Chapter 7

The new woman is not to be judged by exceptions, nor is she to be measured by the standard of public sentiment. Public sentiment has often condemned the right. It ridiculed Columbus; put Roger Bacon in jail because he discovered the principle of concave and convex glass; condemned Socrates, and jeered Fulton and Morse. It pronounced the making of table forks a mockery of the Creator who gave us fingers to eat with, and broke up a church in Illinois because a woman prayed in prayer meeting.

Hume said: "There is nothing in itself, beautiful or deformed. These attributes arise from the peculiar construction of human sentiment and affection; the attractiveness or repulsiveness of a thing depends very much upon our schooling."

Prof. John Stuart Blackie wore his hair so long that it almost reached his waist. Seated one day in front of a hotel in London, a bootblack halted before him and said: "Mister, will you have a shine?"

Professor Blackie replied: "No, but if you will go wash that dirty face of yours I will give you the price of a shine."

The boy went but soon returned with his rosy cheeks cleansed, saying: "Sir, how do you like the job?"

"That's all right; you have earned your sixpence," said Prof. Blackie as he held out the coin.

The bootblack turning away said: "I dinna want your sixpence; keep it, old chap, and have yer hair cut."

The long hair of Professor Blackie was as offensive to the boy as the dirty face of the boy to Professor Blackie. One had been schooled to short-haired men, the other to cleanly children.

I have in my presence now scores of persons, who believe the sale of a negro on the auction block in the South to the domination of a white man was wrong. I did not think so in my youth. My schooling was that Japheth was a white man, Shem a red man and Ham was black; that it was a divine decree that the descendants of Japheth should dwell in the tents of Shem and send for the children of Ham to be their servants, thereby supporting the white man in his dealings with the black and red races. As the Bible was used to justify slavery, so it is quoted today in favor of the liquor traffic, and against the new woman movement. Yet it's the Bible that has given woman her broader liberty. It was the Bible that broke the chains that harnessed woman to a plow by the side of an ox. In the vision of John, a woman is crowned with stars, the burnt-out moon is her footstool and the wings of a great eagle given to bear her above the floods that would engulf her.

The viewpoint of schooling has much to do with our convictions and prejudices. When the bicycle craze first came upon us, women bicycle clubs were formed throughout the country. Wheels were made specially for woman, and to facilitate the pleasure and comfort, bloomers were worn by women in all our cities. The fat and lean, tall and short, old and young wore bloomers. At that time if a man from the country neighborhood where I was reared, one given to dancing, had gone to Chicago and seen these bloomer-clad women, he would have thought the whole sex disgraced. And I must admit I didn't like the bloomer girl myself. I can appreciate the Yankee farmer who lived between Boston and Wareham, Mass. A young woman who lived in Boston had a friend in Wareham, and donning her bloomers she mounted her wheel and started for the village. Passing several diverging points, and thinking possibly she had missed the right road, she decided to inquire at the next house. Seeing the Yankee farmer at the front gate she rode up, dismounted and said: "Sir, will you please tell me, is this the way to Wareham?"

The farmer, with eyes fixed upon the new garb, said: "Miss, you'll have to excuse me. I can't tell you, for I never saw anything like them before."

I said our opinions are based upon schooling. Let the man from the dancing community leave Chicago, go back to Kentucky, attend a country ball, see a young woman with low neck dress and short sleeves, in the arms of a man she never met before, and he thinks her the picture of propriety, as well as grace and beauty. Yet the bloomer girl was completely clad from her chin to the soles of her feet while the other is so un-clad that when a woman, now noted for her great work among the unfortunate of New York City, was a society leader, and was passing through her library to her carriage one evening, her little son said: "Mama, you are not going out on the street looking that way, are you? Why, you are scarcely dressed at all." The mother realizing as never before, the immodesty of her attire, returned to her room, changed her apparel to what met the approval of her boy, and has never since worn a decollete gown.

Let a respectable woman in this town stand on a street corner to-morrow, and utter an oath; she would shock every one within sound of her voice. A man can "cuss" to his satisfaction and, if not a church member, the community is not shocked. Let a young woman seeking a position in a public school in one of our cities, call a member of the school board into a saloon and order beer set up for two; would she get the position? Not much. Not if the community found it out, or the remainder of the board who were slighted. A man can invite a dozen men into a saloon, order drinks for the company, and thereby help to win the position he seeks. In the city where I reside a young man can get drunk and howl like a wolf through the streets, yet if he has wealth and family influence, in ten days he can attend a social gathering of the best society. Let a young woman step aside from the path of right and she is hurled to the depths of the low-land of vices.

Some years ago a young man died in our city whose family name was honored and whose father was wealthy. The young man went the pace that kills and in the very morning of life died a victim to his vices. A long line of carriages followed him to our beautiful cemetery, his pall bearers were from the leading families of the city; flowers covered his grave and the daily papers paid a tribute to the young man cut down before the river of life was half run.

Soon after, a poor girl died in one of the wicked dens of the city. She had been left an orphan in early life without a mother's love to guard and guide her, she went astray. Two carriages followed her to the stranger's burying ground. In one were two of her kind; in the other the pastor of the church of which I am a member. He afterward said to me: "We had to get two negro men at work near by to help lower her body into the grave."

No wonder woman cries out against these standards, these peculiar constructions of human sentiment. Public sentiment demands of a man that he shall be physically brave. If a woman appeals to him for protection, his bosom must heave with courage like the billows of the ocean, though he quake in his boots. Yet the woman he defends will endure pain without a murmur, which would make the man groan for an hour. When my wife is ill it takes about two days to find it out; she does not seem so cheerful the first day, and the second, she will admit she is not so well. Let me get sick, and the whole family will know it in half an hour.

I know a woman will scream if a mouse runs across the floor, but give her a loved one to defend, let supreme danger come and she's no coward. John Temple Graves tells of a Georgia girl so timid she was afraid to cross the hall at night to mother's room. She married a worthy young man and by industry and economy they paid for a cottage home. He began to cough, and the hectic flush told his lungs were involved. The doctor advised a change of climate.

"We'll sell the home," said the little wife, "and go where the doctor advises, for the home will be nothing to me if you are gone."

They went to Florida and knowing they must husband their small means, she took in sewing. A few months later the doctor advised a higher altitude. They went to a little city in the Ozark mountains. Here again she plied her needle, wearing upon her face by day a smile to cheer her husband, while at night her pillow was wet with tears as she heard him coughing his life away. After several months she was informed by physicians that but one chance in a hundred remained, and that was still further west.

"I'll take the hundredth chance," she said, and on west they went. Soon after, in the far-away city he died; she pawned her wedding ring to make up the price of tickets back to Georgia. There the little widow buried her dead by the side of his mother, and after planting her favorite flowers about the grave, she turned away to face the duties of life, and though a dead wall seemed lifted before her, she met each day with a smile and hid her sorrow beneath the soul's altar of hope.

Man has won his title to courage upon battlefield, and yet the battlefield is not the place to test true courage.

"The wife who girds her husband's sword, 'Mid little ones who weep or wonder, And bravely speaks the cheering word, E'en though her heart be rent asunder:

Doomed nightly in her dreams to hear The bolts of death around him rattle, Hath shed as sacred blood as ere Was poured upon the field of battle."

When elbows touch, ten thousand feet keep step together, martial music fills the air, the shout of battle is on, bayonets glitter in the sunlight, the flag flutters in the breeze, and the general commands, men will shout and rush into battle who without these stimulating influences would be going the other way. I remember when a boy how whistling kept up my courage in the dark. It is told of General Zeb Vance of the Confederate army, that while leading his forces across a field into an engagement he met a rabbit going the other way. As the hare dodged around the command, General Vance lifting his hat said: "Go it, Mollie; go it, Mollie Cotton-tail; if I didn't have a reputation to sustain I would be right there with you."

For Christine Bradley, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the Governor of Kentucky, to stand on the dock at Newport News, against the customs of centuries and facing the jeers of prejudice, baptize the battleship Kentucky with water, required as blood-born bravery as coursed the veins of the ensign who cut the wires in Cardenas Bay, or the lieutenant who sunk the Merrimac in the entrance to Santiago Harbor. Because she dared to violate a long-established custom by refusing to use what had blighted the hopes of many daughters, sent to drunkards' graves so many sons, and buried crafts and crews in watery graves, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union presented her with a handsome silver service. I was chosen to make the presentation speech, which I closed by saying: "Heaven bless Christine Bradley, who by her example said:

I christen thee Kentucky, With water from the spring, Which enriched the blood of Lincoln, Whose praise the sailors sing.

I christen thee Kentucky, With prayers of woman true, That wine, the curse of sailors, May never curse your crew.

I christen thee Kentucky, And may this christening be, A lesson of safety ever To sailors on the sea."

Now if public sentiment has made such a mistake in the allotment of virtues, why may it not have made a greater mistake in the allotment of spheres? It has been well said: "God made woman a free moral agent, capable of the highest development of brain, heart and conscience; with these are interwoven interests that involve issues for time and eternity, and God expects of woman the best she can do in whatever field she is best fitted for the accomplishment of results for the world's good." If a young woman is fitted to preside over a home, and some young man desires to crown her queen of that realm, she can find no higher calling in this world. There is nothing on this earth more like heaven than a happy home. I can give to a young woman no better wish than that the future may find her presiding over a home made beautiful by her character and culture, and safe through her influence.

But if a young woman is qualified like Frances E. Willard to better the world by public life-work, or like Florence Nightingale or Jane Addams to relieve the suffering of thousands, then she should not confine herself to the limited sphere of one household. I believe in the call of capacity for usefulness in both sexes. There are men who are called to be cooks; they know the art of the caterer. There are men fitted to be dressmakers; they know the colors that blend and the styles which give beauty to dress. There are women who are fitted for science, literature and medicine. Some of the best cooks we have are men; some of the best writers and speakers are women. Abraham Lincoln never did more by his proclamation to free the slave, than did Harriet Beecher Stowe with "Uncle Tom's Cabin." William E. Gladstone never did more to endear himself to the people of Ireland by his advocacy of the home-rule, than has Lady Henry Somerset endeared herself to the common people of the "United Kingdom," by turning away from the wealth, nobility and aristocracy of England to devote her great heart, gifted brain and abundant means to the elevation of the masses, the reformation of the wayward, and the relief of the poor.

There is a fitness that must not be ignored. Frances E. Willard would never have made a dressmaker. It is said she did not know when her own dress fit, or whether becoming; she depended upon Anna Gordon to decide for her. But by the music of her eloquence and the rhythm of her rhetoric, she could send the truth echoing through the hearts of her hearers like the strain of a sweet melody. Worth, of Paris, France, would not have made an orator, but he could design a robe to please a princess and make a dress to fit "to the queen's taste." Then let Worths make dresses, and Frances E. Willards charm the world by their eloquence.

Yonder is a boy. His soul is full of music; his fingers are as much at home on the key-board of a piano as a mocking-bird in its own native orange grove. His sister is a mathematician; she solves a problem in mathematics as easily as her brother plays a piece of music. Because one is a boy and the other a girl, don't make the girl teach music and the boy mathematics. What God has joined together in fitness, let not false education put asunder.

Recently I read of a man whose father left him a large business. Though an exemplary man he could not make ends meet in a business out of which his father had made a fortune. The man worried himself into nervous prostration. While he remained at home for rest, his wife took charge of the business and made of it a great success. I say let that woman run the business and the man take care of his nerves.

I know a minister who is a good man, but his strength is in his limbs. He's an athlete, but turn him loose in a field as full of ideas as a clover field of blossoms, and he can't preach a good sermon. Let Dr. Anna Shaw enter the same field and she will gather blossoms of thought faster than you can store them away in your mind. Some one in my presence may believe the man should keep on preaching and Anna Shaw go to the sewing-room and run a sewing machine; but I say if the man's strength is in his limbs, and Doctor Shaw's in her head, let the preacher run the sewing machine and Doctor Shaw preach the gospel of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. If God fitted Anna Shaw's brain and tongue for the platform, it would be unwomanly in her to make herself the pedal power of a sewing machine. We want successful, useful men and women; and in fields for which God has fitted woman, don't be afraid to give her the freest, broadest liberty, or be uneasy about her unsexing herself. She has entered two hundred fields in the last one hundred years. Yes, I guess one more field must be added, for I saw a woman a few years ago in an occupation I had never seen one engaged in before. In a city where I lectured a beautiful, intelligent young lady was running the elevator of a hotel, and I was completely "taken up" by her.

Of all the new fields entered by woman you cannot point to one where she has degraded her womanhood, or one that has not been blessed by the touch of her influence.

It is true there are fanatics among women as there are among men, but if the extreme woman goes too far, the average woman will call a halt every time. Fifteen years ago I could stand on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in the evening and within a half hour count twenty young women, dressed in bloomers, riding bicycles. Now one may go to Chicago, spend a year and not see one. Woman is safe enough.

Some are uneasy lest woman will go beyond her sphere, but I am not so much disturbed about the future of woman as I am of man. Upon virtue and intelligence depends the future of this republic. Have men all the virtue? Go to the saloons; are they frequented by women? No; _men_. Go to the gambling halls; are they crowded with women? No; _men_. Go to the jails and penitentiaries; are they full of women? No; _men_. Go to the churches; are they crowded with men? No; mostly by women. What about intelligence? Have men all the intelligence? Two girls graduate from high schools to one boy. I am glad to be living now; one hundred years hence, if I were to be born again, I would want to be a girl. Woman goes to the door of death to give life to man and man should be willing to let her seek out her own sphere for usefulness.

Not long since I read a book called "The New Woman." It was a novel by an Englishman. In it the author takes a beautiful young girl, about eighteen years of age, through a "Gretna-Green" experience with a young man of twenty. She is the daughter of a widow; he, the only son of a wealthy London merchant. They run away and after a month's search are found by the father of the young man in southern France. The girl is sent home to her mother; the young man sent to India in order to get him far away from his wife. The novelist makes the young man a noble character, who is determined to prove himself worthy of his wife, and he toils to send her means for support. The young wife becomes a mother, and the young husband toils the harder to care for his wife and babe. When time hangs heavy on the hands of the young mother, she is invited to join a woman's club. Here she imbibes the spirit of the new woman. She soon neglects her child and appears before the public for a lecture. She wears a low neck dress, paints her cheeks, blondines her hair, smokes cigarettes and drinks wine. A millionaire in India, who loses his own son, adopts the hero of the novel, dies and leaves him the great estate. Then the young man hurries back to his wife. He arrives in the evening, but finds she is not at home; she is delivering a lecture in the opera-house. He awaits her return; a storm rages outside; at a late hour she enters the door, throws off her wraps and stands before her husband, with blondined hair, painted cheeks, and eyes red with wine. He stares, then starts toward her, when she brings him to a halt by her strange manner. He asks, "Is not this my wife?" she answers, "No, I am the New Woman." She refuses to let him see their child, drives him out into the storm, then goes to her room, disrobes and lies down to dream of great audiences and applause.

It is an insult to any intelligent reader. Where is the woman, who was a sweet, modest young mother, and who today is a public speaker, who has neglected her child, driven her husband without cause into the street, blondines her hair, paints her cheeks, drinks wine and smokes cigarettes? She would be hissed from the platform. The author simply shows his extreme prejudice in an abstract attempt to prove that to be a new woman means the surrender of all womanly graces.

Let me give you, not fiction but real history, that I may present to you the kind of new woman I indorse. She was born in the State of New York, was well educated, and at proper age married a young physician. They moved to a western city, where for a while the young physician did well; but in an evil hour he commenced to drink. Like many a noble young man, he was too weak to resist the power of appetite, and soon his practice left him. His wife, the mother of two boys, secured a position in the public schools and by her ability, won her way to a principalship. The husband wandered away, while the brave wife and mother remained with her children, but followed her husband with letters of loving appeal. After long separation he was taken seriously ill in the far Southwest. She left children, home and school work to go to his bedside. Her watchful care brought him back from the very door of death, and her prayers were answered in seeing him forsake the cup and hide for safety in the cleft of the Rock of Ages. He returned with her to their home, but soon after passed away. She buried him beneath the green Missouri sod, planted flowers about the grave, paid him tribute of her tears, and returned to her work.

In the course of these years she had joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and was recognized as one of its greatest leaders.

Several years ago I gave an address in Hot Springs, Ark. A card was presented at my door, which bore the name of the heroine of my story. Going to the parlor I said: "What are you doing here?"

"My boy has been very ill with rheumatism and I have been here with him for several weeks. He is better now and I return to my work tomorrow."

Months later she was called again to the bedside of this son, and with all the tenderness of mother-love, he was cared for until he too passed over the river. Again she took up her work on the platform, where she inspired many young women to do their best in life, and called many to righteousness. She was the salt of the earth, the embodiment of nobility, the soul of truth; and not only her own state but the whole country is better because she lived.

Ask the author of the novel for the _real_ to his story; he cannot name her; she does not live in England or America. Ask me for mine and I answer Clara C. Hoffman, for years the associate of Frances E. Willard as national officer of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and state president of the white ribboners of Missouri.

In a magazine article an author said: "Out of one hundred and forty-five graduates of a certain female college, only fifteen have married." A Chicago editor quoted the statement and asked: "Is it possible education breeds in woman a distaste for matrimony and home life?" In the first place, I would answer: "You never can know how many are going to marry until they are all dead."

Another explanation is that the average school girl goes out of school at that impulsive age when "love acts independent of all law, and is subject to nothing but its own sweet will," no matter how many years father has toiled to give her the comforts of life, nor how many sleepless nights mother has spent to give her rest. She meets a young man; he is handsome, dresses well and talks fluently. She falls in love, and sees in "love at first sight," the "inspiration of all wisdom." In a week, though she knows nothing of the young man's character or disposition, she is ready to say to her parents: "I appreciate all you have done for me: I love you devotedly, but I have met such a nice fellow; he has asked me to marry him, and I have accepted; ta-ta!" She's gone. If her parents ask about the prospect for a living, she answers as did the young girl whose father said: "Mary, are you determined to marry that young man?"

"I am, Father."

"Why, my child, he has no trade, no money, and very little education; what are you going to do for a living?"