The squeezed waists and other tokens of the kind show that our civilization
has not yet outgrown the conception of the most meretricious epochs, that
woman exists for the delight of man, and is meant to be a kind of decorated
appendage of his life, while the men attendants and men nurses of women
prisoners and patients show a most uncivilized disregard of the just
instincts of sex. We are far from asserting that therefore the position of
women in this country is to be likened to their position in China, where
the contempt of men denied them souls, or to that among savage tribes,
where they are treated as beasts of burden. But because we are not
wallowing in the Slough of Despond, it does not follow that we are sitting
in the House Beautiful. The traveller who has climbed to the _mer de
glace_ at Chamouni, and sees the valley wide outstretched far below him,
sees also far above him the awful sunlit dome of "Sovran Blanc." Whatever
point we may have reached, there is still a higher point to gain. Nowhere
in the world are women so truly respected as here, nowhere ought they to be
more happy than in this country. But that is no reason that the New Orleans
outrage should be possible, while the same good sense and love of justice
which have removed so many barriers to fair-play for women should press on
more cheerfully than ever to remove those that remain.

(_December_, 1882)




SECRET SOCIETIES


The melancholy death of young Mr. Leggett, a student at the Cornell