Page:Oration Delivered on the Centennial Day of Washington's Initiation into Masonry (1852).djvu/18

18 by being a helpmate to man, as in the private circle of her home and her family.

We do not deny to you capacities and talents to fill other stations, besides your own; but we do deny the fitness of those stations and these duties for your sex. You would be as much out of place in them, as we would be were we in yours—making caps, fitting dresses, nursing babies, baking pies and pastries, and attending to the thousand-and-one of the nameless minutiæ, that make up a great part of a lady’s employment, which, while graceful and becoming in her, would be childish and ridiculous in us. We question not your ability to hold the plow, drive a team, wield the axe, the saw, the hammer and the plane; but we more than doubt the suitableness of such occupation, and the fitness of such implements for your hands. We deny not your intellectual capacity, for exercising wisely and justly, the privileges and rights of the ballot box; but we do very much question that those scenes around the ballot box is a proper place for ladies to appear. And we deny not your ability to harangue at a mass meeting, in the midst of its fiery and stormy elements, or in the forum or the legislative halls, with a voice as loud, shrill and piercing as a full blown north-wester; but we greatly doubt the fitness and moral propriety of such feminine exhibitions and displays: we do most surely believe and solemnly affirm, that all such exhibitions as these, would tend to diminish your power, lessen your influence, and destroy the charm and grace of your sex, which is the secret of your and influence. We fully coincide in opinion with the greatest of uninspired poets on this subject, that “a voice soft and low, is an excellent thing in woman.”

Had the mother of our been an Abby Folsam, or one of that sisterhood of insane and preposterous fools; had she instead of training up her son in the ways of truth, wisdom and virtue, spent her time as do those modern female Peter Hermits, in traversing the country, preaching a crusade against woman’s wrongs, and prating wisely as owls, about woman’s rights; holding conventions to remodleremodel [sic] society, and turn the world upside, by overthrowing all the institutions of God and man, our country might still be without a  to venerate; and we might be less pleasantly employed this day, than celebrating his deeds and commemorating his fame.

And to every American lady, who loves her country, who loves liberty, and desires the preservation of both, we would recommend to them as examples, all worthy of their study and imitation, the mother and the wife of ; and the mothers and wives of our revolutionary sires, as model mothers, model wives, and model ladies. Their glory and imitation were to discharge the duties in the private circle of their families and their homes.

Tardy and impartial history has not yet done justice to those