Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/61



coming would not be, as now, the great daily event, but merely one of a variety of pleasures attached to woman's life.

Outside of the walls of such a convent and wearing its zzsignia, the law would cheerfully grant an extra degree of sacredness in its protection, analogous to that given the custodians of the public peace.

Perhaps its pecuniary success at the outset would not astonish us; but as for that, feminine employment by no means abounds in swift or large fortunes; and if women only live at all by their own exertions, it is saying a great deal for their capacity under untoward circumstances.

The great aim to be attained would be—not to take the woman from her affections of the home circle, if she is so fortunate as to possess them, nor to dole out to her merely a means of living; but to so open up refuges for her that she need never become aimless and hopeless in life—not to take from those who have a degree of contented happiness already insured them, and call upon them for the performance of unreasonable duties and unattractive labors, but to devote that surplus of energy, now chafing them into listless

discontent, to the work of sympathy with their sisters of less fortunate surroundings. That sympathy given by the socially strong to the socially weak would not, as now it unfortunately too often does, take the odious form of arbitrary charity, returning to the giver nothing beyond the sense of a humane duty performed. But the weakest member of such an association, however dependent upon her sisterhood upon her entry therein, would feel that the future gave promise to her endeavors of something of feminine glory and independence.

If by such means, organizing women into small communities, and these chapters into broader sisterhoods, and finally into one great order, little by little, the aimless, hopeless state of isolated female exertions were broken up, and a healthy energy instilled into the daily life of all, rich and poor, cultivated and ignorant, the great cloud now resting upon woman's advancement would be lifted, and her aimless murmurings, her misunderstood discontents, her aspirations, either noble or ill-advised, would find aid or antidote in her own world of action and enterprise, and a long stride would be taken in the progress of woman.

THE people of the Hawaiian Islands used to eat each other. Starting from such a fact, the imagination might take its wildest flight in the regions of conjecture, and not go much amiss from the truth of tradition and history in portraying the life and character of the Hawaiian people. They had little knowledge of right or wrong. They had no idea of what was bad, and what was worse, had no idea of what was good. They lived in abject fear and servitude, under the rule of an iron

tyranny, and subject to the will of a savage despotism. They were a nation of thieves, and murderers, and fighters. They revelled in the vilest intoxication, and rioted in all the excesses of human degradation, till nature sank exhausted under the burden and they had perforce to cease. The men were slaves to the chiefs, and the women were slaves to the men, and were degraded by the burden of every labor which their strength could endure. To kill a man (fepehi hanaka) was an art to be cultivated, and