im 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



JUNB 



Eating One's Self. — As one of the Hudson 

 River steamboats was about leaving the wharf on 

 Saturday, two sturdy fellows were seen bustling 

 through the crowd, Avith as much impatience as 

 if they feared she would fly before they could 

 get hold of her. Too eager to wait till he had 

 fairly reached her, one of them, to the infinite 

 amusement of the passengers and by-standers, 

 vociferated an application in his broad, just-come- 

 over dialect, as follows : "Captain ! captain ! or 

 are you the mate ? (and not waiting for an ans- 

 wer,) what will you ax to sail us to Albany — an' 

 you to ate us ? or what will you ax and we to ate 

 ourselves ?" 



LADIES' DEPARTMENT. 



FAIR PLAY FOB. WOMEN. 

 At the Lowell Institute last evening, Geo. W. 

 Curtis, Esq., of New York, delivered his lecture 

 on "Fair Play for Women." There was a very 

 fine audience present. He began by congratu- 

 lating himself that on the theme he had chosen, 

 there was no lyceum, no church, no party, not 

 even a committee, to be compromised by any plain 

 speaking. This, though a new subject, had already 

 a literature of its own. It already counted a 

 brilliant list of advocates ; and many views which 

 might seem novel, or, at least, unusual to his au- 

 dience, were as familiar to those who had serious 

 thought of the question as "the flowers of May ;" 

 and when we saw that something might be done, 

 we would soon enough begin to consider how it 

 should be done. Just in the degree that the 

 world advanced, every question of right and re- 

 sponsibility in human relations was sure to come 

 to the most certain discussion. It did no good to 

 lose our tempers and call bad names. We might 

 indeed suppress debate when the subject was but 

 an infant, by laughing merrily ; but when the poor 

 little baby of a question that we laughed at had 

 grown to be a vigorous problem, determined to 

 be resolved, without the slightest respect for bu 

 aboo, and quite able to endure being called vul- 

 gar and atheistic, and all the other cries of mad- 

 dog, and when it become strong enough to hold 

 our fists and pummel us with its own, we Avould 

 very soon have to come to terms, or be reduced 

 to an intellectual and moral jelly. So, in our day, 

 the Avoman's question was coming to be quite 

 robust. It might be an infant still, but it was a 

 very noisy infant, and certainly Avas doing quite 

 as well as could be expected. The question 

 whether women have the same fair play for their 

 faculties in the world that men have for theirs 

 had become an absorbing and all important query 

 indeed, and was not likely to be extinguished with 

 a sneer, or put ofi' with sops and sugar much Ion 

 ger. The question Avas not whether Avomen Avere 

 men, or Avhether there were diff"i.rences of duties 

 arising from difl'erence of sex. In a general and 

 poetic Avay, man might be called the head, and 

 Avoman the heart ; man the intellectual and di- 

 recting force, Avomanthe receptive and modifying 

 genius. It is an instinctive requirement that 

 every AVoman should be essentially womanly — 

 though Avomanly could not be defined — as it Avas 

 that every man should be truly manly. The sexes 

 had their domestic relations in common, but each 

 had duties and claims beyond the kitchen and 



nursery. But, notAvithstanding this, the inferior 

 position of woman in human society was apparent 

 equally in the history of savage and of civilized 

 nations. 



Among primitive nations woman belonged to 

 the man who seized her first ; and the earlier 

 books of the Old Testament showed hoAV she was 

 regarded by the Hebrews, who were polygamists, 

 and among whom she was kept and sold like 

 slaves. St. Paul was ahvays a Jcav in regard to 

 woman, and many of the early Christian Fathers 

 wtre positive pagans in their notions as to her 

 duties and position. [Here the lecturer discussed 

 the position of Avoman under the Egyptians, the 

 Grecians, the Romans, among the Oriental nations 

 and the Northern races, tracing her social prog- 

 ress through the chivalric and Elizabethan ages, 

 doAvn to more recent times.] In the history of 

 literature, as shoAving the position of AVoman, he 

 knew nothing more touching or beautiful than 

 the words that well out of all the filth of the sev- 

 enteenth century, Avritten by a London hosier, 

 who proposed, in his essay on "Projects," the 

 plan of a college for Avoman, and declared, in a 

 strain of simple, poetic, manly respect, unequalled 

 since Shakspeare, but indicative of the general 

 sentiment of his day : "I cannot think that God 

 made them so delicate, so glorious creatures, to 

 be only safeguards of his house, drudges and 

 slaves. A AVoman Avell-bred and Avell-taught, fur- 

 nished Avith all the additional accompaniments of 

 knoAvledge and behavior, is a creature without 

 comparison ; her society is the emblem of sub- 

 limer enjoyments. She is all softness and sweet- 

 ness, love, Avit and delight." 



In the eighteenth century women Avere the 

 toasts of convivial hours, the toys of passionate 

 moments, the puppets of a court, the slaves of 

 parents and of brothers, the drudges of the 

 household and of the field. In England, a Judge 

 gravely held from under his horsehair wig, that a 

 man might beat his wife Avith a stick as large as 

 his thumb, and thcAvomen immediately petitioned 

 him to know the size of the judicial thumb. But 

 if it had not been larger than his wit or his sym- 

 pathy, a cord of such sticks Avould not have made 

 a baby tingle. 



The Avhole theory of modern society Avas that 

 of the Cochin China proverb, that Avomen'sheai-ts 

 bear a good deal of breaking ; and Goody Bar- 

 lowe, toAvards the'end of Avhat was called and is 

 called the sphere of Avoman, when she simpered, 

 in her languid verses on floAvers : 



"Gay without toil, and lovely without art, 

 They sjjring to cheer the sense anfl glad the heart ; 

 Nor blusli, ray fair, to own you copy these, 

 Your best, your sweetest empire is to please." 



This was precisely the sentiment urged by ev- 

 ery slave-merchant upon every Circassian girl 

 that he brought to the market at Constantinople, 

 and precisely the same lesson Avas inculcated by 

 scheming mammas in Paris, London, New York 

 and Boston. 



Mr. Curtis proceeded to vindicate the right 

 and capacity of Avomen to take rank Avith men in 

 the studio, the school-room — in all efforts for the 

 social amelioration of both sexes, and concluded 

 by ably and eloquently urging her claims to the 

 right of suflFrage, and answering all objections 

 thereto. He was enthusiastically apjjlauded 

 throughout. — Boston Journal, 6th. 



