to see a physician’s mind 
so clouded with smoke, that he will not only at- 
tempt to justify its use, but also to prescribe the 
same as a remedy. Such a one ought to be 
sent to a lunatic. asylum, for the purpose of 
having the smoke extracted from his brain, to 
make room for more knowledge of materia- 
medica. 
Happy marriages have been made wretched 
by the ignorance or the bigotry of a physician, 
who gravely made a prescription of Tobacco, to 
be smoked or chewed a certain number of 
times per day. It is just as much a crime, for 
a medical adviser to recommend Tobacco, as it 
is for a clergyman to recommend larceny. If 
there is a difference in the degree of the crime, 
the clergyman’s sin is the lesser. 
The sufferings of the wife of a Tobacco-user, 
are often greater, and certainly more constant, 90 
TOBACCO. 
and agonizing, than are those of the thief. 
In the case of the one, the good name is in- 
jured, but there are noble souls who sympa- 
thize with her, and feel that she is not to blame 
for her husband’s evil deeds, while with the 
other a thousand wrongs to soul and body that 
cannot be told must be silently endured ! 
The use of Tobacco generates thirst, and if 
the father does not resort to the cup, he drinks 
large quantities of other stimulating fluids, thus 
weakening digestion. If the digestion is weak- 
ened, the whole nervous system is weakened, 
for it is by the food being properly digested 
and assimilated, that the nerves are nourished. 
Not only this, but the poison reaches every tis- 
sue in the body, producing under some circum- 
stances the greatest excitability of the system, 
and under others a stolid indifference. 
The children suffer from weak digestion, and 
morbid tastes. The brain suffers and the mem- 
ory is impaired. The little minds are far from 
being what they would have been, had not the 
father’s “ mouth been a nicotine distillery.” 
Tobacco cannot be used in any form, with- 
out producing evil effects, mentally or physic- 
ally, sooner or later, upon the user, the wife 
and the children. America would do well to 
copy one of the cantons of Switzerland, where TOBACCO. 
91 
an edict lias been issued, forbidding any youth 
under eighteen to smoke, for, with the inborn 
depraved tastes of the boys of to-day, and the 
bad examples before them, it is a terrible fact, 
that boys but six or seven years of age, from 
the position of bootblack up, are seen in our 
streets smoking. They are to be the future 
husbands of the loved and cherished little angel 
daughters that you treat so tenderly. What of 
their marriage ? Fathers, will you blind your 
eyes, continue to smoke or chew yourselves, 
and give all your influence in favor of what has 
destroyed the happiness of your own marriage 
relation ? 
It is gratifying to know that there are those 
who look upon this subject in some of its true 
lights, and it is to be hoped that some effectual 
measures may be instituted, to prevent the ex- 
tending of such a terrible evil. It was noticed 
in the public press, that, as long since as 1860, 
the French Minister of Public Instruction pub- 
lished a circular, addressed to the directors of 
colleges and schools in France, forbidding the 
use of Tobacco in any form, by the students, 
on the ground that its use checked the physical 
and intellectual development. The Chamber- 
lain of London found that many petty crimes 92 
TOBACCO. 
were committed by boys in consequence of 
their using Tobacco. 
Does Tobacco have nothing to do with the 
marriage relation, when the poor mother’s 
heart is saddened with the thought that her boy 
is being ruined from using what may prevent, 
not only his mental and physical growth, but 
also make him a criminal? We quote the fol- 
lowing from “ a torn scrap of a leaf.” 
“ Tobacco has utterly spoiled and ruined thousands 
of boys. It tends to the softening and weakening of the 
bones, and it greatly injures the brain, the spinal mar- 
row, and the whole nervous fluid. A boy who smokes 
early and frequently, or in any way uses large quantities 
of Tobacco, is never known to make a man of much en- 
ergy, and generally lacks muscular and physical, as well 
as mental power. We would particularly warn boys, 
who want to be anything in the world, to shun Tobacco, 
as a most baneful poison.” “ The laws of health are 
infallible ; the relation between transgression and the 
penalty is invariable, and the infliction of the latter is 
certain to follow upon the former. There is nothing 
about which young persons are more beguiled and de- 
luded, than the belief that they can transgress natural 
laws, and jump the penalty. Punishment for a viola- 
tion of natural law is just as certain as that the sun it- 
self shines, and one cannot violate a law of his being, or 
any part of it, that there is not registered in him a pen- 
alty.” 
Tobacco often produces, not only paralysis, 
but insanity. We will introduce but one case TOBACCO. 
93 
of the former, and one of the latter, although it 
would be an easy matter to show that much of 
the insane immorality, and much of the paraly- 
sis that is becoming so frequent, and destroying 
the peace of the marriage relation, is due to 
Tobacco. 
While in Paris, the author was called to see 
a case of paralysis, of a number of years stand- 
ing, where both of the legs were affected to 
such a degree that the gentleman had not been 
in the street for several years. He was an in- 
veterate Tobacco-smoker, as his wife informed 
her. The other case is as follows : 
“ Some twelve months ago a young man who was then 
employed in the Nashville and Decatur Railroad car 
shops, a steady, industrious mechanic, formed the ac- 
quaintance of a lady about fifteen years of age, who re- 
sided a few miles from the city. An attachment speed- 
ily sprang up between the two, which resulted in an en- 
gagement. 
“ Their first troubles arose from the objections urged 
by the parents of the young lady. The old folks pre- 
ferred another man. In anticipation of his marriage 
however, the suitor had saved from his wages a consid- 
erable amount of money. He could now give the object 
of*his affection a comfortable home, and saw no reason 
for waiting. 
“ He asked that the wedding might take place at an 
early day, but his fiancee wished to defer the nuptials 
for two months, as at the expiration of that time she 
would be sixteen. This, with renewed opposition from 94 
TOBACCO. 
the parents, seems to have weighed heavily upon his 
mind. He was an inveterate chewer of Tobacco, and 
had often consumed nearly half a pound per day. This 
habit had long been at work undermining his nervous 
system, and his sorrows made him all the more persist- 
ent in masticating the weed. His quid was his constant 
companion. The more he thought of his crossed love, 
the harder he chewed. There was no limit to his un- 
natural indulgence. Every sight was suggestive of a 
fresh mouthful. 
“ The rest is soon told. About two weeks since, he be- 
gan to exhibit unmistakable signs of lunacy, and is now 
in a Lunatic Asylum. His mental condition is directly at- 
tributed by the physicians to the excessive use of tobac- 
co, aggravated by the effects of disappointed love on a 
weakened intellect.” 
But aside from the bad effects of Tobacco on 
temper and mind and body, the family is often 
deprived of actual necessaries, because of its 
expense. It is not enough to send the poison- 
ous smoke into lungs of families, containing, as 
it does, prussic acid, but the very atmosphere 
is impregnated to such an extent, that it is al- 
most intolerable. It is consumed to an alarm- 
ingly fearful extent. The following is an esti- 
mate in one city alone. 
“Wasted in Smoke.—It is estimated that 20,000 cigars 
are daily sold on Broadway, New York, of which one 
twentieth cost 30 cents, two twentieths 25 cents, one 
fifth 20 cents, two fifths 15 cents, and one fourth 10 
cents ; making $3,300 a day, or $1,204,500 a year for TOBACCO. 
95 
cigars on that single street. It is also estimated that 
75,000,000 cigars are consumed in the city, at a cost of 
$9,650,000. This, with the amount annually expended 
for pipes and tobacco, makes an aggregate of $10,500,- 
000, yearly consumed in smoke in this city. ’ 
If all this $ 10,500,000 was expended in 
providing homes and food for the worthy poor, 
and unfortunately degraded women of New 
York, thousands of agonies would be relieved, 
and millions more prevented. Think for a mo- 
ment of the smoke inhaled from the burning 
of 75,000,000 of cigars, to say nothing about 
the pipes, and then wonder at the great num- 
ber of cases of throat and lung diseases, which 
all intelligent members of the Medical Pro- 
fession know are aggravated, and often pro- 
duced by Tobacco smoke. 
Think how next to impossible it is to remain 
in a single house twenty-four hours, without 
being compelled to inhale the poisonous odor, 
for the atmosphere is so filled with the same 
that you cannot find even a breath of the pure 
element (so essential to health) only occasion- 
ally, when “ the wind is so high” that men can 
not smoke in the streets, and you are so for- 
tunate as to be in a house, where your near 
neighbors do not send the poison through the 
crevices. Talk of a wife being amiable, when 
the poisonous smoke stings every nerve as sen- 96 
TOBACCO. 
sibly as though pins and needles were her tor- 
turers ! As well might you talk of her being 
amiable under the one infliction, as under the 
other, if she is of a sensitive organization. If 
you have a complaint to make against such 
effects, you must remember that the author did 
not originate the law of effects. 
That the same cause produced nettles and 
ivy, that produced Tobacco, no one will doubt, 
but that mankind ought to smoke or chew 
them, and believe they were intended for such 
purposes, simply because they grow, no sensi- 
ble person would listen to for a moment; and 
yet we hear Tobacco-users undertake to defend 
its use, on the ground that “ God made To- 
bacco for some purpose, and that purpose was 
just what it is so extensively used for.” As 
well might we undertake to say that God made 
hemp to grow, for the purpose of hanging his 
creatures ! Civilization has found that such a 
use of hemp is a perversion of God’s laws, and 
the time will come when it will be as clearly 
seen that the present use of Tobacco is just as 
much a perversion of His laws. 
In the grand march of the human intellect, 
the true use for which Tobacco was intended 
will be discovered in the chemical or manufac- TOBACCO. 
97 
turing arts. Until that time it ought to be 
classed with nettles and ivy. 
In 1865 the total amount of internal revenue 
from Tobacco and its manufacture was $11,- 
387,799. If the labor in producing and manu- 
facturing and in gathering the revenue, had 
been expended in raising food, or taking the 
wealth from the mines of our country of “ in- 
exhaustible resources,” who could find lan- 
guage to picture the happiness that would 
have resulted in the marriage relation of many 
thousands ? There ought to be no reason 
why every family in America should be with- 
out a neat little home of their own • and if it 
were not for the vices that are indulged in, no 
one would ever exclaim, 
“ No foot of land do I possess, 
No cottage in this wilderness,” 
where I can sing 
“ Home, sweet home.” CHAPTER IY. 
TEMPERANCE. 
STRONG- drink is raging, and whoso- 
ever is deceived thereby is not wise.” 
The intoxicating cup is destroying 
the happiness of the marriage relation in nearly 
sixty thousand families every year in the United 
States. It is surprising, with all the intelligence 
extant, that we should have such a record ! 
The beauties of Total Abstinence are so plain 
to be seen, and they are so evident to the most 
casual observer, that it is really surprising that 
there should be any necessity, for ever having 
another chapter written upon the subject. The 
theme itself has been worn threadbare, and yet 
great armies are constantly committing suicide, 
instead of nobly fighting the battles of life, with- 
out laying the armor down, until the frosts of 
years shall invite a slumber beneath the sods, 
that must sometime be the counterpane on a 
bed, that Deity shall alternately make white 
with snow, and perfume with roses. TEMPERANCE. 
99 
The most charming of all things earthly, is 
the thought of dying a beautiful death, and see- 
ing just how the soul leaves the casket that has 
identified it with mortality, and how it shall 
catch the first grand, aye sublime scenery of 
Eternity ! But, if delirium tremens, or apo- 
plexy, or softening of the brain, or death of any 
kind, in an unnatural condition of the God-mind 
within, takes the so ul out of the shackles of Time 
into the freedom of Eternity, the exquisite pleas- 
ure of witnessing that but once transition, is lost 
forever, and the pangs of one of the “ broken- 
pair,’7 when such a death is remembered, must 
assuredly detract from many an hour of happi- 
ness. 
Think how many families have suffered by 
deaths from Intemperance—how many mar- 
riages been severed! In 1826, when the Unit- 
ed States had but twelve millions of people, fifty- 
six million gallons of intoxicating beverages were 
consumed annually ; the announcement of 
which, startled the people so much, that at the 
close of 1829 a thousand Temperance or- 
ganizations were formed, having one hun- 
dred thousand names who had signed the 
pledge. 
But not until the great work commenced, 
had but few formed anything like a correct idea 100 
TEMPERANOK 
of the want, misery, agony, of the drunkards’ 
wives and children. 
Temperance societies have increased since 
then, until they are vast in numbers, and thou- 
sands of sorrows assuaged and prevented, in 
the marriage relation. But thousands more 
have existed all this time, and the effects on soul 
and body, and mind, are to be seen every day, 
whichever way we turn. 
At this hour wives and children are drink- 
ing cups of agony, to their very dregs, just as 
deep and bitter, as wife or child ever sipped ! 
We in our enlightenment, right in the face of 
these facts, have stepped away back of even the 
people of Burmah, for one of their “ five moral 
codes” says, “Thou shalt use no intoxicating 
liquors.” and Christians at every County Fair, 
and State Fair, appoint a Committee to test 
domestic wines, made out of currants, gooseber- 
ries, elderberries, raspberries, and cherries. 
And because they are made of fruits that we 
have always been accustomed to eating freely, 
they reason that it “ must ofinecessity be harm- 
less, when they are only the juices of fruits P” 
They seem to forget that imported wine is 
only the juice of grapes, and all other liquors, 
only the juice of grains ; and on this truthfully- 
false basis, premiums are awarded to those who TEMPERANCE. 
101 
succeed in making the most deliciously fine poi- 
sons. Temperate men expatiate upon the econ- 
omy, and purity of the same, in comparison 
with foreign wines, and thus the whole coun- 
try is encouraged to make and use that which 
will assuredly undermine both the mental and 
physical foundations. 
It is not necessary to use liquors of any kind 
to the extent that will produce entire, or even 
partial intoxication, to make a great amount 
of wretchedness, for the little that causes irrit- 
ability, often makes more real and continuous 
unhappiness in the marriage relation, than 
when used to that excess which results in entire 
unconsciousness. The happiness-exterminator 
produces its effects in so many ways, and 
shades of varieties of ways, that “ every heart 
knows its own sorrows,” better than can ever 
be portrayed by another individual. 
The various temperaments, and their thou- 
sand different combinations—the various grades 
of intelligence, natural or acquired—the vari- 
ous ideas of just the amount of abuse men can 
with impunity heap upon women, and escape 
punishment from law or from public sentiment, 
are such that no writer or speaker can do justice 
in attempting to portray them. The unending 
sorrows that are of such a nature that common 102 
TEMPERANCE. 
delicacy forbids to mention, seem almost be- 
yond the reach of a remedy, from the fact, that 
such cannot be heralded to the world. When an 
allusion is made to them, those not victims, 
cannot believe in so great a depravity of sober 
men ! 
The great reason why these wrongs are not 
trumpeted, is because those who' make them, 
are constantly crying down what they term 
“ very unfit stuff for the public,” and endeavor- 
ing to keep up a sentiment that will not allow 
the dissemination of unvarnished facts, in rela- 
tion to such wrongs, not only, but to create a 
still greater intolerance, if possible. The sur- 
face, and some of the very depths, of the sor- 
rows to tipplers’ wives, have been panoramic- 
ally placed before the public, but were the 
scenes “behind the curtain ” only unrolled, 
others would see them as they are in reality. 
Could all the smiles that are from other 
causes than to cover sorrows, be measured, 
one would be but poorly supported who was 
paid for measuring, while the one who weigh- 
ed the sorrow-covering-ones would almost need 
some fortified tower to deposit the gains. Un- 
defined wrongs are always the worst to fight, 
and it is only by agitation, that their heinous- TEMPERANCE,\m 
103 
ness is seen sufficiently clear to call forth ef- 
forts necessary in the case. 
No one can be found who cannot see the 
great wrongs resulting from excessive drinking, 
for they are so defined, that there is no mistak- 
ing them. Families of such have a sympathy, 
which helps them to endure their sorrows, but 
they feel, notwithstanding, that “ somebody is to 
(blame 77 for allowing even the sale of intoxicat- 
ing beverages, if not their manufacture or dis- 
tillation. 
It is the opinion of some of those learned in 
the Medical Profession that eating stimulating 
food creates such a thirst for stimulating drinks, 
that the one will never be permanently aban- 
doned until the other is also, at least among 
the masses of the people. This may be true if 
only moral suasion shall be used. The Royal 
Family of Prussia seem to have some correct 
and advanced ideas on this subject, for sugar 
plums, rich food, wines and beer are never al- 
lowed their children. 
It is surprising that all intelligent people do 
not see that what is not good for a child—what 
will not help to make the mature individual— 
cannot be essential to life. Poverty, and ten 
thousand sorrows that make life a wretched 
state of existence, result to families, because the 104 
TEMPERANCE. 
husband and father will indulge in that which 
can intoxicate. 
A drink, has in many cases changed the po- 
sition of a lifetime ; but of the cases recorded 
there is not one perhaps, so very striking as the 
consequences of one drink. The Duke of Or- 
leans, the eldest son of Louis Philippe, King of 
the French, was the inheritor of whatever rights 
the royal family could transmit. On one occa-i. 
sion he invited a few companions to take break- 
fast with him, as he was about to leave Paris to 
join his regiment. In the conviviality of the 
hour he drank too much wine. He did not 
become intoxicated ; he was not in any respect 
a dissipated man ; but he drank a glass too 
much, and lost the balance of his body and 
mind. Bidding adieu to his companions he en- 
tered the carriage. But for that extra glass he 
would have kept his seat; he leaped from the 
carriage ; his head struck the pavement ; he 
was taken into a beer shop and died. That 
glass of wine overthrew the Orleans dynasty, 
confiscated their property of $100,000,000, and 
sent the whole family into exile. 
The hundreds of thousands of bushels of 
grains and fruits that are worse than wasted 
every year, to make the soul and body destroy- 
ing beverages, would, if given to the poor, or TEMPERANCE. 
105 
sold to them at a small price, prevent the half 
famished from stealing or of dying of want. It 
is not because there is not an enormous and all 
sufficient quantity of the most nutritious food 
raised every year, that it is so hard to keep 
soul and body together respectably, but because 
of the wicked, destruction of such food, by con- 
verting the same into poisonous beverages. 
Government allows the poison to be made ; 
and it licenses men to sell it to the people, and 
then it licenses Lawyers to defend those who 
commit crimes while under the effects of such 
poison, and it pays Policemen to watch them, 
and builds jails and prisons to confine the un- 
ruly, and pays Doctors to give opiates to those 
on the verge of delirium tremens. It gives 
them food because it does not dare to starve 
them to death. It takes them to Courts and 
tries them, and pays Jurors and Judges, and is 
at all sorts of expenses for its first folly of al- 
lowing the poison to be manufactured. 
But what of the families of these men, all 
this time ? Need the picture be painted on this 
page, when it is seen in all the vivid colors of 
naturalness in thousands of tenements, from 
brown-stone fronts to the poorest hovels! 
Government is altogether too dignified an in- 
stitution, to look farther into the matter than 106 
TEMPERANCE. 
to build poor-houses for the wives and children. 
And so the world moves on, and it must needs 
be through individual benevolence, that insane 
asylums are spoken into existence, to treat 
those who have lost their reason in consequence 
of trouble that has been caused by the effects 
of Intemperance. 
Husbands may outrage every sense of de- 
cency while in a partial state of intoxication, 
and Lawyers will take a little wine just before 
they make a plea for or against them. Judges 
must leave their benches to drink a glass of old 
Bourbon, and the Jury cannot decide upon 
grave cases, without being stimulated, and no 
one seems to think that a degraded criminal 
needs any of the stuff to sustain him ; 0 no, Tie 
has had a little—just a trifle too much ; and so 
the dignitaries are showing him just how much 
it is proper to take ! 
Everybody sees men who make and execute 
laws “ taking a little,” and so if they ever ex- 
pect to be great, they must follow in the steps 
of the illustrious. 
A number of years since, a man, while in a 
partially intoxicated condition, hired a dentist 
for $80, to extract all of his wife’s teeth ; but 
he had sufficient reason left, so that he gave 
the ether, and told the wife, Frances B. Nor TEMPERANCE. 
107 
ris, that he would kill her if she told of it. 
Every tooth was not only sound, but double. 
Every few weeks we read an account of a 
man killing his wife, or butchering his children, 
while under the elfects of the poison that our 
great Government derives such a large internal 
revenue from. But all women cannot resist 
the temptations to taste as well as look upon 
the sparkling wine, and so they degrade them- 
selves, and sink lower and lower into haunts of 
vice, with the cup to encourage and strengthen 
them in their dens of iniquity. It is rare in- 
deed to find a woman who is lost to all moral 
sense, that does not tip the bottle. 
Hundreds of families who mourn the loss of 
a charming daughter, “ that is worse than dead,” 
well know that the cup has dealt a double 
draught of poison, to them and her. Neither 
pen nor brush can ever do justice to the subject 
in portraying the real condition of families, 
where the intoxicating cup has found an hon- 
ored place. CHAPTER Y. 
WO MAN’ S FRANCHISE. 
l®mrT[I woman’s enfranchisement comes 
her un(lualifie(l individuality. With- 
out it, just so much, or so little, as 
men choose to allow her ; and that allowance 
is according to the preconceived opinions, or 
prejudices, of the men with whom she is related. 
The different measures of justice to woman, 
is according to circumstances, or in the English 
way of speaking, “it depends”—none of these 
measures full, save in a few instances, where 
laws, or the want of laws, would not make any 
material difference with them. 
God has given to woman just as defined and 
important rights of individuality, as He has to 
man; and any man-made laws that deprive 
her of any rights or privileges, that are enjoyed 
by himself, are usurpations of power. Such 
laws are an outrage, and as much a contraven- 
tion of God’s laws, as though man deprived 
woman of her life ; for her aspirations and WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
109 
freedom of soul, are as dear to her as is her 
life. 
Deity intended a free and full development 
of all of woman’s powers, as well as man’s, 
and gave her a mind to decide for herself in 
all things. There are thousands of cases on 
every hand, where more wretchedness, aye, 
agony, would be prevented by man’s taking 
woman’s life from her, than taking liberties 
that the Franchise would secure to her. The 
mass of men do not see this, as they are too 
apathetic to do so, for all men are not so self- 
ish that they would not see and help to right 
the wrongs of woman, if the subject were pre- 
sented to them so that they truly felt her posi- 
tion. 
Man not having been deprived of his indi- 
viduality, does not know the feeling of degra- 
dation, that a woman experiences, and how 
her soul writhes under the chains that have 
inscribed upon them, “ thus far and no far- 
ther,” because you are a woman. Why should 
there be anything said about what shall be the 
bounds of a woman’s abilities, or where shall be 
the limits, any more than those of a man ? He 
is free to make of himself what he is capable of 
doing, and no one is expected to interfere in 
his plans, because he is a man enfranchised. 110 
WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
It is not surprising that there are a thou- 
sand covered wrongs where the victims and 
their friends see no remedy from exposure ; 
but they do see disgrace from acts that they 
had not a particle of control over, not only, 
but before years, and the knowledge that 
comes with them, were theirs. The personal 
violence on little girls, as young as four or five 
years, has been known in dozens of instan- 
ces, by men old enough to be their fathers. 
The trickery and deception of artful men, and 
young and trusting maidens, clearly prove that 
the individuality of woman has no recognition, 
but that she should be the toy and tool of 
man, and thus the victims are compelled to 
acknowledge the superiority of a brute force, 
that would not have been let loose, but for the 
ideas of a woman’s rights of perfect individual- 
ity having been ignored. 
No man fully believing in the enfranchise- 
ment of women, would be guilty of such crimes, 
and if any pretender to such principles has been, 
it is because some sinister motives have led him 
to the advocacy of principles, the very nature of 
which, would lead to a practical recognition of 
justice. The recognition of the individuality of 
woman, is simply an acknowledgment of hu- 
man rights, which all human beings have guar- WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
111 
anteed them, by the fact of their having an ex- 
istence ; as surely is this, as is the right to exist 
at all. 
Every age sighs over the injustice of the men 
to women, in former ages, or among a certain 
people, and are proud of progress in this direc- 
tion in their own time. Our men of to-day in the 
United States boast of more individuality for 
woman, than- in any age or country. Who can 
be found that does not denounce the people 
who kill their parents so soon as they become 
old and useless? And yet the young women have 
been so deprived of individuality, that they are 
seen when old, often in a prison of a poorhouse, 
or shivering over a few apples or matches on 
the corners of streets, while their protectors, 
men, walk by unmoved, and loudly prating 
about women having more rights than them- 
selves, while they are at the same time their 
slaves and protectors and providers. 
Uptil God has taken from woman the great- 
est token of an individual, that he could by any 
possibility have given her, that is, not only the 
right of going out of life into the great eternity 
alone,—but the impossibility of having a man 
to act for her, or even to accompany her through 
the valley and shadow of death, (what the Hin- 
doo husband fears so much, that he compels his 112 
WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
wife to go with him,) not until then,'should 
man assume even more than Deity Himself. 
The great mass of men seem not to have 
thuoght that a woman stands in intimate rela- 
tions to human rights as well as themselves, 
and yet they censure her if she does not assume 
all, in the sphere that they have marked out 
—all that the dictators decide to belong to said 
sphere. • 
Men do not respect women who do not re- 
spect their own individuality. They may not 
have the sickly sentiment of sham or pretended 
respect, which is so transitory, for those who 
are individualized, that they do for those who 
are not, but while they hate the women of 
metal, they cannot fail to respect. 
No woman can sacrifice individuality, for 
gold or love, or anything whatever, without 
losing, in the very act, all that would be worth 
a purchase or a gift. The mass of women who 
do this, are either indolent, or are living object- 
less lives. It is true that some are indolent 
because of physical inability, for the construc- 
tion of woman's clothing is such that she cannot 
be otherwise. Some are living objectless lives, 
because they see how terrible the battles that 
must be waged, if they live to some purpose in 
what would be tasteful to them. There are a WOMAN'S FRANCEISE. 
113 
thousand things that man does not see the. whys 
and wherefores, simply because he has not 
fought the world with a woman’s obstacles to 
surmount, or perish. 
Some women do not wish to be enfranchised, 
because their husbands or fathers are in some 
positions that are for life, and they will be 
pensioned after such supporter’s death, and 
they are so wanting in benevolence to others, 
that they are perfectly regardless of the inter- 
ests of others, so long as they are provided for 
themselves. 
Ignorance or selfishness covers the whole 
ground of the opposition to woman being en- 
franchised, whether it comes from woman or 
man. 
That the Political equality of the sexes will 
produce radical changes in society generally 
and the marriage relation specially, is evident 
to all. Men have felt this in a poignant de- 
gree, and so great has been their fear that 
they will lose their assumed power over wo- 
man as wife, that they have opposed even the 
discussion of the subject, unless it has been in 
the presence of those who were so little in the 
habit of arguing in a logical manner, that they 
had no fears that their, wives, or those they 114 
WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
hoped to be such, would be likely to get “ wo- 
man’s rights notions into their heads.” 
Men have from time to time made conces- 
sions to woman in the statutes, for the purpose 
of quieting those who were restless under great 
wrongs ; but it has always been with an argu- 
ment upon their lips, that “ women were bet- 
ter off than men ; that they were better pro- 
tected by law, and had more rights than men, 
under the law.” And they have labored to 
make them feel, that, because the power was 
in their hands to make laws more just to them- 
selves, and because they had given these priv- 
ileges to women, the women ought to feel un- 
der the greatest of obligations to them. They 
have conceded with the one hand, xmd chained 
with the other, and then charged women with 
the greatest of mgratitude if she dared to com- 
plain that the chains were too grievous to be 
borne! 
Twenty years ago, scarcely a man could be 
found who could hear the words “ woman’s 
rights,” without immediately becoming angry. 
His usurpation of the God-given rights of wo- 
man to her own person, he saw at a glance 
would be endangered, and if allowed to come 
up fairly and squarely, would in time take WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
115 
from man his assumed power to act the petty 
tyrant in the household over his wife. 
Men do not come out boldly and declare 
that the real ground of their opposition to the 
Franchise of woman, is as we have stated, for 
they well know that it would be an acknowl- 
edgment that the greatest of wrongs to soul 
and body of woman, were now inflicted with- 
out her having the power to prevent them. 
Those men who are prating so loudly that 
if women have the Ballot in their hands, the 
marriage relation will be in time ignored, and 
the homes all destroyed, are men who in real- 
ity are not honestly afraid that such a condi- 
tion of affairs will result; but they are afraid 
that public sentiment will be so purified, that 
they will not be tolerated in decent society, if 
they are not as pure as they now demand their 
wives to be, and accord to woman the same 
rights in all social and Political affairs, which 
they arrogate unto themselves because they are 
men. 
Thousands of women’s hearts are at this very 
hour echoing the sentiments just expressed, 
and if they were not so bound down that they 
have lost the power to dare express themselves 
on this subject, the cry of “ it’s true) it’s true /” 
would not only be heard from the great mass 116 
WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
of women, but our halls where we are having 
quiet and orderly discussions, would be one 
vast scene of confusion, where the great and 
agonizing wrongs of the marriage relation 
would burst forth from the lips of women, in 
voices a thousand strong at once ! They would 
not allow us, who have been so many years 
pleading their cause and acting their represent- 
atives, to keep back the great reason of all 
reasons, why men oppose woman’s equality 
with them at the Ballot-box. 
Here and there are found women who can 
hardly hold their peace, but are afraid to enter 
into a discussion that they feel themselves in- 
competent to close, with full credit to them- 
selves, because, while their ideas are clear, and 
connected, and logical in their brains, their long 
servile condition, and the terrible ridicule 
meted out to them, prevent them from taking 
them out of their brains. 
Men may attempt to turn the great question 
in other directions, and give other reasons why 
they oppose the enfranchisement of woman. 
They may talk of her unfitness for office, and 
of her crowding men out of position. They 
may talk about the children and homes being 
so neglected if women go to the polls once a 
year to vote. They may get up all the hob- WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
117 
goblins and side issues that their brains are ca- 
pable of manufacturing, but still, the great 
question that underlies the whole, is the loss 
of assumption of power over the wife. 
It is plain to be seen that they would yield 
everything that woman demands, if the tyranny 
as husband could be saved. This is the ques- 
tion that underlies all others, and she who 
now speaks, expects nothing but abuse from 
such men, and even some women, who do not 
themselves understand the great question, or 
do not dare be full exponents of principles, that 
the sham modest cannot open to the public. 
She has dared for twenty years to advocate and 
live principles in the face of a tyrannical pub- 
lic sentiment, and the time has come when she 
does not dare walk all around the question, as 
some others do, and thus postpone for many 
years, the agitation of the real question at issue. 
Men know that the time has passed, that 
they can, in America, control the minds of 
women successfully, and now the time is almost 
at hand, when they will be unable to control 
the bodies. The great mass of men are to-day 
assuming to be lords over women, and the 
great mass of women deny any such right, and 
hence the quarrel. 
Had woman Political equality, she would 118 
WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
also have social equality, and if she had social 
equality, the great causes for bickerings would 
be removed, and thus the marriage relation 
would, as a natural consequence, be bettered. 
Men would no more attempt to coerce their 
wives to think or act according to their own 
ideas or wishes, than they would other women. 
They would not assume any rights of control 
on the ground of the .marriage relation. 
One human being has no right to assume 
control over another, and the smallest of all 
mean smallnesses,-is that which is assumed by 
the husband over the wife, because of his 
greater physical strength, and her political 
weakness. Suppose that principle were carried 
out into all the relations of life, and every man 
who met another, weaker physically than him- 
self, should rob him of all his money, and 
threaten to “ kill him if he told of it men 
would soon see that physical strength ought 
not to be the criterion to judge the God-given 
rights of human beings. 
There are great wrongs in all countries in 
relation to the marriage question, which can 
never be righted, until woman shall stand side 
by side with man, as an equal in the legislating. 
The most important of all laws that come within 
the sphere of legislation, are the Marriage WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
119 
laws ; and until woman has a voice in making 
them, they must of necessity be imperfect, as 
are all laws, where physical force is required to 
execute them, and woman has had no voice in 
their making. 
To say that the happiness of the marriage 
relation is not affected by oppressive laws that 
make women wretched, in such relation, would 
be to make an affirmation glaringly false. 
Where the mostywstf laws are enacted, there are 
the happiest marriages. The most unjust are 
found where the wife is caught and compelled to 
live in such a relation ; as is the case in the 
South Sea Islands, where “ woman’s influence 
in politics ” in any shape, would be considered 
to be much farther out of “ her sphere,” than 
the Ballot is by the most ignorant in America. 
The shortest-sighted can readily see the rela- 
tion the Ballot would have to social life, in such 
a degraded condition as in the Isles just re- 
ferred to. It could hardly be possible to find 
an individual, who made any pretence of pos- 
sessing intelligence, who would not acknowl- 
edge that the Ballot, even if in the hands of 
but half the people, would be instrumental in 
making much better laws for the other half, 
than where there was no people’s Ballot. In 
such a case, those who were at all disposed to 120 
WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
mete out a respectable measure of justice, 
would be much more likely to do so. It may be 
argued further, that if all the people helped to 
frame the laws, none but those who had the 
general good of society at heart, would attempt 
to speak otherwise than in this direction, and 
it would therefore follow that the greatest 
good would result to the many, and as the 
causes for dissensions in society generally 
would be in a great measure removed, so would 
the marriage relation be bettered in the same 
proportion. 
Equals are not the ones to have dissensions 
of any magnitude as a rule, but the troubles of 
life arise mainly out of the real or assumed su- 
periority of the one, on one side, and the as- 
sumed inferiority on the other. If a pugilist 
charges another with inferiority, the question 
is settled very soon by a trial of physical strength. 
And if two minds were to debate the question 
of mental power, they would not be so simple 
as to undertake to enforce their mental superi- 
ority by physical means. And yet in the mar- 
riage relation, without the majority of men 
seeming to realize it, they are doing so in re- 
gard to woman. 
When men think more upon this subject 
they will be surprised at their own unjust WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
121 
ideas, which have so grown with them, that 
they have become a part of their very being. 
It cannot be denied that many are kind and 
very just according to their own ideas of those 
qualities. But the effects in many respects 
are the same as though there were different 
ruling motives. 
But many wretched women do not ask for 
the Ballot. They do not want the right to vote, 
but they want simply the “rights that women 
ought to have, without meddling with politics, 
the business of men.” They say this because 
they do not understand the relation that the 
Ballot has to them in their domestic wrongs. 
Poor martyrs, you would be able to right 
those wrongs if you had the Ballot in your 
hand, and the simple fact of your having the 
Ballot would carry with it a respect for your 
human rights. 
Look at the late Negro slaves, and see the 
difference in their treatment, even in matters 
that are away beyond the sphere of Legisla- 
tion ! There would be just as noticeable a dif- 
ference in the respect of man for woman. 
Struggle for political rights, for it is through 
such, and such alone, that you will ever obtain 
human rights. It is not simply for yourself, 
but for that great army of young women, who 122 
WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
cannot yet see the necessity for anything hut 
smiles and gallantry from the future husbands. 
We who are laboring for the enfranchisement 
of woman, represent the strongest of maternal 
natures, for we would protect the young and 
innocent, and the helpless everywhere, from 
encroachments, and the wrongs that result 
from physical force. Instead- of being “ out 
of our spheres f we are just in them, only in a 
wider, more important and more potent sense. 
As a Physician, the author believes that her 
duties are not all in the sick-room, for, after an 
experience of over fifteen years, she finds her- 
self loudly called to diagnose the great body 
politic, more thoroughly than ever before, and 
her prognosis is, that doubling the dose at the 
Ballot-box will produce convalescence. Every 
one knows that the people are happier when 
well, than when sick, and after the important 
dose has been taken and health secured, the 
marriage relation will be something better than 
the least binding contract that is ever made. 
There will be no such terrible binding, as in 
South Carolina, where no divorces are ever 
granted, no matter how terrible the wrongs, and 
where a man can by law give a certain portion 
of his property to his mistress, the same as 
though his wife were dead. Neither will Mas- WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
123 
sachusetts and New York go to Indiana to 
right wrongs that never can be righted in their 
own States ; for every State in the Union will 
have such just laws, that there will be no ne- 
cessity for fleeing to the protection of another 
State. 
Had woman a Ballot in her hand, there 
would not exist in any State such sham codes 
of morals, as are on our New York Statutes, 
where no divorces can be had except for the 
crime of adultery ; which all know is, by the 
very nature of such crime, almost impossible 
to prove. Then, in another act, it takes away 
the power to prove the same, by not allowing 
the husband or wife to testify against each 
other, and by allowing the guilty parties to re- 
main silent as regards their own crimes. Those 
who are not guilty, could with an honest face 
testify, while those who are, ought to be made 
to testify accordingly, and have the severest 
punishment for perjury enforced, if the latter 
crime were added to the former. 
New York, and all States with such tyrannical 
laws, show that they do not wish to be just, or 
have not the ability to frame equitable laws, or 
are afraid that they are powerless to enforce 
them. Any one reason is a disgrace to a great 
State. But when the plea for the continuance 124 
WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
of such laws, is, that it is to “ promote morality 
that stringent divorce laws are still on the Stat- 
utes,” the idea is too absurd for serious argu- 
ments, were it not for the terrible wrongs that 
are constantly resulting to the best citizens, 
while the worst pursue the vilest course of life 
under legal cover. 
Women, those who are neither idiots nor 
criminals in any respect, are the greater suffer- 
ers from such laws. It is true that the same 
State prohibits the one who is divorced, from 
ever marrying again, while the one who obtains 
a divorce, is at liberty to do so—but at the 
same time, if it be a woman, it sends her into a 
house of ill fame, as public sentiment will not 
allow her to have a shelter, it hardly matters 
what were the circumstances connected with 
the case. She is deprived of every dollar of 
the property she may have helped to indirectly 
accumulate by serving and saving, and she is 
turned into the street characterless, moneyless, 
friendless, without health, to beg, starve, or sell 
herself. Begging will not avail, for she has not 
as fair a chance as the filthiest vagabond. If 
she were able to work, no man who would not 
sink her still lower in his selfish purposes, will 
employ her—woman who has a sympathy for 
her condition does not dare employ her, be- WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
125 
cause “ she will disgrace her house,” and so if 
she prefers to live in a disreputable house, 
where she has some voice in the rent of her 
body, instead of dying in the street, where per- 
haps she would have no voice in the matter, 
she does the best she can under the circum- 
stances, and the men who made the laws that 
sent her there, and the men who execute the 
laws, visit her until she becomes too degraded 
for respectable gentlemen. 
This is one of the degraded women that we 
hear just such men talk about exercising the 
rights of Franchise with their wives and daugh- 
ters, if women are “ allowed to vote.” These 
women are the legal nonentities, except when 
law can degrade. Men, the legal protectors of 
women, ask you what would be the condition 
of society, if all the women in certain houses 
were allowed to vote ? but they do not ask us, 
what is the condition of society now that all the 
men who keep up such houses are voters! 
But to return. If it be a man who is di- 
vorced, he simply pursues the same course of 
iniquity, and to carry out his tyrannical spirit, 
presents quibble after quibble to delay and 
annoy as long as it is possible, often for years 
and years ; and when his legal oppression fails 
to compel her to condone, he brings charges 126 
WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
against her, of the same character of which he is 
actually guilty. Having the purse-strings in 
his grasp, he buys up witnesses against himself, 
or sends them to parts not known, where they 
die, and the evidence is buried forever. He 
also buys witnesses to swear against a pure 
spirit they never saw, until in the Court-room ; 
and if, after series of years and the pure one 
has waded through all the seas of law that can 
be brought to bear upon the case, and Justice 
extends her hand with the scroll of freedom, 
the scrawny fingers that receive it, must spend 
the best part of the remaining years in toil, to 
pay the costs of Courts and borrowed money 
that paid expenses to sea-sides, and mountains, 
and for journeys, that saved the poor victim 
from a lunatic asylum ! 
But it will be said men are obliged to pay 
all court expenses, and support the wife while 
getting a bill from him. Yes, if he has any 
money, and if she swears she does not know 
anything, and can’t do anything to support her- 
self, or is too sick to do so, the court will eke 
out a something, according to his ideas of the 
case, and every body will pity the husband 
who has such an apology for a wife, little think- 
ing that many who have gone to their graves, 
in consequence of such troubles, could not even WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. • 
127 
survive long enough, to be living apologies for 
women, whose every look speaks of the terri- 
ble wrongs of man-made laws ! Husbands are 
obliged to provide for wives who get a bill of 
Divorce. Yes, if they have any property, and 
if they have not taken it to another State, 
where it can’t be reached by law, and if they 
do not manage to run away and change their 
names, and if and if and if!! 
It is just as much the duty of Congress to 
make general laws respecting marriage and 
Divorce, as to make any other laws ; and when 
we see the terrible effects of unrighteous laws 
on this world-wide discussed subject, and 
realize the importance of Marriage to the per- 
petuity of an intelligent government, we can 
but believe that its necessity will not long be 
overlooked. The days are not distant when 
England will do this, and thus prevent more 
terrible cases of the Yelverton type, where a 
noble woman and her children are wronged 
for life. 
But there is no necessity for our travelling 
thousands of miles from our native shores, to 
gather wrongs that result from the want of just 
and universal laws, in relation to marriage, for 
every month brings victims to the surface, that 
have been buried in injustice. Thousands of 128 
WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
noble Sage-Richardsons are suffering this hour ! 
Nothing but the Ballot in woman’s hand will 
right these wrongs, by making just 
wherein a pure marriage relation may be per- 
petuated, just as nothing but the power of wo- 
man in Legislative and Congressional halls, 
will perpetuate the Union of States. 
As a last reason urged against the Ballot for 
women, we hear that they cannot be warriors, 
and defend a country, and therefore have no 
right to take part in a government. Such rea- 
soners are always found to be either ignorant 
of the histories of past and present ages, or are 
selfish tricksters, who well know that they 
would never succeed in their plans if women 
were enfranchised. The instances of bravery, 
starvation, suffering, wounds and death of wo- 
men both North and South during our late war, 
ought to forever close the mouths of such rea- 
soners, even if wholly ignorant of the thousands 
of instances in all ages, of the never by man ex- 
celled courage, bravery, endurance and patri- 
otism, of the women of the past. The follow- 
ing is a list of the last mentioned. 
England owed its deliverance from the tyran- 
nic yoke of the Danes, to Judith, the step- 
mother of Alfred. 
Philippa of Hainault, the Queen of Edward WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
129 
Third of England, was celebrated for her skill 
_and prudence in military affairs. 
The women were foremost in the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries in Hungary, the islands of the 
Archipelago and the Mediterranean in resisting 
the aggressions of the Turks. 
Ancient history furnishes splendid instances 
of woman’s heroism in defence of country and 
religion, in the mediaeval ages. There were 
also many brave warlike women in the French 
revolution, and in the Peninsular War. In the 
revolution of 1789 the women of Paris were 
the foremost actors as actual combatants. The 
women marched on Versailles to bring back 
the King of France to Paris. During the 
campaign of the army of Republican France, 
under Dumouriez on the Sambre and the 
Meuse in 1793, Tlieophile and Felicitd Fernig, 
the daughters of Mortagne, fought at the head 
of Philippe Egalite’s columns, as they had pre- 
viously, at Valmy, the noisiest battle on re- 
cord. 
Augustina Saragossa, a Spanish woman, called 
the “ Maid of Saragossa,” during the Spanish 
war of independence in the Peninsula, at the 
time that the most exposed battery had been 
silenced by the men having been killed, sprang 
over the dead and dying, snatched a match 130 
WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
from a dead artilleryman, fired off a twenty- 
six pounder, and made a vow not to quit it 
alive during the siege, and she so inspired the 
men that the French were repulsed with great 
loss. 
The Helvetian lady warriors are praised 
by Caesar, in his Commentaries on the Gallic 
war. More than once have the Roman sol- 
diers fled from the women soldiers of Switzer- 
land. 
According to the testimony of Tacitus, a 
Queen of the ancient Britons led her armies 
to battle. There were women warriors in her 
army. During the crusade, many women died 
with arms in their hands, fighting with other 
soldiers by their side. 
Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, and Joan 
of Montford, and the celebrated Margaret of 
Anjou, all were as brave as ever men were. 
Boadicea or Bunduca, the Queen of the 
Iceni, resisted with her armies, and that in 
person, the legions of Rome, in the fiercest 
and most deadly conflicts in which that em- 
pire ever engaged. Ethelfreda, the eldest 
daughter of Peter the Great, commanded 
armies and gained victories. Renee Borde- 
reau, whose father was butchered before her 
eyes, and who lost forty-two relatives in the WOMAN’S FLANCHISE. 
131 
civil war of La Vendee ; during the course of 
six years fought in more than two hundred 
battles, on foot and on horseback, with the 
most determined intrepidity. In one battle 
she killed twenty-one of the enemy. She liber- 
ated fifty priests at one time and eight hun- 
dred at another, all of whom would have been 
executed. A price of 40,000 francs was set on 
her head. She was thrown into prison for a 
crime for which she could only prove her inno- 
cence by a discovery of her sex, where she 
remained five years, until the accession of 
Louis Eighteenth to the throne of France. 
The King of Dahomey has a National Guard 
that is composed entirely of women, number- 
ing 5,000. 
Ex-Queen Isabella of Spain at one time 
went with her soldiers into her revolted states 
and entirely quieted them. 
About 720 years since, the Moors sought 
to regain Tortosa, and for a length of time the 
male inhabitants bore the siege firmly and with 
the utmost bravery; but after having suffered 
extreme privations, and every hope had van- 
ished, and they had proposed to yield to the 
Moors, the women attired themselves in men’s 
clothes and made a resolute sally upon their 
enemies, with such heroism, that they were 132 
WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
compelled to raise the siege, and the Tortosa 
women returned triumphant to their city, while 
the Moors fled in dismay and made no further 
attempt upon Tortosa. For the same, Don Ray- 
mond instituted an order of knighthood, in 
which none but these brave women were ad- 
mitted. He also ordained that women should 
be exempt from taxes, and that at all. public 
meetings the women should have the best 
seats, and that all of the apparel and jewels 
left by their husbands should be lawfully their 
own. There the women were universally hon- 
ored and esteemed. 
What of our half Republican country ; what 
of the appreciation of American women? What! 
Men of America—the best and most appre- 
ciative of you, will see new charms in woman, 
or at least you will have an added respect 
for women generally, when the power of the 
Ballot is in their hands ; as surely as you feel 
thus towards an enfranchised foreigner with 
elegance of manners, cultured mind, and well 
filled purse. With all the above advantages 
—the wealth, education, elegant appearance 
and the position that they give—you feel 
that all are but toys to a man-resident of 
America, if the power of the Ballot is want- WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
133 
ing, although he is as well protected as wo- 
men. There is a feeling that he is something 
less than yourselves, although he may be su- 
perior to you in all things else. 
Power always carries with it a certain 
amount of respect, whether it be of brain, 
body, purse, or Ballot. But to a native of a 
Republican country, there must ever be a feel- 
ing of insecurity, it matters not how much of 
all other powers one has, if' deprived of the 
Ballot, the real birthright of every American 
child. 
Men of America—you have robbed us of our 
most precious inheritance—you have robbed us 
of what you feel a necessity to your protection, 
with all your superior physical strength. Be- 
cause we are weaker physically than you, is an 
incontrovertible reason why we should have 
what you deem the greatest protection to per- 
son, property and liberty. That you are our 
protectors, is not true ; for if you were, who 
would there be to protect us from ? That you 
are our providers, is equally false, for there are 
over a million of women in these United States 
that are toiling early and late in shops, and 
factories, and garrets, to keep soul and body 
together—a body half clothed and half starved, 
and an equally famished soul that weary hours 134 
WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
of toil, and half or quarter pay, prevent the 
possibility of ablutions and clean clothes for the 
soul! 
You would spend the last dime you have ; 
you would spill your last drop of blood before 
you would see your sons causelessly disfran- 
chised ! And yet you lie quietly and uncon- 
cernedly down and die, without one thought 
about your disfranchised daughters. You be- 
lieve that their husbands will be their protec- 
tors, providers, law-makers, and in a word, all 
that they will be for themselves when they are 
full fledged citizens in reality—you trust all this 
to a man that you would not to-morrow dare 
to trust your filthy lucre with ! Your daugh- 
ter’s all, is in the hands of a man, while she is 
deprived of the Ballot, while you would not, 
with your superior strength, trust your all in 
his hands, even with the power of the Ballot. 
That man with daughters, who does not labor 
for their enfranchisement, is unworthy of the 
name father, and ought to be classed with the 
senseless fops, or the poor unfortunate old 
bachelors, whose paternal love has never been 
awakened. 
Men—I need not tell you that the burning 
facts are the same, “ whether you hear, or 
whether you forbear ”—but the results are in WOMAN'S FRANCHISE. 
135 
your hands, for you have the Ballot yourselves, 
and withhold it from women. 
To say that “ women shall have it when they 
ask in mass,” is as inconsistent as to say that 
children shall be clothed and educated when 
they come on their bended knees and pray to 
you for such essentials. If you are so much 
the superiors of women, why do you wait for 
them to ask you for protecting power ? If 
they are so ignorant that they do not see the 
necessity for such protection, treat them as chil- 
dren and give it to them, and teach them its 
value and use. If it is not best for them to 
have such power, why do you promise it, as 
soon as a certain number express a desire for 
it ? Is a right inherited by all, and desired but 
by few, any the less a right now, than it will 
be when all see its uses ? Will a large number 
possessing an advantage in itself wrong, make 
that right, which would not be, if exercised by 
a few ? 
If I am talking instinctively, you must listen 
and act ; for you say instinct does not err. 
But if I am reasoning the cause, do not show 
your want of the power to cope with me, by 
your anger, but come up like men and acknowl- 
edge the truth, or bring arguments from your 
master minds to prove what you in your sphere 136 
WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. 
are able to do. Through the power of brute 
force I see the ballot in your hands, but through 
the telescope of justice I see woman having it, 
is equally certain. 
The zephyrs that shall waft the sounds of joy, 
to be uttered by woman enfranchised, are 
already “ pluming their wings and when that 
time shall arrive, in every State husband and 
wife will walk side by side, in all the important 
duties of life, being equals socially as well as 
politically. Bickerings will cease, for there will 
be no more necessity for strife ; and the mar- 
riage relation will be a beautiful friendship, 
such as Heaven designed it should be. Then the 
great principle that just Governments derive 
their power from the consent of the governed, 
will be a living one, in our dearly loved Amer- 
ica—then it will be a whole Republic in 
reality, instead of being scarcely a half one, as 
it is to-day. 
Note.—This book was written over a year since, before 
the Territories of Wyoming and Utah had enfranchised 
the women; or England had enfranchised the single 
women who pay taxes. CHAPTER VI. 
DIVORCE. 
/jRjEvjEgHOM God hath joined together let 
l\|lE not man put asunder.” 
No one can believe more firmly than 
the writer in the sacredness of the marriage re- 
lation. And perhaps she would be equally slow 
to advise any one to flee from present ills, to 
those “ we know not of.” 
There is a difference of opinion, however, as 
to whom God hath joined together, and in 
what that joining consists. God’s laws are im- 
mutable, and if He ever joins two persons to- 
gether, no man can put them asunder ;—they 
may travel the world over, and have all sorts 
of temptations presented to them, and still they 
cannot be separated. It is well known that 
there have been some such cases, examples of 
which stand out beautifully in bold relief, on 
the great panorama of ill-assorted marriages. 
Nero, the Roman emperor, so envied such 
a couple that came under his observation, that 138 
DIVORCE. 
he ordered them to kill themselves; Aria 
took the fatal knife and stabbed herself, ex- 
claiming “ Paetus, it is not 'painful.1'1 The hus- 
band immediately followed her example, and 
those whom “ God had joined together,7’ en- 
tered the beautiful city of eternity, as Aria and 
Paetus, the joined on earth, that were beyond 
the power of being separated in Heaven. 
Damon and Pythias were also examples of a 
“joining” of souls. It was stronger than ties 
of consanguinity, and stronger than marriage 
contracts. True marriage of an exalted type 
must have just such a joining as these men had, 
and then the word Divorce can never be found 
in the lexicon of their hearts. 
But there are those who have about as cor- 
rect ideas of noble marriage, as 11 the cattle on 
a thousand hills.” Some people look upon the 
institution only in a physical light, and live it out 
on this plan, marrying persons who are widely 
different. Their souls are soon divorced, and 
then how inhumanly cruel to compel them by 
law to live together! God never “joined” 
them, and if one of man’s enactments is more 
wicked than another, it is the compelling them 
to live together, when at least one of their souls 
is crushed, and one of their bodies tormented. 
There are various types of “ what God has DIVORCE. 
139 
joined together,” and also a very wide range 
of difference in the character of the highest 
and the lowest of these types. The highest are 
of the Damon and Pythias order ; where the 
souls are in harmony, each thinking and feel- 
ing alike when both understand'alike. Not 
that one is the mental tool of the other, but 
that they are joined by indissoluble ties, which 
each recognizes in the other, without either feel- 
ing placed in a servile position. Divorce laws 
are no more needed for such, than are extra 
wings for the dove. 
The lowest type of “what God hath joined 
together,” is where there are little minds. Di- 
vorces are not needed for such, and they are 
astonished that any one can be so wicked as to 
allow themselves to sin in this direction. From 
their own stand-point do they judge, and to 
them is their judgment righteous, on the 
ground that "as a man thinketh so is he.” 
We have spoken of but a very small number 
of the great army of earth’s soldiery, who are 
enlisted in the life battles of marriage. We 
have only reviewed in your presence, two of 
the regiments that have never been under fire ; 
but we shall not deceive you into joining the 
army under false pretences, but take you to a 
vast battle-field, where the wounded are groan- 140 
DIVORCE. 
ing and the silent sick are in the background 
in hospitals. The one class are dying slowly 
but surely, breathing their quiet prayers to 
Him who hears the gentlest zephyr. The great 
throng see not the insupportable anguish that 
the forced smiles cover, and only now and then 
does a sympathizing heart look in and exclaim, 
0 God, could the world but get a glimpse of 
this quiet martyrdom, before it is too late ! 
But they cannot believe this sight unless they 
see it, and they will not look ! 
They turn to the groaners on the field, some 
of whom joined the army from the highest mo- 
tives ; some because starvation stared them in 
the face; some because ambitious parents 
urged them ; some because of ennui, and the 
desire for change ; but a large number because 
public sentiment demanded it, and they entered 
into the best company there was, in the only 
regiment that they could enlist in, although 
they were far from being satisfied that it was 
just the place for them. 
They look hemp ropes, and daggers, and pistols, 
and lunatic asylums, and at last exclaim, “You 
have no business to be in such a predicament j 
it is your own fault.” “ Why did you not join 
a regiment that would never get into trouble ?” 
“Your getting hurt is plainly your own fool- DIVORCE. 
141 
hardiness in not asking everybody's advice.” 
"But you had no need of being hurt any way; 
it is the result of indiscretions on your part, 
and now all your friends must be tortured with 
the scars upon your face !” “You have dis- 
graced them all, for everybody will hear that 
you have been in the army, and are not in it 
now” 
“Ah,” cries a poor victim, “ trace your own 
family relations, and you will find that some 
one is in the same condition.” Every house in 
the land has its family record, and its pages 
are read by outsiders who are often supposed 
to be ignorant of its secrets, and there are un- 
written margins that may yet be filled with 
such as you see before you. See to it that 
you make such scars in the highest degree hon- 
orable, for you know not what hour may find, 
if not you, your children, in an “ action.” 
Purity and impurity cannot harmonize. When- 
ever a George marries a Julia, there is such 
a wide difference in the depth of purity, and the 
depth of vice, that whenever the Julia, often 
viewing the case on every side, decides that 
the tenderest of affection has lost all power to 
win from evil, she is untrue to her noble self, 
if she sins against her highest light, and de- 
grades herself by suffering a George to live 142 
DIVORCE. 
with her longer. She can decide for herself 
with an accuracy that it is impossible for others 
to understand ; and a George who has been 
leading a dissolute life, will be sure to charge a 
Julia with coldness, or try to shift the faults of 
separation off himself, when he has lost the 
power to appreciate sincerity, high-toned pur- 
ity, and those childish demonstrations of the 
deepest affection that God has implanted in the 
human heart. 
We have often heard it preached that u a 
wicked man would be unhappy in Heaven.” So 
while a bad individual may feel the loss of the 
good, and may speak in the most glowing terms 
of that loss, he is unhappy if-obliged to be free 
from the people with whom he has debased 
himself. Like the drunkard who has left his 
cups, or the tobacco-user who sees not the 
weed, the habits of both mind and body have 
been such, that nothing but what has been the 
cause of degradation will satisfy, even if a 
thousand times better in all respects. 
But no one who hovers near and undertakes 
to be a reconciler and unasked adviser, can ever 
understand such logic, if the knees are bended, 
and promises made from a smooth tongue, that 
has made, if possible, falseness one of the com- 
ponent parts of his being. It is not at all a DIVORCE. 
143 
matter of surprise, that such a man should 
know that a woman who knew him well, could 
never credit promises that she knew were not 
made to be kept. 
The pure always suffer for a time, but that 
great and beautiful law of adjusting all wrongs 
sometime, at last raises a noble champion, who 
dares to defend the one who has suffered un- 
written agonies, for the sake of eternal princi- 
ples, which all must understand sometime— 
if not in this world, in that which is to come. 
How the want of a Divorce affects such, the 
farthest range of imagination cannot picture. 
To be neither married nor single, and be placed 
in such a position by the delicate facts of the 
case, that explanations are out of the question 
in most instances, is what it is literally impos- 
sible for any but the noblest and tenderest to 
comprehend ; and hence the want of sympathy 
for those who thereafter tread life’s path alone, 
imparting happiness to others whose sorrows 
seem almost unendurable. 
To be deprived of a Divorce is like being 
shut up in a prison because some one attempt- 
ed to kill you. The wicked one takes his ease 
and continues his course, and you take the 
slanders, without the power to defend your- 
self. It is just as honorable to get out of mat- 144 
DIVORCE. 
rimonial trouble legally, as to be freed from any 
other wrong. If it is right to be legally mar- 
ried. it is right to be legally Divorced. No 
one would think of slurring another, who ran 
out of the reach of a murderer, where simply 
the “ shuffling off this mortal coil77 was 
threatened, but when the God-like principle 
was being hampered and crushed, and every 
iota of confidence was literally destroyed, 
some would censure an individual for freeing 
soul and body from such a condition. 
It was not until the twelfth century and un- 
der the auspices of Pope Innocent Third, that 
divorces were prohibited by the civil, as well 
as by the canon law, and it is to be hoped that 
when the Roman Catholics think more upon 
the importance of Divorces, (in some cases,) that 
they will again allow them. 
Thanks to an increasing and diffusing sen- 
timent of equity that the breezes of time are 
fast fanning out such unjust ideas as the right 
of compelling people to live together when that 
relation is perfectly agonizing, and all the man- 
ufactories of the brain are unable to weave a 
web of confidence again. One of the most 
beautiful sayings of our George Washington 
was in relation to the influence of a bad exam- 
ple on a noble individual, if obliged to remain DIVORCE. 
145 
for a length of time under such influence. 
And if so in the ordinary relations of life, what 
shall we say of the Marriage relation ? With- 
out proper Divorce laws, virtue is robbed of 
her rights, vice is encouraged, noble aspirations 
crushed, love turned to hate, and Marriage made 
wretched beyond the power of human expres- 
sion. 
We recite with all the indignant horror of 
which we are capable, the wrongs of the ancient 
Greeks, Jews, and Romans, where they com- 
pelled the people by law to marry, and then, 
no matter how wretched that relation proved 
to be to the wives, there were no Divorce laws 
for their benefit; and yet in our own country, 
and in our own time, the greatest of outrages 
imaginable are inflicted without the power to 
be Divorced from the oppressor. 
Thousands of sorrows are brooded over in 
silence, when no mortal eye witnesseth the 
same—thousands of sighs escape the lips, un- 
heard by mortal ears. * * * * 
But all wrongs come up before the “ Great I 
Am,” and Agitators are sent forth to show to 
the good of earth, their duties to humanity, and 
strength is given such, to work until justice 
shall be meted out to all, and the oppressed al- 
lowed to go free. 146 
DIVOUCE. 
How long, 0 Lord, how long, must there be 
such martyrs as the noble Sage, and the sainted 
Richardson ! CHAPTER YII. 
SY the sweat of thy brow, shalt thou 
eat thy bread.” 
To remain in absolute idleness, is, to 
say the least, a great piece of selfishness. No- 
where in life does it seem so glaringly displayed 
as in cases where a husband is laboring from 
earliest dawn until latest even, and his wife 
doing nothing but dressing for dinner parties, 
making and receiving calls. No matter whether 
the husband be a professional man, or is exten- 
sively engaged in mercantile pursuits, or in any 
branch of business where the profits are large, 
sooner or later, if he does not need a helping 
hand in his wife to save, or retrieve from ruin, 
he needs sympathy and encouragement, which 
an idle butterfly wife cannot give. Her living 
such a life detracts from her character, and, 
instead of becoming better, truer, and nobler, 
she is constantly becoming, if not “ beautifully 
less,” a sort of less, that lessens one’s esteem for 
her. 
LABOR. 148 
LABOR. 
The mind is either becoming more majestic 
and beautiful, or it is being dwarfed, as life 
wears away. Labor of some kind is just as 
much a necessity to the abiding happiness, as 
is bread to the existence. The years are not 
distant, when the truth of this will be realized 
by every human being. 
The following couplet is being acknowledged 
more and more every year, by our most intel- 
ligent people : “ Toil of the brain, of the heart, 
or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the 
only true nobility.’7 But we would add a 
word and say, the only true womanhood also, 
and then we would add a line, and have it 
read—“ And the only sure road to happiness.” 
No kind of Labor should be despised. It is 
a great piece of human presumption, to say 
that any part of God’s creation in the great 
field of Labor, is in any way unworthy of your 
superior consideration, when Deity takes cog- 
nizance of the smallest Labors performed by 
mortals, and gives credit for even the handing 
of a cup of cold water. 
If you have a regard for the Bible, you must 
not forget that your very thoughts are sinful, 
if indulged in, in relation to sinful matters; if 
you style and feel yourself above another mor- 
tal, simply because he is obeying the command, LABOR 
149 
“ do wliat thy hands find to do,” you cannot 
be guiltless. 
The shoddyocracy who despise Labor, and 
teach their children to do so, are more fre- 
quently than otherwise, found to be, at length, 
lamenting over their children’s prodigality, if 
not absolute viciousness. Thus the marriage 
relation is embittered, when, if the children 
had all been educated to perform some kind of 
Labor, and had had the principles of the dig- 
nity of the same instilled into their minds, they 
would have become useful members of society > 
instead of drones, or butterflies, or criminals. 
No individuals can occupy any positions of 
trust, without Labor, if they discharge their 
duties properly ; for they toil with the pen and 
brain in signing and considering measures, just 
as much as the mechanic who makes the table 
the paper rests upon, or the manufacturer who 
makes the paper ; and the ruler, whoever it may 
be, performs no higher service in writing }U3S 
or no than the writer in speaking of such persons. 
The one who tills the soil to raise my food, and 
the one who cooks the same, helps to give me 
the use of my brains as effectually as though 
they guided my hands in* writing this book. 
If both husband and wife labor according to 
their abilities, they would not only help to 150 
LABOR. 
give use to each other’s brains, but there 
would be ample time for each to use his or 
her own brain, for the good of themselves, and 
society, and they would both be happier than 
if either were idle. 
Not only every son, but every daughter 
should be given a practical knowledge of some 
business, whereby they can support themselves. 
It matters not how much wealth there may be 
in the family, or how high their position is be- 
fore the world. Wealth “ takes wings and flies 
awaypositions, sometimes, end on desolate 
isles, where life drags out very wearily. But 
whoever they are, whether inhabitants of pal- 
aces, or of hovels, wherever all in the family 
are laboring a part of the day with brain, 
heart, or hand, they feel that they are living 
for some purpose, and that there is some hap- 
piness in life. 
There are more vacant chairs in family cir- 
cles, made such by sickness and death, from 
the system having been worn out endeavoring 
to gain pleasure, than there are honestly la- 
boring to deserve it. The one class spend their 
days in severe toil, laboring so hard to gain the 
necessities of existence that the system is 
constantly overtaxed; the other pass their 
nights in fashionable follies, and their days LABOR, 
151 
in ennui. (Ask the latter class, what has 
Labor to do with the happiness of the married 
relation ?) Such people are not contented and 
happy anywhere, and can never sing with the 
spirit, “ Home, sweet home.” But the “ wo- 
man who is kept,” feels the sentiment about as 
much, as the one who “marries for the pur- 
pose of being supported in idleness ;” and 
while the one despises the other, the question 
might be raised as to the vastness of the dif- 
ference of the sins, in the sight of Heaven. 
Both classes of women would be married, and 
both respecting themselves in marriage, were 
it not for their dependence on the Labor of 
men. 
A public sentiment that endorses some kinds 
of Labor as being respectable, and others as 
not; some people as respectable in laboring 
and others as not.; that pays to a man’s hand 
twice or thrice as much as a woman’s, for the 
same Labor, performed as well, and in the 
same length of time, is a part of the chippings 
of barbarism, that have not yet been hewn off 
the pillars of civilization. But the axe is al- 
ready being forged, with edge so keen, that the 
work will be thoroughly accomplished, long ere 
the writer shall count her three score years. 
The effects of the Labor question are seen 152 
LAB OB. 
in the family relation on every hand, and when 
“ the good time coming’7 comes, no one will be 
obliged to Labor more than three or four 
hours per day, because all will Labor as a 
pleasure and a profit to body and mind, if not 
for pecuniary reasons. The toiling millions 
and the idle thousands will then be nearer on a 
par mentally, because the former will have more 
time for intellectual improvement, when the 
body is not so weary with toil, that they can- 
not appreciate anything but physical necessi- 
ties. 
Ye who have the capital, and oppress the 
laborers, forget that it is the “talent that you 
must account for ” in the future state of exist- 
ence. If you oppress them here, and prevent 
them from preparing their minds for an in- 
tellectual hereafter, you must suffer there, by 
keeping the company of those who are so un- 
developed, that they are not fitted to be of 
much service in the great eternity of progres- 
sion. They are not illiterate, they are not ill- 
natured, simply because they prefer to be, 
but, because of the unequal distribution of cap- 
ital, that must always be as it is, until those en- 
gaged in the different branches of work are 
well paid, that they can have time and means 
for improvement and for rest. LABOR. 
153 
At the present time, not a family exists, 
where the marriage relation is not affected in- 
juriously, either by the want of Labor, or by 
excessive Labor ! The great mass of wives are 
overworked in their homes, “ trying to get 
along without any help, to save expense,'’ 
when, if the laboring man obtained better 
wages, the wife could have help constantly. 
The laboring women are over worked every- 
where, as well as the laboring men, but the 
women are worse off, because of the pittance 
paid for woman’s work. 
Thousands of unsuitable marriages are con- 
tracted every year, which would never have 
been, had not the question of Labor been in- 
volved. There are but few avocations where 
women can earn means to purchase homes for 
themselves, so they do the best they can in get- 
ting a permanent shelter by marrying, or 
“ doing worse,” and afterwards being diseased 
and deserted ; whereas if the great question of 
equal pay for work, and good pay at that, and 
only a few hours per day, were in vogue, they 
could have a purse of their own, and would not 
marry until the really congenial one was at 
hand, and a new dress, or a “ love of a bonnet,” 
would not be made a temptation to evil, when 
such clothes were an absolute necessity, in 154 
LABOR. 
order to keep a respectable room, or remain in 
respectable company. 
Mrs. Crowe has truthfully said, “ Few wo- 
men marry from affection. It is because it is 
a suitable person.” Parents do not wish their 
daughters to spend their lives with them, unless 
it be one who can pay her way with Labor of 
some kind. Grown girls are almost turned out 
of doors into marriage, by having their destiny 
as somebody’s wife constantly preached. Fa- 
thers are heard to say that, “ daughters are 
only a bill of expense—if'you had been sons, I 
might have been rich.” 
Women, in some positions of life, are kept 
out of marriage because their friends will not 
consent to their marrying what is usually 
termed a Laboring man—in others, because 
they are so worn out with Labor, that they are 
not fit to marry. This is true of the great 
mass of women in school-rooms, sewing-rooms, 
and in the various factories and binderies. 
While many men retire from business, who 
ever heard of a woman’s retiring from business, 
because she had accumulated a competency. 
Women retire from the school-room, or the 
clerk’s desk, from their six or seven hours per 
day labors, into the Marriage relation, where 
their family labors and cares give them only as LABOR. 
155 
many hours of rest. Or they retire from the 
fryingpans of other people’s kitchens into the 
fires of their husbands’, when, if they had been 
properly compensated for their labor before 
Marriage, they would have saved money enough 
to have paid others, and not be obliged to labor 
so hard themselves. 
As a rule, that labor which costs the most 
time, and physical strength, is the most poorly 
paid, and is usually of a nature that is abso- 
lutely essential to existence, or, at least, the 
common comforts of life. This , fact is poig- 
nantly felt in the marriage relation, by the 
toiling wife, who feels that nobody with tender 
care brushes the great drops of perspiration 
from her brow, with an appreciating look and 
with words of encouragement, that helps so 
much to make the thousand trials of domestic 
wifehood endurable. The terrible sorrows and 
discouragements, because of not being appreci- 
ated, is felt in thousands of homes, both high 
and low. 
The wife who studies from day to day about 
the kind of food to be prepared, that will be 
the best, with the least expense ; who performs 
all the work herself, in kitchen, laundry, nur- 
sery and chamber, and then does her sewing by 
artificial light, sighs over a want of appreciation, 156 
LAB OB. 
and want of time for rest. So does* the wife 
who for long years has directed a number of 
servants, in her large house with its thousand 
cares and annoyances that hirelings always 
make, and independent positions always have as 
accompaniments. Such a one said in conver- 
sation with the writer, “Ten years since, my 
husband retired from business, and has had no 
cares since, while I have as many as ever.”— 
I believe that when a husband retires from his 
business to spend the rest of his life in reading 
and recreation, it is time that his wife retires 
from housekeeping. His whims of diet, and 
his vanities of style were as great as ever, and 
he never for a moment thought that his wife’s 
cares were of much importance, but what they 
were, must be according to the “ sphere ” that 
G-od intended for woman. In such thoughts, 
he is no better and no worse than the great 
mass of men, who underrate the work of wo- 
man in the family relation. 
Sons, as well as daughters, should be brought 
up to learn the complicated duties of house- 
keeping. Everything about the kitchen, din- 
ing-room, laundry, parlor, making and mend- 
ing of clothes—in a word, everything that is 
considered woman’s peculiar duties, should be 
and must be thoroughly learned by boys, be- LABOR. 
157 
fore such Labors and duties will ever be appre- 
ciated by men. 
One, and I may say the great reason, why 
the mass of women are so dissatisfied with 
their domestic duties, is because they are pain- 
fully conscious of the inability of men to duly 
appreciate the thousand cares, thoughts, and 
anxieties of their position. Too well do women 
know that the great mass of men feel that if 
they earn the money, they have performed the 
nine-tenth part of living, and whatever a 
woman does is only of minor consideration ; 
and thinking this, men act it in a way that 
pains and discourages women. 
All woman’s reasoning of the case- goes for 
naught, because (not that men intend to be 
unjust to women, not that they intend to make 
them feel that they are, and must ever be, un- 
der a tied-up sort of obligation to them for 
home and shelter, but it is perfectly impossible 
for men to realize what is due to woman, un- 
less they have, at some period of life, had a 
practical knowledge of what a woman’s duties 
are. 
There are times and occasions in the life of 
nearly every man when all of such knowledge 
is of the greatest of importance to men, as re- 
gards comfort if not economy, when the mother 158 
LABOR. 
or the wife is sick. How much lighter would 
the broom and smoothing-irons seem if women 
knew that they had been used by men who had 
left a touch of appreciation upon them. How 
much less oppressive would the cook stove 
seem, if women knew that men’s brains had 
been heated to agony over it; not that “misery 
loves company,” but that every human being 
loves appreciation, and everybody knows that 
no one can fully appreciate what they have not 
known practically. 
It is no wonder that men are so unsym- 
pathizing and unappreciating, when they are 
so practically ignorant of what they ought to 
know. The long tirades about “woman’s du- 
ties ” and “ woman’s spheres ” will be wonder- 
fully shortened when men learn all of the du- 
ties of their spheres, the most important of 
which, is the domestic—(when woman is ne- 
cessarily taken out of it by maternal sickness) 
who so blind that they will not see that every- 
thing that has before devolved on the wife, 
now is left entirely to the husband, or should 
be, to facilitate her recovery. 
But we would not take from men credit that 
is due to them, for there are women who do 
not appreciate the labors of men, and who do 
not use money judiciously, and who never feel LABOR. 
159 
at all grateful for money that they have neither 
helped to save, nor encouraged in earning. Such 
are few, however, and when the toils of the 
marriage relation are more equally divided and 
the respectability of all kinds of Labor fully 
established, the good effects of such a system 
will be seen in there being few who are un- 
married, and much more genuine love in the 
marriage relation. 
But a great work is yet to be accomplished, 
for “ one half of the world knows nothing 
about the other half” and are not prepared to 
sympathize with them, for they do not know 
there are so many groaning beneath Labor 
chains. 
Those who toil excessively become so weary 
that the rare and beautiful gems of thought, 
that they try to save in their memory (until 
they can command time to write them down,) 
break and vanish like air bubbles, and no one 
will believe they were ever thought, because 
they never saw any evidence of their having 
had an existence. 
Some of their thoughts are as much more 
beautiful than those who have ample time to 
express them well, as are the air bubbles from 
the pipe of a child, more perfect and beautiful, 
than the real balloon of the man. 160 
LAB OB 
Who will say that the marriage relation 
would not be made much happier, if the La- 
borers had time to think and write ? for as it 
affords me happiness in expressing my ideas, 
and makes me more noble, so it would another 
human being. Every noble expression adds a 
title to one’s own soul’s nobility. 
There are branches of Labor where one can- 
not stop and pen the burning words, that rush 
out of the brain, and demand paper to rest 
upon, and a pen to hold them there. But if 
they labored a fewer number of hours, had 
better pay for Labor, they would not be so 
weary that they would forget how to clothe 
their beautiful ideas, or where they last saw 
the naked truths that begged for apparel. 
Many a laborer has listened to such appeals, 
with a sorrowing heart, knowing that his or 
her want of time to clothe, would result in the 
interment of the neglected gems, and they 
could only attend the funeral, for that takes 
but little time, and so everybody can attend 
funerals. The immortal Tupper, in the follow- 
ing words, has beautifully expressed the neces- 
sity for clothing the “ naked ” ideas as soon as 
they are called for. 
“ Hast thou a thought upon thy brain? 
Catch it ere it fly, LABOR, 
161 
Or other thoughts will intervene, 
And it will soon take wing.” 
We predict that the time will come, when 
there will be time for all Laborers to heed his 
advice ; for they will not consume so many 
hours in work, but that if their thoughts do 
take wing, they can keep sight of them, and 
overtake them at last without the use of a 
velocipede. That the Laborers do not desire 
more time for intellectual pursuits, and are in- 
capable of appreciating and enjoying a higher 
culture, is a piece of that book of sophistry, 
from which we have heard so many quota- 
tions, that we are led to believe that many 
people express themselves not only ignorantly, 
but thoughtlessly. 
The great mass of the manual Laborers of 
our country, can comprehend whatever pro- 
found reasoning may be brought before them. 
And who will pretend that the mind that can 
understand is not as great, naturally, as the one 
that can create ? The only difference is in the 
power of surroundings that have developed the 
one into expressing what the other would have 
been able to do, if as well informed. 
Those who would keep a certain class in ig- 
norance, for the purpose of being almost re- 162 
LABOR. 
vered for their own lore and positions, forget 
that the higher the culture, the greater the ap- 
preciation, and as a natural consequence, the 
better the people and the better the marriage 
relation generally. That there always will be 
some who are grovelling, and half idiotic, or 
for many hundreds of years, no one will doubt; 
but such, in time, will be looked upon with 
that same kind of pity, that their deplorable 
conditions shall elicit from the truly noble of 
earth. 
Would not the marriage relation be bettered 
if such were kept in asylums, and not allowed 
to marry and entail their wretched condition 
on offsprings, whose chances of becoming re- 
spectable and intelligent citizens were still less 
than their parents ? 
If half grown children in filthy streets, who 
are growing up in idleness, were taken to asy- 
lums where they could be taught trades, and 
educated for the ordinary business of life, they 
would not live in such filth afterwards, and the 
habits of neatness that would be acquired would 
be carried into homes of their own. Both sexes 
should be treated in this way, and parents not 
allowed to visit them, unless they were sober 
and cleanly in their appearance. 
Our free schools do not accomplish all that LABOR 
163 
was hoped for the lowest classes, and there is 
an absolute necessity for other educational ad- 
vantages which cannot be given them in a sys- 
tematic manner, unless they are under the con- 
trol of those who make a business of teaching 
practical as well as theoretical ideas. The cost 
of such institutions to the State, would not 
be as great as the policemen's salaries to watch 
their filthy dens, and the costs of Jails and 
Courts. 
In time the marriage relation of such would 
be made much better ; for, if the parents would 
not live soberly and respectably, their children 
would be away from such influences, and would 
never settle down into their parents’ degrading 
style of existing, when, by proper Labor, they 
could live comfortably, and well. 
Better classes suffer in consequence of the 
wrongs of the Labor question. Many would 
have been married who are now living in a 
most wretched condition, having no homes, and 
never can have, because the pay for their labor is 
so small. They cannot accumulate a sufficient 
amount before marriage to warrant them in 
assuming the responsibilities of the relation, 
which, in the first place, calls for a house, 
or a high price for board. It has been said, 
and too truthfully, that the first years of mar- 164 
LABOR. 
ried life are either commenced in an extrava- 
gant way, so that in a few years they are 
obliged to strain every nerve, simply to live 
respectably and keep up an appearance, or are 
obliged to go to some new country, and be 
prisoners half of a life-time, and thus their 
minds are dwarfed by hard Labor, and want 
of time to improve the mental condition. 
No individuals can be entirely absorbed in 
excessive physical toil, without detracting from 
the mental powers. You can see, as you go to 
a country church, who are overworked through 
the week, by the head’s dropping, and the 
arms of Morpheus at once encircling the lis- 
tener. However interesting the speech, it is 
impossible for the tired body to allow the mind 
to comprehend all that is said, and the mind is 
so tired with the body, that it cannot think 
clearly on any subject whatever. Look at the 
effect on the children of such overworked pa- 
rents ! It must be evident that the mind of 
such cannot be as thoroughly developed as 
though they had time for recreation and men- 
tal improvement. There is much truth in the 
assertion, “ where no bread is brought in at the 
door, love goes out of the window,” and it 
needs but little observation to see that love can 
not feed on air, and that minds of parents can LABOR. 
165 
not feed on air either, and manufacture brains 
to give to posterity. That there are a great 
many unhappy hours caused by the poverty in 
many poor families is too true. The husband 
is too weary to attend lectures, and besides he 
cannot afford to spend a dollar not strictly 
necessary, and thus a great and important 
source of, not only recreation, but of improve- 
ment is lost. 
Many a soul is hemmed and packed and 
compressed into a narrow life, with pure and 
extensive aspirations. Many a great soul yields 
quietly to conditions that are, wearing out the 
body in but partially requited toil, that irri- 
tates the nervous system to such an extent, that 
the effects on the marriage relation are far 
from being happifying. 
I am ashamed of so much of our American 
boasting, when I look facts in the face, and 
hear the unsung agonies of thousands of our 
people, that toil all their lives, and die without 
owning a little home. They nestle into the 
bosom of our mother Earth, feeling that some- 
body had deprived them of a cot, or a foot of 
land. 
Away in the distant future, the people of the 
day will charge the great land-owners, and 
stock-owners, and great everybodies, with self- 166 
LAB OB, 
ishness unparalleled, when they read that 
many fathers never saw any of their children 
by day-light, except on Sunday, as they were 
all day at work in factories, mines and rail- 
roads, and that many husbands and fathers 
never saw their wives and children in the beau- 
tiful light of day, because so weary on Sundays, 
after the long week’s Labors, that they could 
not keep their own eyes open to look at them ! 
It is strange, when all the comforts and lux- 
uries enjoyable are produced by Laboring peo- 
ple, that the wealthy do not make greater 
efforts to show appreciation of the Laborers! 
It is only when there is a colliery explosion, 
that the dangers which attend the digging of 
coal to make us comfortable in cold weather, 
seem to be realized. It is only when a switch 
tender fails in his duty, and a collision of rail- 
road coaches results, that we realize (as the 
mangled masses of humanity are before us) 
how dependent we are upon the Labor of the 
men who graded the road, the men who made 
the track, the men who laid the rails, the men 
who made the comfortable coaches, with cush- 
ioned seats, looking-glasses, stoves with glow- 
ing fires, and all the comforts of travel. 
Not one luxurious couch, not one magnificent 
mirror, not one splendid carpet, not one mar- LABOR 
167 
ble-top table, but that, for style and beauty, 
we owe not only to the hands, but to the con- 
ceptions of beauty, and utility of the poor 
Laborer. Not one exquisitely wrought silver 
dish upon your mahogany dining-table, or even 
the brilliant flowers in your vases, but that 
cost the hard, and poorly paid toil of workers 
that are unnoticed by you. Even the linen in 
its snowy whiteness that you sleep upon, and 
wear in displaying your diamonds, are brought 
to you by woman’s blistered hands, that you pay 
so poorly for the toil that causes the suffering ! It 
is not only her hands, but her soul’s anxiety to 
have the clothes suit, that helps to wear her 
life, and use up her strength, and yet no one 
seems to think that there is anything hwt phy- 
sical toil with the laundry woman. 
The happiness of the marriage relation every- 
where would be enhanced, if all were paid bet- 
ter for their Labor, worked a fewer number of 
hours in a day, and were duly appreciated in 
the performance of the same, and were made 
to feel, that, as it was noble for Deity to Labor 
and make the Heavens and the Earth, and all 
that in them is, “it is noble for His creatures, 
one and all, to do what their hands find to do.” CHAPTER. VIII. 
RELIGION. 
every human heart some Religious 
emotions are to be found. There 
SssreJegijj is a consciousness of the existence of 
a power higher than oneself; and the fact of 
such superiority, calls forth respect, reverence, 
worship. But all of these emotions must first 
be felt towards a mortal, and the more intense 
they are towards the human, the greater they 
will be when years and reason bids them look 
higher. 
The father and mother is the God in the eyes 
of the little child, for it knows of nothing higher, 
with its infantile reason. We are surprised 
when we think how differently minds view the 
attributes of Deity, and yet it is not so won- 
derful after all, when we study the subject and 
realize that the parents or the guardians make 
the ideas of the character of Deity, in the fu- 
ture mature individual. 
In the tender years of the child, if the rulings 
are in love and kindness, and the parents’ acts RELIGION. 
169 
before the child are of the same character, the 
child will form an idea of Giod as an all loving 
Father, seeking the best good of His children, 
and the chastisements will seem to come from 
such loving hands, that the pain will all be in 
the realization of the fact, that a wrong has 
been committed, or a duty neglected ; and 
there will not need to be any sermons for the 
purpose of showing the importance of innume- 
rable resolves being made to live a better life 
in future. 
But on the other hand, if the parents are un- 
kind, exacting, assuming, and towards 
the child, having no mercy or justice in deal- 
ing with little faults, and utter ignorance, the 
child will have an idea of a Gfod that is filled 
with anger, bottled up against a day of impul- 
sive wrath, that shall frighten one into a hope 
of sinking out of existence in eternity, if there 
be an annihilation to get to, after we find the 
eternal shores of the last and final settling up 
of our earthly accounts, that are written in the 
great book of His remembrance. 
The child with the former training and un- 
der the love-to-do-right influence, because it is 
right, is a thousand times better to its parents, 
than one with the latter harsh and tyrannical 
ideas, who must all through life look upon the 170 
RELIGION. 
parents as masters instead of friends ; and upon 
God as the great master and tyrant, that rules 
with a rod of iron in this world, and burns with 
fire and brimstone in the world to come, where 
the fire can never be quenched, and where 
Deity and saints will glory over their eternal 
agonies. Indeed, earthly parents have been 
known to expend all the fury from hands and 
tongue upon their children, that they dared to 
do, and then finish up with the representation 
of a lake of literal fire and brimstone, into 
which they will be hurled after death Jby God. 
Such parents are most unhappy themselves, 
and seem not to be able to live without mak- 
ing their children wretched, and so such chil- 
dren go forth and commit all sorts of crimes, 
with a stolid indifference to consequences, be- 
lieving tha . there cannot be a greater Hell out 
of this life, than there is in it. 
Religion has something that is telling, to do 
with the marriage relation, when such results 
proceed from the Religious teachings of parents, 
whether they fill pulpits or groggeries. 
Parents that teach their children that the 
most beautiful part of Religion is the golden 
rule of the Christ, that so beautifully taught the 
love principles to God and man, will in turn 
find the same reflected back upon themselves, RELIGION. 
171 
and the great humanity, to which we are all 
under obligations to love as did Christ, and not 
to turn away with, “be ye fed and be ye 
clothed,” and be ye loved and encouraged, by 
somebody, but not by us. 
No one subject has been discussed by all the 
world, (where the people have been allowed to 
think for themselves,) that has produced so 
much inharmony in the marriage relation as the 
subject of Religion. 
It would seem, that, when there are such a 
variety of opinions on this subject, and the fact 
so well known that one's Religious belief is sa- 
cred to them, that, when married people know 
their beliefs are different on denominational 
subjects, and cannot be made to harmonize, that 
they would never undertake to discuss the sub- 
ject. 
Much of the inharmony of the marriage re- 
lation, results from a difference in the Religious 
sentiments, or rather the doctrinal points, as 
sent forth by leading theologians. 
It has been said that “married people can 
never discuss any subject without getting 
more or less angry before closing,” and this is 
especially true in Religious discussions, but 
not because they are married, for all people 
who do not consent to differ upon this subject, 172 
RELIGION. 
without discussion, feel an enmity towards 
each other. 
But if married people quarrel over subjects 
under discussion, it is because they have more 
time to discuss than other people ; and as wo- 
man under the law, has not as many rights as 
man, she must of necessity avail herself of her 
weapon of defence that man cannot legislate 
away from her. 
Religion is almost the only subject about 
which many women dare to differ from their 
husbands, whenever a discussion closes. 
There is more of intolerance manifested upon 
this subject than any in the world, and yet 
here and there, the wife, who is so timid in 
calling forth a dissent to her ideas on other 
topics, comes out boldly and makes her own 
assertions of belief, as if she were really en- 
titled to such expression—as if she had a 
right to “ her say,” as a distinct human intel- 
ligence. 
An advantage is taken of the subject, and 
a woman is the supreme controller of her own 
ideas, and will have her will, in their expres- 
sion. The husband submits because the wife has 
the advantage, but this compulsory submission 
does not always make him any more amiable 
than he often sees his wife, after other discus- RELIGION. 
173 
sions, where by browbeating or by physical 
force, he has gained the victory. 
It is assuming much more than is modest, 
to say the least, to expect because two persons 
enter into the marriage relation, that they 
ought, or will be likely, to think alike on a 
subject that the wisest, those who have made 
theology a special study, differ so widely upon. 
As there is something good in all Religious 
beliefs, there should be a quiet toleration to- 
wards all who represent the various forms or 
ceremonies that are connected with worship. 
No misrepresentations of the Bible on the in- 
feriority of sex, can ever produce any happi- 
ness in the Religious world, any more than 
elsewhere, and any sect that advocates such a 
theory, must sooner or later lose all of its in- 
telligent and respectable members. If there is 
a necessity for men to be active in-Religion, 
there is the same necessity for women, and the 
same obligation. Hundreds of married people 
have lived wretchedly and finally separated, 
in consequence of an advantage having been 
taken of the writings of Paul as explained in 
some of our churches. 
It is a terrible fact, that there are more 
quarrels in families on account of the miscon- 
struction of Paul’s writings, than any one cause, 174 
RELIGION. 
and among Religious people, I do not know 
but I am warranted in saying, any combina- 
tion of causes. Many women have left the 
church, because they felt their womanhood so 
degraded by the teachings on this subject. 
There is no doubt that the women of Hindo- 
stan feel the same kind of degradation, when 
they are compelled to carry out the Religious 
rites of wife-burning on the funeral pile of 
husbands. 
Men are startled at such comparisons, but 
thousands of women, even in our churches, 
would be willing to endure Hindostan martyr- 
dom, at their husbands’ funeral, if they could 
but escape the terrible wrongs that are endured 
during their lives. 
Any Religion that gives the wife a servile 
position, is beneath the great plans of Deity, 
and must ultimately be considered one of the 
tokens of barbarism, that Christ tried to exter- 
minate, by teaching the beautiful golden rule. 
Unless women in all the churches are elevated 
to their true positions, as companions of men, 
and not treated in any way as Religious infe- 
riors, the sects that persist in wrongs of this 
character, will, sooner or later, be swept out 
of the Religious world ; for the beautiful refin- 
ing, and purifying influences of Religion, were RELIGION. 
175 
not designed to make women wretched ; and 
everything that has a disturbing or unharmoni- 
ous effect must be removed. 
Both men and women have been martyrized 
in ages past, for daring to think upon Religious 
matters differently from those belonging to na- 
tional churches. But thanks to the sun of pro- 
gress that is shining brighter and brighter 
every age, drying up the mists of superstition 
and intolerance, with which the atmosphere of 
our loving Father has been filled. 
Every age brings with it a clearer view of 
Him who has been hid by this mist, and ere 
long we may hope that the masses will see the 
King of Kings in a pure and glorious light, and 
point their little ones to Him, as their dearest 
friend, and not as a tyrant to be feared. 
Since the days when men and women were 
drowned, strangled, and burned, in the old 
world, because of Religious belief, down to the 
time of the hanging of Quakers in Massachu- 
setts, for their belief, broader and truer ideas 
have been so disseminated, that, when we have 
learned of people being imprisoned in Spain 
for daring to read the ordinary Testament, and 
of Mrs. Louisa Jeanson of Sweden being jeered 
and ill-treated in the streets of Saru, Sweden’s 
fashionable resort, for daring to be a Bap- 176 
RELIGION. 
tist, instead of belonging to the established 
church of Lutherans, all through intelligent so- 
ciety, we hold up our hands in horror, and 
is it possible that such things have occurred 
within the last ten years ? And yet we see 
progress, for Mrs. Jeanson was not tied to a 
stake, where the tidal waters of a Loch Long 
would make her a watery grave, nor has a 
Spaniard been strangled and burned, as was 
William Tyndale in the days of Henry VIII., 
about the year 1534, for translating the Testa- 
ment into English, so that all could read it. 
Spain is ashamed of her treatment of a Testa- 
ment reader, and Sweden would not to-day 
allow any more of ill-treatment because any of 
its citizens believed in immersion. 
The days of golden rules of Religion will 
surely come, and in the family relation as well 
as elsewhere, all will believe Religiously, as 
seemeth to them good, without any one ques- 
tioning their inalienable right to do so—no one 
will, in an authoritative manner say—why 
think ye thus ? but all will have a liberty of 
conscience and of speech, which will be such in 
reality. 
No Religion is true and genuine, it matters 
not what church its representatives belong to, 
unless it is something that makes homes happy, RELIGION. 
177 
and ennobles life generally, by the precepts 
and examples of Christ, as embodied in the 
grandeur of the golden rule. 
Those Religious sects living out these princi- 
ples, it matters not by what names they are 
known to the world, will live as great and no- 
ble bodies while time lasts, and will contribute 
to make the Marriage relations and homes gen- 
erally, “ The dearest places ” and conditions 
on earth. 
THE END. Aaehor Mb© 
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can. 
Liberal Terms Offered to Active Agents. 
Offices, 
(505 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, 
' 97 CHEAPSIDE, LONDON. PENNSYLVANIA CENTRAL, 
Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago, 
AND 
PAN HANDLE ROUTES, 
TO THE 
West, North-West, South, and South-West 
WITHOUT CHANGE. 
Running Pullman’s Palace and Drawing-Room Cars 
through to Pittsburg, Chicago, Cincinnati, 
Louisville, Indianapolis, and St. Louis. 
THE MOST DIRECT ROUTE TO ALU POINTS IN THE 
WEST, NORTH-WEST, SOUTH & SOUTH-WEST. 
Rates of Fare Always as Low as by any other Route. 
THROUGH TICKETS FOR SALE AT 
526 Broadway, 
435 Broadway, 
No. 1 Astor House, 
AND AT ALL THE PRINCIPAL HOTELS. 
H. W. GWINNER, 
Gen’l Pass. & Ticket Agent. 
JOHN H. MILLER, 
Gen’l Eastern Pass. Agent  
T. R. PROCTOR, 
PROPRIETOR, 
* 
UTICA, N.Y. 
Utica is a quiet and aristocratic city, with 
Four Railroads, 
Many Manufactories, 
Excellent Schools, 
And all that is desirable to make it a 
Pleasant & Healthful Stopping Place. ALYAH WALKER’S 
Water Elevator. 
PATENTED JUNE 2, 1868. 
Highest 'Premium Awarded at JV. T. State Pair, 
also, at Two County Pairs. 
The following are among the superior advantages claimed for 
his Invention : 
ist. The Well can be open to the air. 
2d. The water is brought from the bottom of the well. 
3d. The moment you arrive at the well, a bucket of water is 
dumped into your pail, without having to wait to draw it. 
4th. A child 6 or 7 years of age can draw a bucket full, the well 
being from 30 to 200 feet deep. Four buckets have been drawn 
and emptied in LESS THAN ONE MINUTE, from a well 20 
feet deep, and 8 rods from the house. 
Cost, from $12 to $20. It is easily made, and not liable to get 
out of order or wear out soon. It can be arranged to bring water 
into the house, without going out of doors. 
Territory in Large or Small Divisions For Sale. 
For further particulars, Address 
ALVAH WALKER, 
Oswego Centre, V. Y. HOME FOR THE AFFLICTED. 
AT ALL SEASONS OE THE YEAR. 
Medical Lectures 
DURING 
The Winter Months 
Dr. R. T. TRALL, 
Dr. ELLEN B. HARMAN. 
FLORENCE HIGEHTS, 
NEW JERSEY.