“Nurse their brats, forsooth!”
“We must circumvent them as we can, to obtain our ‘rights!’”
“Yes! yes! All stratagems are fair in love and war!”
Suddenly sprang to her feet a very emphatic, stout woman, straight and thick-set, with soiled cap, coarse, stubby, grayish hair, sparse, silvery bristles on her chin, gray, savage eyes, and large fists, which she brought down with a crash upon the frail chair-back which constituted the bulwark of her position. In a voice of creaking bass, she exclaimed—
“The sister is right—they are our oppressors; but it is because we have been cowards enough to yield them the supremacy; it is nothing but our own cowardice that is to blame. Man knows, as well as any other animal, on which side his bread is buttered; we have only got to learn him what and where his place is, and he will keep it. When I first married, I had some trouble with my Jonas; but I soon taught him that he had better be back again in the whale’s belly, than employed in trenching upon my ‘woman’s rights!’ (A general disposition to laugh, which was, however, frowned down by the dignified Priestess.)
“It is true, my sisters; we have only to assert our rights, and take them! Man will never dare to rebel, if we are resolute. Overwhelm him with our strength—make him feel his littleness beside us, and he will slink into any hole to hide. I am myself in creed a non-resistant—(suppressed laughter.) I do not believe in pummelling truth into man; forced conversions do not last, and should not. But I will tell you what sort of conversions I do believe in; they are spiritual. Bow, bend, aye, break his spirit to your will, and then he is yours; instead of being slave to him, he is your slave. This is what we want. When he can be reduced to obedience, then he will be happy; for when he has accepted us as his spiritual guides, and no longer dreams of lifting his thoughts in rebellion, then will he always go right. They themselves are for ever confessing, that without us, as mothers, they would never—the greatest of them—arrive at any thing; that they owe it all to us—all their greatness, all their goodness. Let us take the hint, and hold the spiritual birch over them always, and they will ever remain obedient, for their own good.”
This speech was received with very general approbation; though, that all did not recognise it as orthodox, became immediately apparent. A tall, thin, cadaverous-looking lady, with excessively black hair, and eyes that literally glistered as she rose—the huge ear-rings and multifarious trinkets about her person quivering with excitement—exclaimed, in a shrill voice—
“It is false! it is not true that we desire to make slaves of man. We are opposed to slavery—to slavery of all sorts; and, although man deserves, on account of his oppressions of the poor negro, to be made a slave of, if human slavery were to be tolerated, yet we desire rather to return good for evil; and all we ask is equality in the Senate, in the Presidential chair, on the bench of justice, in the counting-house and workshop. We want our rights; our right to marriage as a mere civil contract—our right to choose with whom we shall enter into that contract, whether colored or white man, and our right to annul that contract when it pleases us. What kind of freedom is it, when, if I choose to marry a man of color, no matter how noble he may be, I am to be mobbed and driven out of the society of my race; while, if I am so unfortunate as to marry a white man, who turns out to be a brute and tyrant, as he is most like to do, and attempt to rid myself of the horrid incubus, by leaving him, or by suing him for a divorce, I am equally mobbed by the hue-and-cry, and banished from society as an outlaw? We want our rights in marriage—we want equality. I can—”
Here the speaker was interrupted by a voice marvellously flute-like and lingering in its intonations:
“‘At which, like unbacked colts, they pricked their ears,