While the boy, hat in hand, rushes to the common or rear yard to roll hoop, fly his kite, or, in winter, to skate or coast down hill, the girl is reminded that she has “one whole hour to practise at the piano,” either in a darkened room, from whence all God’s sunshine is excluded, cold and cheerless, or the other extreme—seated near a heated register, from which the dry, poisonous fumes belch forth, destroying the pure oxygen she requires to inflate her narrowing lungs, and increase the fibrine, the muscle, and strength necessary to the exhausting exercise. She closes the day by eating a bit of cake and a plate of preserves.
The hungry, “neglected” boy has returned, and, with swift coursing blood, strength of muscle and brain, catches a glance at his neglected lesson, comprehending it all the quicker by the change he has enjoyed, bawls boisterously for some cold meat, or something hearty, and tumbles into his bed, forgetting to close the door or window; whereas the girl must be attended to her room, “she is so delicate,” and, being tucked well in on a sweltering feather bed, and bound down by heavy blankets, the doors and windows are carefully secured, and, committed to the “care of Providence,” she is left to swelter till to-morrow.
The period for a great change arrives, often catching the poor, uninformed girl completely by surprise. Furthermore, the constant deprivation of her natural requirements—pure air, wholesome, nutritious food, unrestrained limbs and lungs—now become more apparent. In spite of the constant drilling which she has received, she feels exceedingly gauche. Her face is alternately pale and flushed; she suffers from headache,—“a rush of blood to the head.” Stays and tight-lacing have weakened the action of the heart, cut off the circulation to the extremities, and deprived those parts of blood which now require the nutriment necessary to their strength and support in the time of their greatest need.
The ignorant mother sends for a physician, perhaps almost as ignorant as herself; or, what is still worse, being a miserable time-server, seeing the admirable opportunity for making a bill, straightway commences a course of deception and quackery that, if it do not result in the death of the unfortunate patient, leaves her a miserable creature for life, with spinal curvature or consumption; or worse, by confinement and medication destroy her chance of restoration; and should some unlucky and ignorant young man take her as wife, and she become a mother, she surely will drag out a wretched existence as a victim to uterine displacement and its concomitant results.
Physically, morally, and intellectually woman is not born inferior to man. We have briefly shown where and how she has fallen behind in the race of life in a physical view of the matter. The intellectual sense has kept pace only with the physical. Morally woman stands alone; by her own strength or weakness she stands or falls. Man scarcely upholds or encourages her. Her own sex, we have herein-before stated, is woman’s own worst enemy! “Be thou as chaste as ice, or pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny,” and if she fall, who shall restore her? The whole world is against her; one half makes her what she is, the other’s scorn and neglect keeps her thus! The “ballot” will not keep woman from falling, nor raise her when fallen. The “church” does not exempt woman from the wiles of men, nor its adherents raise the fallen to their pristine strength, beauty, and respectability! Though Christ, the lowly, the magnanimous, said, “Neither do I condemn thee,” his followers (?) cannot lay their hands upon their hearts and repeat his gracious words. Where is the fallen woman whom the church (not Roman Catholic) ever took in with that good faith and spirit of sisterly love or brotherly affection, with which a fallen man can, and is, often received into the church and into society?
Echo answers, “Where?”
O, deny this who will! It is no “attack upon the church;” merely a lamentably truthful statement.
The church, like society, withdraws her skirts from contact with the fallen sister. “She is a wreck, drifted upon our shore, for which God holds some one accountable. Not a wreck that can be restored—not a wreck that money or repentance can atone for.” (What! not money? Then surely she is lost, and forever!) “The damage is beyond earthly knowledge to estimate, beyond human power of indemnification. If ever the erring soul shall retrace her steps, it will be Christ himself who shall lead her; if ever peace shall brood again over her spirit, it will be the Comforter who shall send the white-winged dove.
“But the merest lad detects the lost woman. She carries the evidences of her guilt (or misfortune?) in the very clothes she wears, whether she is the richly dressed courtesan of the Bowery, or the beggarly street-walker of the village. There is a delicacy in, and a fine bloom on the nature of woman, which impurity smites with its first breath, and she cannot conceal the loss nor cover the shame!”
“If there be but one spot upon thy name,
One eye thou fearest to meet, one human voice
Whose tones thou shrinkest from, Woman! veil thy face,
And bow thy head and die!”