Phemie Frost's Experiences Part 47

Dear sisters:--I wish you could have seen that stuck-up thing, with all the color taken out of her hair, perking herself up for an argument with me. All the people in the room had crowded round us, which set her all in a flutter.

"Oh, pray excuse me," says she, a-shaking her curls, "we are broaching into politics, and I a.s.sure you," says she, a-pr.i.m.m.i.n.g herself up, "I know nothing about such subjects."

"Why," says I, "you speak as if ignorance were something to be proud of."

"I--I do not pretend to know anything of politics, at any rate," says she, a-coloring up with inward madness.

"Indeed, what is politics," says I. "The history of the present? Why should the most refined lady on earth be ignorant of one period of history more than another?"

"Politics are things going on at the present time, and no real lady is expected to take interest in them," says she.

"What is the present time? The breath we are drawing--nothing more. That very breath has now gone into the past, which is history. All the rest is guess-work and prophecy," says I.

"Dear me, how strong-minded you are," says she, giving her curls a toss; "I suppose you would be splendidly eloquent on Woman's Rights too."

"No," said I, "all my life I have had more rights than I have known how to use, so I leave that question to persons who have no better field of ambition. Mine happens to be of a different kind. I want to make women wise, good, generous, faithful to duties that come down to them from their mothers. I want to improve women, miss, not turn them into contemptible men."

"By talking politics?" says she, as saucy as a sour apple; "what is the good of that if you don't go in for voting?"

"What is the good of any knowledge which may be turned into blessings by woman's influence?" says I, blandly.

"Then you believe that women ought to have influence in politics," says she.

"I think that women should have influence everywhere," said I, "but only as women. We are governed through the heart, and those finer portions of the intellect that people call taste. Men plant the grain and timber of every-day life with their strong hands, which G.o.d made for that very purpose. We women fill in the hollows and crevices and swelling banks with flowers and ferns and delicate shade-trees, which make the vigorous work of their strong hands beautiful."

Sisters, I said this to that stuck-up girl because I wanted to express an opinion on this subject--first, because it was my opinion, and again, because I know that it is yours, going as you do for it in a spirit of feminine spontaneosity. I don't want the nature of our Society misunderstood. We are not Woman's Righters, nor Woman's Wrongers, but straight out women, wanting nothing better on this earth than to be just as G.o.d made us, with a full, free, and generous development of all the femininities that belong to the s.e.x.

For my part, I don't want to be a man; his work is too rough and hard for me. His thoughts have too heavy and coa.r.s.e a grain. His clothes wouldn't fit me any better than his thoughts and duties.

We being women, according to a beneficent G.o.d's intention, have got enough to occupy a whole life in the same path that our good old New England mothers trod. We don't want to get out of that path into any other, and we don't mean to entice the children that are growing up amongst us into an idea that pure-thinking, hard-working womanliness isn't the highest and best destiny that G.o.d has yet given to his creatures.

I have no patience with women who scorn their own s.e.x so much that they would rather turn into weak, meddlesome men than work, study, bring up children, and live as high-souled, loving women should. As for voting and all that, it's just turning gold into bra.s.s, and getting nothing but the baser metal for change.

Why, influence is a thousand times sweeter and more certain than legal power, and that is given to every woman who loves and is beloved.

As for my part, I should be ashamed if I couldn't persuade ever so many men to do any right thing I wanted. Shouldn't I be a fool to swap off that influence for the rights that only one man owns for himself?

If women want power, let them be sweet, good, and persuasive, wise enough to have their opinions command respect, and bright enough to enforce them pleasantly. That is the way to move nations, if the mind of woman ever can do it. At any rate, it is the way to govern families and make them respectable in the next generation; and out of families nations are made.

"Have you ever noticed one thing?" says I to the people about me.

"Whenever women get dissatisfied with themselves and hanker after the rights of men, the very foundations of life seem to be breaking up all around us. Marriage ties fall into ashes like fire in hatcheled flax, morals are burned up, families torn to pieces, and society falls into revolt against law and religion. When women begin to hanker after votes, they hanker after divorces too, and, while they want unlimited power with men, throw away the n.o.blest of all power over men--that of honest respect and a sacred consciousness of protecting."

If women will break through all the delicate safeguards and childlike purity which keeps them so much above men, that they are aspired after and worshipped, let them take the consequences. To be hustled in conventions, hissed off from platforms, and received with hidden sneers by three-fourths of mankind, doesn't seem to me half so pleasant and respectable as the friendship of one's neighbors, and the love of one's own family; but, if they like it better, I haven't the least mite of an objection. Only such things force an honest woman into awful bad company once in a while, and it sometimes happens that ambition leads them to shake hands with persons that sweet charity itself could never persuade the best of them to touch with a ten-foot pole.

"Don't think," says I, "that I go against female progress, or would stop its infinite capabilities--far from it. There are questions mixed up with this subject that ought to have our warmest sympathy and most ardent help. Female labor is one of them, and in that lies the greatest moral question of these times.

"When a woman finds herself doing the work nature carved out for her, with a man crowding her out, doing no more, yet getting double pay, only because he happens to be a man, it is a burning shame and disgrace to both s.e.xes. If that injustice can't be swept away by fair means, I go in for trying any that a female woman can handle without bringing herself down to a level with the males who seem to be as sick of being men as some of our s.e.x are of being women.

"Still, it seems to me that the best way of doing this is by such appeals for justice as have brought the women of New York State more freedom than they know what to do with. At this day there is no legal slavery for any woman in the great Empire State. The fact is, the women there have got their feet on the necks of the men. But this don't satisfy them, and they are all the time crying out for more, as the Scripture says, like the leeches--which is a pa.s.sage of Scripture that I never have quite understood, because leeches in our day suck your _blood_ without asking, and I never yet heard of one who went farther than a bite in the way of crying out.

"Excuse me," says I, drawing breath, "if I sometimes digress, and turn down a Scripture path in search of scientific truth or ill.u.s.tration. I was saying that a woman in New York State is to all intents and purposes master of herself--herself and husband too. If she has money when a poor fellow marries her, it is all her own to do with as she has a mind to, just as much as if she had never been married at all. But he has to support her, anyway, keep up the house, pay all the bills, settle her debts, if she is mean enough to make them, and she can be h.o.a.rding up her own money all the time, while he has no more right to touch a cent of it than the man in the moon.

"More than this; when he dies, she comes in for a full third of his real estate for life, and has half his personal property, to sell, give away, or do with as she pleases. If _she_ dies, he cannot touch a red cent.

Then, again, she can sell all the real estate that belongs to her, without so much as asking his advice, but he cannot sell an acre or a wood-shed, and give a clear t.i.tle, without her written name to the deed.

Then, again, if he earns money, the law makes him support her; if she earns money, he has no right to a cent of it.

"Poor, downtrodden creatures are these women of New York State--don't you think so," says I. "Is it a wonder they get dissatisfied with their hardships, and hanker after more power, more freedom, and less work?

When marriage is so profitable, is it strange that some of them want a great deal of it, and go through the divorce courts three or four times with a rush, picking up sc.r.a.ps of alimony and leaving sc.r.a.ps of reputation along the way.

"If it wasn't that I mean to stand by my own s.e.x through thick and thin, I should say that the laws lean a trifle over on the woman's side in York State; but, being a woman, I keep a lively thinking, while the other poor, downtrodden souls rush to the women's rights meetings, and wring their hands in desperation over the wrongs I have just explained."

"But what has this to do with your Society?" says Cousin E. E.

"Everything. We are in for Infinite Progress. We want women to be all that G.o.d intended them to be--the full companions and helpmates of men.

We want them to cultivate all the Christian and kindly virtues, not only because they make women lovely and beloved, but because men are humanized, softened, and made better by such help and such companionship. When men seek peace, rest, the inspirations of prayer, they turn at once to us for tender guidance and sympathy. Would they do that if we elbowed them at the polls, or held knock-down arguments at the primary elections? No, no! If we can soften human misery, strengthen weakness, make women wiser and men better, it is all that the best woman among us can ask."

Sisters, I had got too much in earnest. I felt the blood come like a dash of wine into my face. It seemed to me as if I were on a platform, lecturing, and the thought covered me with confusion, like a crimson garment. I bent my head slightly, and went away dreadfully ashamed of myself.

LXII.

A TRIP TO ANNAPOLIS.

Dear sisters:--Another of those pleasant excursional entertainments which this nation gives to genius in the female line has been offered to me, and I accepted. For my part, I think the country ought to be encouraged in giving these little testimonials to her favored children.

She hasn't done much of that in former years, but has practised a good deal more on foreigners than she has ever thought of doing where home-made writers are concerned.

Them j.a.panee potentials always seem to go along when an entertainment is got up for me, and, if that didn't rather mix things up, I should be glad of it; for Mr. Iwakura is just splendid in his black coat and stovepipe hat, and talks beautifully with his little black eyes; I feel it in my bones he has not left a heathenish impediment behind, or anything that ought to stand between him and a wife who might carry fresh missionary spirit into his benighted land.

Of course, all the other j.a.panees were on hand, and seemed to feel proud and chipper, as if the party had been made for them instead of me; but I didn't mind that a bit. Even if they did think so, what harm? There is so much happiness in delusions, that I wouldn't rob those nice-looking heathens of one for the world.

Besides the j.a.panees, a very distinguished party had been invited to go with me, and I couldn't help but feel the whole thing a triumph.

There was Postmaster-General Creswell, with a head of hair and a beard that warmed you, it was so silky and bright. There was his wife, too, a real pretty creature, with manners as sweet as her face; and Mrs. Fish, almost a mate for a lady I will not name for queenliness; and Governor Cook with his wife. Besides these, there were lots of young people, and old people, and middle-aged people, filling car after car, till we had a whole train all to ourselves. The party was large, but so is a genuine New England heart, and I managed to make them all welcome in an off-handed, queenly way, which I hope was understood. It certainly was by Mr. Iwakura, who lifted his stovepipe hat and bowed like a native Vermonter before he sat down.

Sisters, I do think there is a meaning in that--a j.a.panee isn't likely to study the elegancies of our manners for nothing. Still, I wish he wasn't a heathen. The Greek Church of Russia sat heavy on my conscience, but a heathen! I shall have to meet all this politeness with the icy chill of Christian reserve, unless--the thing is possible, for, to love, all things are so--that heathen should adopt our religion with the stovepipe hat.

There was a thing that troubled me a good deal before I came away from the hotel that morning. I have been told that Mr. Grant and our Vermont statesman have got up a little spirit of rivalry about being President--a thing I never dreamed of, they seemed such good friends, and, till now, I thought Mr. Grant had kind of half invited his old friend to take the chair. But it isn't so by any manner of means, and I'm afraid there may be some little dispute about it in the end, which will be unpleasant to those who like them both.

Now, sisters, here comes in the benefit of being a female, which is great in such perplexing cases. Female women are not expected to be consistent, and they're not expected to take sides for any great length of time. They can just climb any fence that comes handy, and sit on it with the dignity of hen turkeys at sundown if they have a mind to, and no one has a right to scare them up. But, considering myself as an exceptional female, whose duty it is to have ideas, I scorn the fence, and come right up to the crib, corn or no corn.

It is a duty I owe to the State, and from that I shall never turn aside.

Besides--I own it boldly--in this case duty and a hilarious state of pleasure unite and make me jubilant as a Fourth of July salute. I like Greeley because he is first-rate as an author, an editor, and a man. I admire Grant as a brave soldier and as a man too, but then, the old State! I don't care who knows it--from this day out, white is my color.

But, feeling this in my very bones, how could I accept the great national compliment of a special train filled with admiring friends from the Government, which is General Grant?