THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.
533
These lady horticulturists did a good deal of grafting; they sold young rose plants, and some cut flowers; had a few shops in London and other towns which they managed and supplied. They found that the roses which were most valued were those that, to my mind, were ugly little enormities. A small, all but black,, rose, only redeemed from entirely resembling an undertaker’s rosette by a faint carnation flush, which in the eyes of its growers was its one fault; a tiny green rose, like a pale and bilious Brussel sprout among the darker foliage, and a small orange-colored rose, recalling a double king cup without its gloss. These floral aristocrats had a corner of the garden to themselves, fared delicately, and were sheltered from every blast and every parasite with the tenderest solicitude. May they long retain their exclusiveness!
Old ecclesiastical chronicles sometimes solicit our admiration for St. Thomas or St. Somebody Else, because he never doffed his penitential hair shirt, nor washed and anointed his body. If being uncomfortable were virtue, virtuous indeed those dirty old monks must have been. Well-born ladies, too, would dry a beggar’s feet with the hem of their garments to show their lowliness of mind, and walk about humbly in miserable, scrappy under-vests for the glorification of their creed. Our nineteenth century ladies have left them far behind. With the hem of costly gowns they do not dry a tramp’s feet that have first been well soaped; no, they sweep up the dust tramps have carried in on unwashed feet from the slums of our great cities, mingled, perhaps, with the refuse of garbage dogs disdained.
Well may they wear those large hats so much the fashion now. Are they not nineteenth century halves? Fit circlets for those who humble themselves to the dust! Our own young men and maidens vie with each other in boating, cricket and golfing. The common, sensible and not unsightly costumes worn during these favorite pastimes are influencing the costumes of working hours and social intercourse. Dress need neither be ugly nor masculine because they are clothes instead of fetters. Indoor trailing garments may be graceful, but even then no garment should be a hindrance.
Women are very eloquent nowadays on what is due to them. “ Rights! ” “ Franchise! ” “ Equality! ” is the burden of a good many speeches.
“ When I contemplate the vicious brutality of tyrant man,” remarked a lady speaker when I was last in London, to a deeply interested audience, “ I am not only glad to be formed in a different mold; I regret that I do not belong to a different genus of created being! ”
After all, one must have something to make speeches out of, and if “brutal man” is the topic of the day, why not discuss him? Reaction will surely set in! It always does. In twenty or thirty years we shall probably be devoted to worsted work and cooing gently. If we progress as we are doing now, the pinnacle will soon be reached.
Nevertheless, at no time have women been such eager candidates for the servitude of government as today, and in fairness be it added, at no time have a greater number been willing to serve the rough apprenticeship that alone can fit them for holding the reigns of government.
The avocations of English women are numerous. We have thousands of lady clerks, typewriters, bookkeepers, cashiers, shop girls, governesses, postoffice and telegraph clerks, sick nurses, a few lady doctors and dispensers of medicine, matrons of hospitals, etc., but the time is too short and my paper too circumscribed to give you all these in detail; suffice it to say that all these women, each in their own specialty, are earning their living nobly and well.
Chopping wood with a razor, and shaving with a hatchet, are laborious, even dangerous, tasks. The razor and the hatchet may be most excellent and useful tools, each in its way and used in the manner its maker intended; but reverse and exchange the work you consigned to them and the chances are ten to one they will cut your fingers, or even your throat. So it is with man and woman—they are each perfect in and fitted for their own sphere, but there is danger and disaster in one climbing into the place of the other. To fill her place fitly is not the ideal of woman’s life!
Perhaps the time is not far off when the relative positions of trivial and great