“Resolved that, while we part with our friends with sincere regret, our warmest wishes for their future welfare will go with them to their new home, and we shall always hear of their prosperity with the greatest satisfaction.
“The serious part of the proceedings having been gotten along with, music and dancing were introduced and the festivities were prolonged to a late hour, when the assembly dispersed and all retired to their homes with a consciousness of having discharged their duty to valued friends who were about removing from their midst.
“The whole of the proceedings passed off most agreeably and pleasantly, and we regard the affair as the very highest compliment that could have been paid to those in whose honor it was gotten up.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] From Seneca County Courier, Dec. 1853.
CHAPTER SEVENTH.
AN ASSISTANT EDITOR.
On taking up her residence in Mount Vernon, Mrs. Bloomer became assistant editor of the Western Home Visitor, of which her husband was editor and one of the proprietors. This was a weekly family paper, having a large circulation and printed in folio form on a large sheet. It was devoted to educational progress and all reformatory questions designed to advance the interests of the community in which it circulated. It advocated temperance and sound morality, and its columns were filled weekly with matter appropriate to be read in the family circle. Its columns contained no advertisements, and it depended for its support solely on its patrons’ yearly subscriptions. We give below Mrs. Bloomer’s salutatory, and also her first additional article on assuming her position as assistant editor:
“Salutatory. Following the custom set to me by my husband, I make my editorial bow to the readers of the Visitor. I suppose it is not necessary for me to enter into any detailed account of myself, as the papers have already done that for me. Neither do I suppose it necessary to make any statements in regard to my sentiments and principles, as they are already generally well known to the public. What I have been in the past, I expect to be in the future,—an uncompromising opponent of wrong and oppression in every form, and a sustainer of the right and the true, with whatever subject it may be connected. I have no promises to make, preferring to stand uncommitted and at liberty to write as the spirit moves me, or as the circumstances of the case may require. Having a separate organ of my own independent of any other paper or person through which I can speak forth my sentiments on the great reform questions of the day, freely and independently, I probably shall not introduce into the columns of the Visitor anything particularly obnoxious on those subjects; yet I may frequently come in contact with old prejudices and bigoted notions, for it is impossible for the free progressive spirit of the present day to be bound by the opinion and prejudices of a former age. I trust, however, that my readers will bear with me and listen to me even though they do not approve, and if I say anything very bad, attribute it to my womanly folly or ignorance. And, as it is but right that I should bear whatever censure my doings may deserve, I shall write over my own initials in all matters of any moment. With this much for an introduction I extend to you, readers of the Visitor one and all, a cordial greeting, and wish you not only a ‘Happy New-Year’ but that it may prove happy and prosperous to you to its close.”
“Woman’s Right to Employment. To woman equally with man has been given the right to labor, the right to employment for both mind and body; and such employment is as necessary to her health and happiness, to her mental and physical development, as to his. All women need employment, active, useful employment; and if they do not have it, they sink down into a state of listlessness and insipidity and become enfeebled in health and prematurely old simply because denied this great want of their nature. Nothing has tended more to the physical and moral degradation of the race than the erroneous and silly idea that woman is too weak, too delicate a creature to have imposed upon her the more active duties of life,—that it is not respectable or praiseworthy for her to earn a support or competence for herself.