Page:A Few Hours in a Far Off Age.djvu/49

50 that the vanity of those semi-brutes in the past closed women's mouths, crippled her intellectual exertions, enacted that she had not enough brain to learn, and availed themselves of every means "divine"—so they "piously" called it—or any other, to degrade the muscularly weaker sex, and that they should have promulgated theories, unsound as conceited, laudatory of the greater brute; but now that there has grown higher intellect in all human kind, it is full time men should repair, as far as possible, those most calamitous injuries to our species which have been brought about through their selfish devotion to the lack-brain errors of our ancestors. Ever since the first important record of men's speech they have branded women as false, illogical, immoral and weak-minded. Whenever they wish to very much insult one of their own sex they liken him to a woman. Anybody who reads current literature frequently sees the following sickeningly ignorant phrases, disgracing manhood and what, in other respects, are cleverly-written articles:—"Scolding like au enraged Woman," "With truly feminine vindictiveness," "Woman's tongue, never still," "Illogical as a woman," and many similar which most people have seen, and, excepting small-brained males, are quite weary of seeing. And all this unmerited abuse of unoffending woman is unfailingly given when public men choose to quarrel or wrangle over some little matter, which, unfortunately for woman's prestige, is very frequently; as in senate, bar and pulpit—the three public educators, they tell us—there is always abundance of scolding.

Pass inns—men babbling nonsense or scolding. Go through the streets—everywhere men's tongues; very little of women's. Listen while journeying in train, 'bus or steamer, waiting anywhere—the men are the talkers. And,