WOMAN'S EMPLOYMENT. 481 



■cally useless studies from the curriculum, and give us a practical and manual 

 training for the youth. 



Our child is taken from our control at a tender age; we are taxed for his 

 education, and we of a right demand that our whole child be developed in 

 the best possible manner to make him a good citizen. We do not want the 

 children overfed physically, neither overtaxed mentally. We want head work 

 and hand work, and a moral training irrespective of any sect, simply to make 

 the best men and women for the future. 



My friends, there are still greater heights to climb than those to which 

 woman has risen since paganism and these are to work for the more perfect 

 education and elevation of our sons and daughters. Women, under the law, 

 have the consolation of knowing they are classed with idiots, paupers and 

 children, inasmuch as they are debarred from exercising the right of fran- 

 chise, but how grateful are we that we may have a voice in the education of 

 our offspring. 



Nature is compensatory. If we as women have disabilities, still are they 

 equitably balanced by commensurate privileges. So men and women in the 

 matter of education are equals, but not identical associates — not rivals. New 

 truths are unfolding to our view hour after hour, like the perfumed petals of 

 beautiful flowers through the long summer days. Not without storms, but 

 all the better for the purification and vigor they impart, and those coming 

 after will gather in our treasures of experience and knowledge. And in pro- 

 portion as women come to recognize as their highest standard of work, the 

 elevation of themselves and the youth in general, in that proportion will their 

 labor be a success. 



But whatever we find to do, let us glory in being women, and let us go 

 forward earnestly and valiantly to accomplish our work, firm in the convic- 

 tion and fearless in our assertions that with our best moral and intellectual 

 development whatever is noble and honorable for man to pursue is equally so 

 for ourselves. 



WOMAN'S EMPLOYMENT. 



BY MRS. GEORGE A. PERET. 

 [Read at the Charlotte Institute, February, 1887.] 



Much is being said and written nowadays upon the subject of " Woman's 

 employment;" how "far she shall go and no farther;" why she shall go at 

 all, outside the limits of her conceded " sphere," what she shall receive for 

 ^' going," and how the departure will affect herself and humanity. 



We are told by a recent contributor to the North American Review that 

 "there is growing a widespread neglect of and opposition to marriage because 

 women are beginning to find out that they can support themselves." Some- 

 one says in the Popular Science Monthly " that the present effort of woman 

 to invade the higher forms of labor is battling with the established order of 

 sexual relations," that "the Almighty has established bounds beyond which 

 woman cannot go without defeating the primary object of her creation." A 

 contributor to the Pall Mall Gazette takes the opposite extreme and urges 



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