Wit, humor, reason, rhetoric, prose, poetry and story woven into eight popular lectures

by George W. Bain

Now if public sentiment has made such a mistake in the allotment of virtues, why may it not have made a greater mistake in the allotment of spheres? It has been well said: "God made woman a free moral agent, capable of the highest development of brain, heart and conscience; with these are interwoven interests that involve issues for time and eternity, and God expects of woman the best she can do in whatever field she is best fitted for the accomplishment of results for the world's good." If a young woman is fitted to preside over a home, and some young man desires to crown her queen of that realm, she can find no higher calling in this world. There is nothing on this earth more like heaven than a happy home. I can give to a young woman no better wish than that the future may find her presiding over a home made beautiful by her character and culture, and safe through her influence.

But if a young woman is qualified like Frances E. Willard to better the world by public life-work, or like Florence Nightingale or Jane Addams to relieve the suffering of thousands, then she should not confine herself to the limited sphere of one household. I believe in the call of capacity for usefulness in both sexes. There are men who are called to be cooks; they know the art of the caterer. There are men fitted to be dressmakers; they know the colors that blend and the styles which give beauty to dress. There are women who are fitted for science, literature and medicine. Some of the best cooks we have are men; some of the best writers and speakers are women. Abraham Lincoln never did more by his proclamation to free the slave, than did Harriet Beecher Stowe with "Uncle Tom's Cabin." William E. Gladstone never did more to endear himself to the people of Ireland by his advocacy of the home-rule, than has Lady Henry Somerset endeared herself to the common people of the "United Kingdom," by turning away from the wealth, nobility and aristocracy of England to devote her great heart, gifted brain and abundant means to the elevation of the masses, the reformation of the wayward, and the relief of the poor.

There is a fitness that must not be ignored. Frances E. Willard would never have made a dressmaker. It is said she did not know when her own dress fit, or whether becoming; she depended upon Anna Gordon to decide for her. But by the music of her eloquence and the rhythm of her rhetoric, she could send the truth echoing through the hearts of her hearers like the strain of a sweet melody. Worth, of Paris, France, would not have made an orator, but he could design a robe to please a princess and make a dress to fit "to the queen's taste." Then let Worths make dresses, and Frances E. Willards charm the world by their eloquence.

Yonder is a boy. His soul is full of music; his fingers are as much at home on the key-board of a piano as a mocking-bird in its own native orange grove. His sister is a mathematician; she solves a problem in mathematics as easily as her brother plays a piece of music. Because one is a boy and the other a girl, don't make the girl teach music and the boy mathematics. What God has joined together in fitness, let not false education put asunder.

Recently I read of a man whose father left him a large business. Though an exemplary man he could not make ends meet in a business out of which his father had made a fortune. The man worried himself into nervous prostration. While he remained at home for rest, his wife took charge of the business and made of it a great success. I say let that woman run the business and the man take care of his nerves.

I know a minister who is a good man, but his strength is in his limbs. He's an athlete, but turn him loose in a field as full of ideas as a clover field of blossoms, and he can't preach a good sermon. Let Dr. Anna Shaw enter the same field and she will gather blossoms of thought faster than you can store them away in your mind. Some one in my presence may believe the man should keep on preaching and Anna Shaw go to the sewing-room and run a sewing machine; but I say if the man's strength is in his limbs, and Doctor Shaw's in her head, let the preacher run the sewing machine and Doctor Shaw preach the gospel of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. If God fitted Anna Shaw's brain and tongue for the platform, it would be unwomanly in her to make herself the pedal power of a sewing machine. We want successful, useful men and women; and in fields for which God has fitted woman, don't be afraid to give her the freest, broadest liberty, or be uneasy about her unsexing herself. She has entered two hundred fields in the last one hundred years. Yes, I guess one more field must be added, for I saw a woman a few years ago in an occupation I had never seen one engaged in before. In a city where I lectured a beautiful, intelligent young lady was running the elevator of a hotel, and I was completely "taken up" by her.

Of all the new fields entered by woman you cannot point to one where she has degraded her womanhood, or one that has not been blessed by the touch of her influence.

It is true there are fanatics among women as there are among men, but if the extreme woman goes too far, the average woman will call a halt every time. Fifteen years ago I could stand on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in the evening and within a half hour count twenty young women, dressed in bloomers, riding bicycles. Now one may go to Chicago, spend a year and not see one. Woman is safe enough.

Some are uneasy lest woman will go beyond her sphere, but I am not so much disturbed about the future of woman as I am of man. Upon virtue and intelligence depends the future of this republic. Have men all the virtue? Go to the saloons; are they frequented by women? No; men. Go to the gambling halls; are they crowded with women? No; men. Go to the jails and penitentiaries; are they full of women? No; men. Go to the churches; are they crowded with men? No; mostly by women. What about intelligence? Have men all the intelligence? Two girls graduate from high schools to one boy. I am glad to be living now; one hundred years hence, if I were to be born again, I would want to be a girl. Woman goes to the door of death to give life to man and man should be willing to let her seek out her own sphere for usefulness.