But stay—have the ladies no sins to answer for? May it not be just possible that the men are at last getting weary of rendering civilities to women who receive them as a matter of right, without even an acknowledging smile, or “Thank you?” May they not have tired of creeping, with an abject air, into cars and omnibusses, and gradually and circumspectly lowering themselves amid such billows of hoops and flounces? May they not at last have become disgusted at the absurd selfishness which ladies manifest on these occasions? the “sit closer, ladies,” of the conductors and drivers being met with a pouting frown, or, at best, the emigration of the sixteenth part of an inch to the right or left. And is it not a shame, that a deprecating blush should crimson a gentleman’s forehead because he ventures to seat himself, in a public conveyance, in the proximity of these abominable, limb-disguising, uncomfortable, monopolizing hoops? Women who are blessed with hips, should most certainly discard these nuisances, and women who are not, should know that narrow shoulders, and a bolster conformation, look more ramrod-y still, in contrast with this artificial voluminousness of the lower story.
And then the little girls! The idea of hunting under these humbugs of hoops, for little fairy girls, whose antelope motions are thus circumscribed, their graceful limbs hidden, and their gleeful sports checked—the monstrosity of making hideous their perfect proportions, and rendering them a laughing-stock to every jeering boy whom they meet; and—worse than all—the irreparable moral wrong of teaching them that comfort and decency must be sacrificed to Fashion! Bah!—I have no patience to think of it. I turn my pained eyes for relief to the little ragged romps who run round the streets, with one thin garment, swaying artistically to the motion of their unfettered limbs. I rush into the sculptor’s studio, and feast my eyes on limbs which have no drapery at all.
Yes, it is trying to feminine ankles and patience, to have gentlemen occupy ladies’ places in the “ladies’ cabin,” and gentlemen who do this will please consider themselves rebuked for it; but it is also disgusting, that women have not fortitude sufficient to discard the universal and absurd custom of wearing hoops. Nay, more, I affirm that any woman who has not faith enough in her Maker’s taste and wisdom, to prefer her own bones to a whale’s, deserves the fate of Jonah—minus the ejectment.
TO GENTLEMEN.
A CALL TO BE A HUSBAND.
Yes, I did say that “it is not every man who has a call to be a husband;” and I am not going to back out of it.
Has that man a call to be a husband, who, having wasted his youth in excesses, looks around him at the eleventh hour for a “virtuous young girl” (such men have the effrontery to be very particular on this point), to nurse up his damaged constitution, and perpetuate it in their offspring?
Has that man a call to be a husband, who, believing that the more the immortal within us is developed in this world, the higher we shall rank with heavenly intelligences in the next, yet deprecates for a wife a woman of thought and intellect, lest a marriage with such should peril the seasoning of his favorite pudding, or lest she might presume in any of her opinions to be aught else than his echo?
Has that man a call to be a husband, who, when the rosy maiden he married is transformed by too early an introduction to the cares and trials of maternity, into a feeble, confirmed invalid, turns impatiently from the restless wife’s sick-room, to sun himself in the perfidious smile of one whom he would blush to name in that wife’s pure ears?