their external support. All that is desirable for either sex is such an
economy of labor, in this respect, as shall leave some spare time to be
appropriated in other directions. The argument against each new
emancipation of woman is precisely that always made against the liberation
of serfs and the enfranchisement of plebeians,--that the new position will
take them from their legitimate business. "How can he [or she] get wisdom
that holdeth the plough [or the broom],--whose talk is of bullocks [or of
babies]?" Yet the American farmer has already emancipated himself from
these fancied incompatibilities; and so will the farmer's wife. In a nation
where there is no leisure class and no peasantry, this whole theory of
exclusion is an absurdity. We all have a little leisure, and we must all
make the most of it. If we will confine large interests and duties to those
who have nothing else to do, we must go back to monarchy at once. If
otherwise, then the alphabet, and its consequences, must be open to woman
as to man. Jean Paul says nobly, in his "Levana," that, "before and after
being a mother, a woman is a human being, and neither maternal nor conjugal
relation can supersede the human responsibility, but must become its means
and instrument." And it is good to read the manly speech, on this subject,
of John Quincy Adams, quoted at length in Quincy's life of him, in which,
after fully defending the political petitions of the women of Plymouth, he
declares that "the correct principle is that women are not only justified,
but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from the domestic
circle, and enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity, and of
their God."

There are duties devolving on every human being,--duties not small nor few,
but vast and varied,--which spring from home and private life, and all
their sweet relations. The support or care of the humblest household is a
function worthy of men, women, and angels, so far as it goes. From these
duties none must shrink, neither man nor woman; the loftiest genius cannot