One fact I learned, both at this time and afterwards, namely, that men always sympathize with fallen and wretched women, while women themselves are the first to raise and cast the stone at them.
Why is this? Have not women as much feeling as men? Why, women are said to be made up entirely of feeling. How does it happen then that women condemn where men pity? Do they do this in the consciousness of their own superior virtue? Ah, no! for many of the condemning are no better than the condemned.
The reason is that men know the world, that is, they know the obstacles in the path of life, and they know that they draw lines to exclude women from earning an honest livelihood while they throw opportunities in their way to earn their bread by shame. All men are aware of this; therefore, the good as well as the bad give pity to those who claim it.
It is my honest and earnest conviction that the reason that men are unwilling for women to enter upon public or business life is not so much the fear of competition or the dread lest women should lose their gentleness, and thus deprive society of this peculiar charm, as the fact that they are ashamed of the foulness of life which exists outside of the house and home. The good man knows that it is difficult to purify it; the bad man does not wish to be disturbed in his prey upon society.
If I could but give to all women the tenth part of my experience, they would see that this is true, and would see, besides, that only faith in ourselves and in each other is needed to work out a reformation.
Let woman enter fully into business with its serious responsibilities and duties; let it be made as honorable and as profitable to her as to men; let her have an equal opportunity for earning competence and comfort—and we shall need no other purification of society. Men are no more depraved than women, or rather, the total depravity of mankind is a lie.
From the time of my leaving school until I was fifteen years old, my life was passed as I have described, in doing housework, attending the sick with my mother, and reading a few books of a scientific and literary character. At the end of this time, a letter came from an aunt of my mother’s, who was ill and whose adopted daughter (who was my mother’s sister) was also an invalid, requesting me to visit and nurse them. I went there in the fall.
This was probably the most decisive event of my life. My great-aunt had a cancer that was to be taken out. The other was suffering from a nervous affection which rendered her a confirmed invalid. She was a most peculiar woman, and a clairvoyant and somnambulist of the most decided kind. Though not ill-natured, she was full of caprices that would have exhausted the patience of the most enduring of mortals.
This aunt of mine had been sick in bed for seven years with a nervous derangement which baffled the most skillful physicians who had visited her. Her senses were so acute that one morning she fell into convulsions from the effect of distant music which she heard. None of us could perceive it, and we fully believed that her imagination had produced this result. But she insisted upon it, telling us that the music was like that of the Bohemian miners who played nothing but polkas. I was determined to ascertain the truth, and really found that in a public garden one and a half miles from her house such a troop had played all the afternoon. No public music was permitted in the city because the magistrate had forbidden it on her account.
She never was a Spiritualist, though she frequently went into what is now called a trance. She spoke, wrote, sang and had presentiments of the finest kind while in this condition, far better than I have ever seen here in America in the case of the most celebrated mediums.