Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/59



arousing the least feeling of covetousness on the part of other classes. Civil death is now an absurdity for a sane mind. No one chooses to put up barriers forever shutting out humanity; but the uses of combined effort are still as important, and protection against modern ills can be acquired in that way now as well as when the convent doors opened kindly to the distressed and persecuted.

There is even an affection for the ancient forms and designations still lingering in the most Protestant in faith. Young women band themselves into dainty associations under pleasant corporative names, such as the "Sisterhood of St. James" or "St. Luke;" and though the aims are limited in the main to the decorating of churches and the superintending of religious bazaars, they give promise of more substantial results hereafter.

That single women, capital being furnished them for the inception of the work, may successfully combine into a power for the foundation of establishments in which to learn and practice every art and duty of which they are capable, sheltering and supporting themselves materially and intellectually, furnishing a scope for any "mission," which they may choose to adopt, with a loss of no tittle of feminine grace and dignity, is a proposition that no misogynist, however contemptuous, after a careful consideration of the ecclesiastical and feminine experience chronicled in European history, will seek to combat. They might, as they do now, take charge of educational interests, manage hospitals, manufacture a thousand articles capable of a constant market, and enjoy varied accomplishments limited only by their tastes.

It is not necessary to become Amazonian for all this. The heroine of such a movement would not be a coarse Hippolyte, but an Eloise secured from persecutions, with energies turned from

sentimental brooding into practical channels. There would be no fossilizing for the outward world; but however temporary each individual worker might consider her life, there would be nothing precarious about it.

Such an organization, or system of organizations, with its element of rivalry, its claims for distinction, and its incentives to ambition, would give to each a position entitling her to a well-defined respect both in and out of her college; and about the conduct of those so associated, wherever they went, the reputation of their establishment would hang as a mantle of protection and honor.

As to the details of the enterprise, they would suggest themselves to the practical workers-out of the system, as circumstances might require. The humorous absurdities of the "Princess " need by no means be classed as essential vices rendering feminine organizations impracticable. It is very fine for chivalrous Tories to smile half playfully, half doubtfully, at the prospect of "sweet girl graduates with their golden hair;" to depict the ridiculous airs of female masters and proctors; but there is nothing in the whole range of powers sarcastically laid upon feminine shoulders by the poet, that has not been exercised by woman with effectual success. Margaret Roper, Queen Elizabeth, Mary Stuart, and a host of others, down to Mrs. Browning, have exhibited acquirements of a depth and extent that would astonish the lazy mass of passmen and bachelors of English and American colleges. These they wore with no unfeminine awkwardness; but flirted quite as artistically and broke hearts as deftly as their shallower sisters. In the feudal days, when.men were reputed so very manly, and women so very womanly, if the warrior was brought in, wounded and bleeding, his lady did not stand sobbing and wringing her hands, while the servant rushed off for the gouty