Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses,
As they smelt music.’”
And cold shoulders were simultaneously turned upon the dark-haired and be-jewelled orator of amalgamation.
The dulcet-toned interrogator, who, to the surprise of all eyes, appeared a squabby, cottony, pale-eyed, thick-lipped, lymphatic-looking personage, who wore a wig clumsily, and had no vestige of hair upon brow or violet eyelids, proceeded, in mellifluous phrase—
“We did not come here to talk about private grievances. The sister who speaks so fiercely of our rights, in regard to marriage, had better have had a little experience on the subject. She is, I should judge, considerably the rise of forty, and has never yet been married; not even to one of the dark-browed children of Ham, towards whom she exhibits so decided a leaning. Now, I have been married six times already—(great sensation,)—and to white men, and gentlemen, at that; and consider myself, therefore, qualified to speak of marriage. Marriage is a great blessing; let her try it when she gets a chance, and she will find it so! (much bristling and fidgeting, the dark-haired woman looking daggers.) It isn’t marriage that is the great evil, against which we have to fight—nor it isn’t the slavery of the colored race, either. It is the slavery of our own race, of our own kith and kin, of our own blood and complexion. It is the emancipation of our own fathers, sons, and brothers, from the barbarous penalties of the penal code. Our erring fathers, sons, and brothers; it is their cause, my sisters, it is their cause we are called upon to vindicate. According to our brutal laws, one little frailty, to which we all may be subject,—one little slip, which any, the purest of us may make—subjects man to solitary incarceration for life, in which he is cut off from all loving communion with our sex; or to the horrible penalty of death by the rope! This, my beloved sisters, is the crying evil of the day; and man, cruel man, is in favor of such inflictions. We must soften his flinty heart, through our charms. It is our duty, it is our mission, to effect amelioration in favor of the erring classes. We are all erring; and in how much are we better than they?—except, that through our cunning, and in our cowardice, we have as yet escaped penalties which, under the same measure of justice, might as well have been visited upon us. I have visited the penitentiaries and prisons of many States, that I might carry consolation to the shorn and manacled children of oppression. I tell you that I have seen among them gods, whose shattered armor gleamed in light! I have seen Apollo, with his winged heel chained to a round-shot! I have witnessed more glorious effulg—”
“Hiss-s-s-s!” “Nonsense!”
“It was Mercury, the god of thieves, you saw with the round-shot at his heels!” said an oily voice; and, as all eyes turned in that direction, the forehead of the speaker flushed crimson while she proceeded—
“It is not man at all; it is we who shut ourselves up in tight frocks, who make hooks-and-eyes our jailors, and ribs of whalebone our strait-jackets! Let us first free ourselves physically, give our lungs and hearts room to play, and then we may talk about open battle with man for our rights. But, as it is, to speak thus, is nonsense. We are weak, while man is strong; we must fight him with other weapons than open force. While he laughs at our pretensions, let us, too, laugh at his foibles, and govern him through them. It was to consult, as to some consistent and uniform system, by which we should be enabled to accomplish this result, that we came together this afternoon. It has been well said, that our motto should be, ‘The end justifies the means.’ To the weak and the determined, this is a sacred creed, and we should go forth with it in our hearts, and act upon it in all our relations towards men. It should be our business to get possession of them, body and soul. We need their influence, to advance our views, to obtain our rights. We should be all things to all men; should believe in the Bible, in Fourier, in Swedenborg, in Joe Smith, or Mahomet, if necessary, so that the influence be gained. We must seek out everywhere men who hold places of power and public influence, and win them—not to our cause, for that would be hopeless—but to ourselves; and through ourselves to our cause. We must not scruple as to the means; for ‘the end justifies the means.’ We must find, by whatever stratagem, art, or intrigue, that may be available, the assailable points in the characters of those who may be of use to us, and secure them, at whatever risk of reputation; for, as we will secretly sustain each other, we will at once dignify ourselves and our cause into the position of martyrdom, and be able to take shelter behind the omnipotent cry of persecution. There we are safe.”
“Good!” “Good!” “Right!” “Right!” “Just the thing!” burst from all sides of the room; while the weather-beaten face,—that is, the forehead,—of the lithe, glib speaker flushed with momentary exultation, while she continued, with still greater emphasis—
“Thus banded, my sisters, if we are firm, faithful, and enduring, we may conquer the world. There is never a period when there is more than a dozen men who wield its destinies. There are nearly a dozen of us here present, and there are other spirits that I know, resolute and strong enough, to be our associates; let us resolve, then, to govern those who govern; and the romantic fragments of the life of a Lola Montes will have been firmly conjoined in the fact of a governing dynasty, the sceptre of which shall be upheld by woman.”