He was impressed. He took her gently by the hand, pressed her to his palpitating bosom, and, looking into her deep liquid eyes, he said, “I love you.” He broke the chains that bound her, and, the wrist fetters being stubborn, he polished them into bracelets—and these are still worn as a rudiment of the earlier times. What “Papa” might say came later. The twain became one flesh—which one, has always been debatable.
Then it was arranged, with very considerable limitation, that they should be partners. She, the wooed-man, or woman, was to love, to serve, to obey, while he—furnished the superintendence.
The old system dropped out of use many centuries ago, and the new was a change, largely in form, hardly in fact.
The old fetters have rusted in the museums of the past. The club, that potent persuader of old, has been presented to the champion of the base-ball team, and the woman is at large. But as the priest now signs and sanctifies the bond, the change, in most countries, is still chiefly in the character of the fetters.
All people have traditions that help to justify the stronger in acts of oppression, and to conciliate the weaker in their vassalage.
But civilisation has grown—only with the emancipation of women. Just as the fetters have been removed from the brain, and soul, and conscience of woman, has the social ideal risen, has arbitrary force weakened, and have feeling and reason prevailed. The woman is the mother; from hereditary and prenatal influences come form and character.
How can a mother, with the feeling of inferiority, a feeling of subdued dependence, with no courage nor conscious individuality, bring forth brave, independent, high-minded offspring? Only by emancipated mothers can full-statured men be reared, and thus has the race crawled slowly forward.
For the snail-like pace of human progress, the world is more indebted to the past and political inequalities of the sexes than to all other retarding influences combined.
With the progress of science, with the physical forces of Nature harnessed by mental exploits, the relative positions of human muscle and human sentiment are changing, and, with a cultured reason, deeper affections and higher ideals invariably appear.
