" Can gallantry go
further?
In this country is venerated, wherever seen, the character which
Goethe spoke of as an Ideal, which he saw actualized in his friend and
patroness, the Grand Duchess Amelia: "The excellent woman is she, who,
if the husband dies, can be a father to the children." And this, if
read aright, tells a great deal.
Women who speak in public, if they have a moral power, such as has
been felt from Angelina Grimke and Abby Kelly,--that is, if they speak
for conscience' sake, to serve a cause which they hold sacred,--invariably
subdue the prejudices of their hearers, and excite an interest
proportionate to the aversion with which it had been the purpose to
regard them.
A passage in a private letter so happily illustrates this, that it
must be inserted here.
Abby Kelly in the Town-House of ----.
"The scene was not unheroic--to see that woman, true to humanity and
her own nature, a centre of rude eyes and tongues, even gentlemen
feeling licensed to make part of a species of mob around a female out
of her sphere. As she took her seat in the desk amid the great noise,
and in the throng, full, like a wave, of something to ensue, I saw her
humanity in a gentleness and unpretension, tenderly open to the sphere
around her, and, had she not been supported by the power of the will
of genuineness and principle, she would have failed.
Pages:
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140