Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/613

558 day under the instruction of a skillful German; and on every Saturday morning they take lessons from the best dancing master in the city. The result is, she has no dull scholars complaining of headaches. All are alike happy in their studies and amusements.

Mrs. Sewall is a preëminently common-sense woman, believing that sound theories can be put into practice. Although her tastes are decidedly literary and æsthetic, she is a radical reformer. Hence her services in the literary club and suffrage society are alike invaluable. And as chairman of the executive committee of the National Association, she is without her peer in planning and executing the work.

As her husband, Mr. Theodore L. Sewall, is also at the head of a classical school, and equally successful in training boys, it may be said that both institutions have the advantage of the united thought of man and woman. As educators, Mr. and Mrs. Sewall have reaped much practical wisdom from their mutual consultations and suggestions, the results of which have been of incalculable benefit to their pupils.

Peering into the homes of the young women in the suffrage movement, one cannot but remark the deference and respect with which these intelligent, self-reliant wives are uniformly treated by their husbands, and the unbounded confidence and affection they give in return. For happiness in domestic life, men and women must meet as equals. A position of inferiority and dependence for even the best organized women, will either wither all their powers and reduce them to apathetic machines, going the round of life's duties with a kind of hopeless dissatisfaction, or it will rouse a bitter antagonism, an active resistance, an offensive self-assertion, poisoning the very sources of domestic happiness. The true ideal of family life can never be realized until woman is restored to her rightful throne. Tennyson, in his "Princess," gives us the prophetic vision when he says: