With their
wives at home, and the readers of the paper, it was the same. And so
the stream flows on; thought urging action, and action leading to the
evolution of still better thought.
But, were this freedom to come suddenly, I have no fear of the
consequences. Individuals might commit excesses, but there is not only
in the sex a reverence for decorums and limits inherited and enhanced
from generation to generation, which many years of other life could
not efface, but a native love, in Woman as Woman, of proportion, of
"the simple art of not too much,"--a Greek moderation, which would
create immediately a restraining party, the natural legislators and
instructors of the rest, and would gradually establish such rules as
are needed to guard, without impeding, life.
The Graces would lead the choral dance, and teach the rest to regulate
their steps to the measure of beauty.
But if you ask me what offices they may fill, I reply--any. I do not
care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will. I do
not doubt there are women well fitted for such an office, and, if so,
I should be as glad to see them in it, as to welcome the maid of
Saragossa, or the maid of Missolonghi, or the Suliote heroine, or
Emily Plater.
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