Page:New Peterson magazine 1859 Vol. XXXV.pdf/125

 ',ﬂit"

“120

THE

OLD

STONE

MANSION.

cousin maintains that women are not justly treated, by the laws; that, in fact, they are little better than slaves to the stronger sex.”

Now this was the subject, on which, above all others, I felt most strongly: the one in which my pride and sensitiveness controlled me, perhaps, more than my intellect. I had so often contemplated the possibility of having to leave my uncle's house and earn a livelihood for myself, that I was morbidly awake to the inadequate wages which women received, to the few avenues of employment open to them, and to the loss of social caste which laboring for their bread often brought upon them. I was already angry; and this question, thus put by Mr. Talbot, made me angrier, because it implied that he palliated, if he did not defend, the course of the world at large toward my sex.

But I need not have been so. I was well aware, that, though Mr. Talbot was a firm believer in the progress of the race, and though he advocated enthusiastically every measure which he considered a reform, he was not a visionary, and that many superficial thinkers, on this account, would have called him a con- servative. We had, indeed, never talked before on this theme, but 1 knew enough of his sentiments on social questions generally, to be aware that he was no friend to sudden and radical ohanges, even where they were possible, because he had no faith in their permanence under such contingencies; and I was not ignorant that he considered there were very few sudden social reforms which were practicable at all. ‘A reform, which is not founded on public sentiment,” he had once said, ‘is no reform at all; for things soon fall back to their old condition; no law can laat which is not an exponent of the popular prejudice as well as of the popular intellect.” Earnestly as I felt on the subject of woman's wrongs, I was well aware that it was one of the most difficult social problems of the age, and that to solve it wisely would require the best thoughts of the best minds for more than one generation. I would have known, in a calmer moment, that I could not expect Mr. Talbot to take the radical view of the question, to which I, ia common with others of my sex, inclined. But, in my present mood, I disregarded all this, and replied bluntly and passionately,

Slaves! So they are.” And as I spoke, the whole catalogue of woman’s injuries, as dealt out to her by laws made my men, rose up before me; and my heart ewelling with what I thought a righteous indignation, I continued with kia- dling cheek. ‘The chain may be gilded, but it is still a chain.”

Georgiana’s big eyes opened to their full width, less at the matter than at the manner of this speech. It shocked her conventional notions of fine ladyism. Mr. Talbot smiled, and that emile provoked me to go on, more passion- ately, if possible, than before. :

‘What equality has woman before the law?’’ Ieaid. ‘You do not allow ber to vote, yet you make her pay taxes. You tell her it is indeli- cate for her to preach, yet say she has a soul to be saved. You give her property, when she marries, to her husband; but don’t give her his, but only « third of it, and that not till he dies. And if a woman is poor, and has to earn her living, you put her at once out of the pale of good society, and degrade her to a lower class.’

“You are vehement,” said Mr. Talbot, gravely, as I paused exhausted of breath. ‘Permit me to ask: have you considered all these things as fully as your very decided language warrants ?’*

The tone of superiority, in which this was spoken, provoked me still more.

‘Decided language? Vehement?” I cried. “Qn such a subject one caunot be too vehe- ment.”

Mr. Talbot was silent. I continued heatedly,

“Take the case I last spoke of. Is the world just to a woman who has to earn her liveli- hood?”

Still he did not reply. He was writing on the sand with the end of his light bamboo cane. I cannot describe how this simple act irritated me. I began again,

“Nor is this all. Society, that shuts the door of nearly every employment against woman, pays her inadequately even for what it allows her to do. No female earns a9 much as a wan; she is not permitted te do it. In my city, women wait in stores, very generally; but even there they receive only half as much as young men. In your city, they are shut out even from this avenue. So it is everywhere. Yet a woman has blood and bones, must eat and dress, must have fire and light.”

‘¢A man is paid as the head of a family; oa woman as a solitary individual; and.the majority of men are heads of families, as the majority of women are not,”’ said Mr. Talbot, looking up.

“Are women never heads of families? Are there no widows, with orphan children? It is the old story of the lion. Men make the lawa, and make them to suit themselves. Oh! if woman could, for but one day, have control of the halls of legislation.”

‘Honestly now, Miss Gray,” he said, and ho looked me full in the eycs, ‘do you think the world would be the better, if women followed