A daughter of the greatest living French poet passed the examination lately for the mere honor of it. Another girl, the daughter of one of the highest public functionaries, passed the examinations; going through the winter twilight every morning at five, that she might not only be permitted to found a school on her estate, but secure the right to teach in it. Aware that her rank would befriend her, she concealed her name that she might owe nothing to favor. That is the right spirit. When a majority, or even a plurality, of women are capable of it, farewell to lecturers and lectures, to conventions, special pleadings, and the like! The whole harvest will be open, and the laborers will come, bringing their sheaves with them.
In receiving lately a letter from a distinguished French author,—Madame Sirault,—I was struck by the following sentence: "Every career from which woman is steadily repulsed by man is, by this fact alone, marked with the seal of death. The very repulse stigmatizes it. Man may not be conscious of what he does; but the career which is too vile for a woman to enter has outlived all chance of reform, and must perish with its abuses."
And, heroic as this statement may seem to you, it is a simple statement of fact. Can man demand of woman a higher purity, a more ideal Christian grace, than the letter of the Scripture, than the spirit of Christ, demands of man himself?—"Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is also perfect."
That was the clear command laid upon the simple fishermen, upon Luke the physician and Matthew the publican, as well as upon Mary and Martha. The world's eyes are slowly opening to the need of a pure life in men; and it helps to show men what they ought to be, when women knock at the doors of their workshops, and insist on entering.
"What!" says the soldier, "must my sister follow me to the field to take this blood-stained hand; to see me decked in the spoils of fallen men; or hunting unprotected women like a brute beast, till they fall senseless on the bodies of those they loved?"
"Shut her out!" cries the minister of state. "Shall my sister see these hands, dripping with blood-money, bribed by a slave power or a party interest, signing papers that condemn children yet unborn to the miseries of hopeless war?"
"Shut her out!" cries the advocate. "I am preparing to defend this man for luring helpless innocence to the brink of hell, for building up a fortune on dollars wrung from starving women, for putting a bullet through his brother because he did not live a life purer than his own."
"Turn her out!" cries the judge. "She will see that my scales are loaded. She heard that railroad company offer me a bribe. She caught a whisper just now from the husband of yonder outraged woman. She will hear the liquor dealer's counsel, and see the golden lure that South Carolina offers when the fugitive stands at the bar. Turn her out!"
"Turn her out!" says the physician. "Shall she hear me jeer at what she deems holy? Would you have her grow shameless also?"