



Produced by David Widger





MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS,

AND

OTHER LECTURES.

By Helen H. Gardener.


With An Introduction By Robert G. Ingersoll.

Twelfth Edition.

New York:

The Truth Seeker Company,

28 Lafayette Place.

Copyright, By Helen H. Gardener,

1885.


THIS LITTLE VOLUME

is

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

WITH THE LOVE OF THE AUTHOR, TO

MRS. EVA INGERSOLL,

THE BRAVE, HAPPY WIFE OF AMERICA'S GREATEST ORATOR,

AND WOMAN'S TRUEST FRIEND.

IN HER BEAUTIFUL HOME-LIFE SUPERSTITION AND FEAR HAVE NEVER

ENTERED; HUMAN EQUALITY AND FREEDOM HAVE

THEIR HIGHEST ILLUSTRATION;

AND

TIME HAS DEEPENED YOUTHFUL LOVE INTO A DIVINER WORSHIP

THAN ANGELS OFFER OR THAN GODS INSPIRE.




CONTENTS.

     INTRODUCTION.
     MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
     ACCIDENT INSURANCE.
     CHIEFLY WOMEN.
     WHY WOMEN SUPPORT IT.
     WHAT IT TEACHES.
     THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
     KNOWLEDGE NOT A CRIME.
     AS MUCH INSPIRED AS ANY OF IT.
     VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.
     FEAR.
     BEGINNING TO THINK.
     CREEDS.
     SELF-CONTROL WHAT WE NEED.
     VICARIOUS ATONEMENT NOT A CHRISTIAN INVENTION.
     TWIN MONSTERS INHERITED FROM INTELLECTUAL PIGMIES.
     GEOGRAPHICAL RELIGION.
     REVELATION.
     EVIDENCE OF FAITH.
     DID HE TALK?
     WHAT YOU MAY THINK.
     INTELLECTUAL GAG-LAW.
     THE VICARIOUS THEORY THE CAUSE OF CRIME.
     REVISION.
     THE CHURCH'S MONEY-BOX.
     SHALL PROGRESS STOP?
     HISTORICAL FACTS AND THEOLOGICAL FICTIONS.
     CHURCH FICTIONS.
     HISTORICAL FACTS.
     CIVILIZATION.
     COMPARATIVE STATUS.
     WOMEN AS PERSONS.
     EDUCATION.
     AS WIVES.
     NOT WOMAN'S FRIEND.
     MORALS.




INTRODUCTION.

Nothing gives me more pleasure, nothing gives greater promise for the
future, than the fact that woman is achieving intellectual and physical
liberty. It is refreshing to know that here, in our country, there are
thousands of women who think and express their own thoughts--who are
thoroughly free and thoroughly conscientious--who have neither been
narrowed nor corrupted by a heartless creed--who do not worship a being
in heaven whom they would shudderingly loathe on earth. Women who do
not stand before the altar of a cruel faith with downcast eyes of timid
acquiescence, and pay to impudent authority the tribute of a thoughtless
yes. They are no longer satisfied with being told. They examine for
themselves. They have ceased to be the prisoners of society--the
satisfied serfs of husbands or the echoes of priests. They demand the
rights that naturally belong to intelligent human beings. If wives, they
wish to be the equals of husbands--if mothers, they wish to rear their
children in the atmosphere of love, liberty and philosophy. They believe
that woman can discharge all her duties without the aid of superstition,
and preserve all that is true, pure and tender without sacrificing in
the temple of absurdity the convictions of the soul.

Woman is not the intellectual inferior of man. She has lacked--not
mind--but opportunity. In the long night of barbarism physical strength,
and the cruelty to use it, were the badges of superiority. Muscle was
more than mind. In the ignorant age of Faith the loving nature of woman
was abused, her conscience was rendered morbid and diseased. It might
almost be said that she was betrayed by her own virtues. At best, she
secured, not opportunity, but flattery, the preface to degradation. She
was deprived of liberty and without that nothing is worth the having.
She was taught to obey without question, and to believe without thought.
There were universities for men before the alphabet had been taught
to woman. At the intellectual feast there were no places for wives and
mothers. Even now they sit at the second table and eat the crusts and
crumbs. The schools for women, at the present time, are just far
enough behind those for men to fall heirs to the discarded. On the same
principle, when a doctrine becomes too absurd for the pulpit, it is
given to the Sunday School. The ages of muscle and miracle--of fists and
faith--are passing away. Minerva occupies at last a higher niche than
Hercules. Now, a word is stronger than a blow.

At last we see women who depend upon themselves--who stand self poised
the shocks of this sad world without leaning for support against a
church--who do not go to the literature of barbarism for consolation,
nor use the falsehoods and mistakes of the past for the foundation of
their hope--women brave enough and tender enough to meet and bear the
facts and fortunes of this world.

The men who declare that woman is the intellectual inferior of man, do
not, and cannot, by offering themselves in evidence, substantiate their
declaration.

Yet, I must admit that there are thousands of wives who still have
faith in the saving power of superstition--who still insist on attending
church while husbands prefer the shores, the woods, or the fields. In
this way families are divided. Parents grow apart, and unconsciously
the pearl of greatest price is thrown away. The wife ceases to be
the intellectual companion of the husband. She reads the "Christian
Register," sermons in the Monday papers, and a little gossip about
folks and fashions, while he studies the works of Darwin, Haeckel and
Humboldt. Their sympathies become estranged. They are no longer mental
friends. The husband smiles at the follies of the wife and she weeps for
the supposed sins of the husband. Such wives should read this book.
They should not be satisfied to remain forever in the cradle of thought,
amused with the toys of superstition.

The parasite of woman is the priest.

It must also be admitted that there are thousands of men who believe
that superstition is good for women and children--who regard falsehood
as the fortress of virtue, and feel indebted to ignorance for the purity
of daughters and the fidelity of wives. These men think of priests
as detectives in disguise, and regard God as a policeman who prevents
elopements. Their opinions about religion are as correct as their
estimate of woman.

The church furnishes but little food for the mind. People of
intelligence are growing tired of the platitudes of the pulpit--the
iterations of the itinerants. The average sermon is "as tedious as a
twice-told tale vexing the ears of a drowsy man."

One Sunday a gentleman who is a great inventor called at my house. Only
a few words had passed between us, when he arose, saying that he must
go as it was time for church. Wondering that a man of his mental wealth
could enjoy the intellectual poverty of the pulpit, I asked for an
explanation, and he gave me the following: "You know that I am an
inventor. Well, the moment my mind becomes absorbed in some difficult
problem, I am afraid that something may happen to distract my attention.
Now, I know that I can sit in church for an hour without the slightest
danger of having the current of my thought disturbed."

Most women cling to the Bible because they have been taught that to give
up that book is to give up all hope of another life--of ever meeting
again the loved and lost. They have also been taught that the Bible is
their friend, their defender, and the real civilizer of man.

Now if they will only read this book--these three lectures, without
fear, and then read the Bible, they will see that the truth or falsity
of the dogma of inspiration has nothing to do with the question of
immortality. Certainly the Old Testament does not teach us that there is
another life, and upon that question, even the New is obscure and vague.
The hunger of the heart finds only a few small and scattered crumbs.
There is nothing definite, solid, and satisfying. United with the idea
of immortality we find the absurdity of the resurrection. A prophecy
that depends for its fulfillment upon an impossibility, cannot satisfy
the brain or heart.

There are but few who do not long for a dawn beyond the night. And
this longing is born of, and nourished by, the heart. Love wrapped
in shadow--bending with tear-filled eyes above its dead, convulsively
clasps the outstretched hand of hope.

I had the pleasure of introducing Helen H. Gardener to her first
audience, and in that introduction said a few words that I will repeat,

"We do not know, we can not say whether death is a wall or a door, the
beginning or end of a day, the spreading of pinions to soar, or the
folding forever of wings. The rise or the set of a sun, of an endless
life that brings rapture and love to every one.

"Under the seven-hued arch of hope let the dead sleep."

They will also discover, as they read the "Sacred Volume," that it is
not the friend of woman. They will find that the writers of that book,
for the most part, speak of woman as a poor beast of burden--a serf, a
drudge, a kind of necessary evil--as mere property. Surely a book that
upholds polygamy is not the friend of wife and mother.

Even Christ did not place woman on an equality with man. He said not
one word about the sacredness of home, the duties of the husband to the
wife--nothing calculated to lighten the hearts of those who bear the
saddest burdens of this life.

They will also find that the Bible has not civilized mankind. A book
that establishes and defends slavery and wanton war is not calculated to
soften the hearts of those who believe implicitly that it is the work of
God. A book that not only permits, but commands religious persecution,
has not in my judgment developed the affectional nature of man. Its
influence has been bad and bad only. It has filled the world with
bitterness, revenge, and crime, and retarded in countless ways the
progress of our race.

The writer of this little volume has read the Bible with open eyes. The
mist of sentimentality has not clouded her vision.

She has had the courage to tell the result of her investigations. She
has been quick to discover contradictions. She appreciates the humorous
side of the stupidly solemn. Her heart protests against the cruel, and
her brain rejects the childish, the unnatural, and absurd. There is no
misunderstanding between her head and heart. She says what she thinks,
and feels what she says.

No human being can answer her arguments. There is no answer. All the
priests in the world cannot explain away her objections. There is no
explanation. They should remain dumb, unless they can show that the
impossible is the probable--that slavery is better than freedom--that
polygamy is the friend of woman--that the innocent can justly suffer for
the guilty, and that to persecute for opinion's sake is an act of love
and worship.

Wives who cease to learn--who simply forget and believe, will fill the
evening of their lives with barren sighs and bitter tears. The mind
should outlast youth.

If, when beauty fades, Thought, the deft and unseen sculptor, hath not
left his subtle lines upon the face, then all is lost. No charm is left.
The light is out. There is no flame within to glorify the wrinkled clay.

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.

Hoffman House,

New York, July 22, 1885.





MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.

IT is thought strange and particularly shocking by some persons for a
woman to question the absolute correctness of the Bible. She is supposed
to be able to go through this world with her eyes shut, and her mouth
open wide enough to swallow Jonah and the Garden of Eden without making
a wry face. It is usually recounted as one of her most beautiful traits
of character that she has faith sufficient to float the Ark without
inspecting the animals.

So it is thought strange that a woman should object to any of the
teachings of the Patriarchs. I claim, however, that if she honestly
thinks there is anything wrong about them, she has a right to say so. I
claim that I have a right to offer my objections to the Bible from the
standpoint of a woman. I think that it is fair, at least, to put the
case before you as it looks to me, using the Bible itself as my chief
witness. That Book I think degrades and belittles women, and I claim
the right to say why I think so. The opposite opinion has been stated by
hundreds of people, hundreds of times, for hundreds of years, so that it
is only fair that I be allowed to bring in a minority report.

Women have for a long time been asking for the right to an education,
for the right to live on an equal footing with their brothers, and
for the right to earn money honestly; while at the same time they have
supported a book and a religion which hold them as the inferiors of
their sons and as objects of contempt and degradation with Jehovah. They
have sustained a so-called "revelation" which holds them as inferior
and unclean things. Now it has always seemed to me that these women are
trying to stand on both sides of the fence at the same time--and that
neither foot touches.

I think they are making a mistake. I think they are making a mistake to
sustain any religion which is based upon faith. Even though a religion
claim a superhuman origin--and I believe they all claim that--it must
be tested by human reason, and if our highest moral sentiments revolt at
any of its dictates, its dictates must go. For the only good thing about
any religion is its morality, and morality has nothing to do with faith.
The one has to do with right actions in this world; the other with
unknown quantities in the next. The one is a necessity of Time; the
other a dream of Eternity. Morality depends upon universal evolution;
Faith upon special "revelation;" and no woman can afford to accept any
"revelation" that has yet been offered to this world.

That Moses or Confucius, Mohammed or Paul, Abraham or Brigham Young
asserts that his particular dogma came directly from God, and that
it was a personal communication to either or all of these favored
individuals, is a fact that can have no power over us unless their
teachings are in harmony with our highest thought, our noblest purpose,
and our purest conception of life. Which of them can bear the test?
Not one "revelation" known to man to-day can look in the face of
the nineteenth century and say, "I am parallel with your richest
development; I still lead your highest thought; none of my teachings
shock your sense of justice." Not one.

It is faith in "revelation" that makes a mother tear from her arms a
tender, helpless child and throw it in the Ganges--to appease the gods!
It is a religion of faith that teaches the despicable principle of
caste--and that religion was invented by those who profited by caste. It
was our religion of faith that sustained the institution of slavery--and
it had for its originators dealers in human flesh. It is the Mormon's
religion of faith, his belief in the Bible and in the wisdom of Solomon
and David, that enables the monster of polygamy to flaunt its power and
its filth in the face of the morality of the nineteenth century, which
has outgrown the Jehovah of the Jews.

Every religion must be tried at the bar of human justice, and stand or
fall by the verdict there. It has no right to crouch behind the theory
of "inspiration" and demand immunity from criticism; and yet that is
just what every one of them does. They all claim that we have no right
to use our reason on their inventions. But evil cannot be made good by
revelation, and good cannot be made evil by persecution.

A "revelation" that teaches us to trample on purity, or bids us despise
beauty--that gives power to vice or crushes the weak--is an evil. The
dogma that leads us to ignore our humanity, that asks us to throw away
our pleasures, that tells us to be miserable here in order that we may
be happy hereafter, is a doctrine built upon a false philosophy, cruel
in its premises and false in its promises. And the religion that teaches
us that believing Vice is holier than unbelieving Virtue is a grievous
wrong. Credulity is not a substitute for morality. Belief is not a
question of right or wrong, it is a question of mental organization. Man
cannot believe what he will, he must believe what he must. If his brain
tells him one thing and his catechism tells him another, his brain ought
to win. You don't leave your umbrella at home during a storm, simply
because the almanac calls for a clear day.

A religion that teaches a mother that she can be happy in heaven, with
her children in hell--in everlasting torment--strikes at the very roots
of family affection. It makes the human heart a stone. Love that means
no more than that, is not love at all. No heart that has ever loved can
see the object of its affection in pain and itself be happy. The thing
is impossible. Any religion that can make that possible is more to be
dreaded than war or famine or pestilence or death. It would eat out all
that is great and beautiful and good in this life. It would make life a
mockery and love a curse.

I once knew a case myself, where an eldest son who was an unbeliever
died. He had been a kind son and a good man. He had shielded his widowed
mother from every hardship. He had tried to lighten her pain and relieve
her loneliness. He had worked early and late to keep her comfortable and
happy. When he died she was heartbroken. It seemed to her more than
she could bear. As she sat and gazed at his dear face in a transport of
grief, the door opened and her preacher came in to bring her the comfort
of religion. He talked with her of her loss, and finally he said, "But
it would not be so hard for you to bear if he had been a Christian. If
he had accepted what was freely offered him you would one day see him
again. But he chose his path, he denied his Lord, and he is lost. And
now, dear madam, place your affections on your living son, who is,
thank God, saved." That was the comfort he brought her. That was the
consolation of his religion. I am telling you of an actual occurrence.
This is all a fact. Well, a few years later that dear old lady died in
her son's house, where she had gone on a visit. He broke her will--this
son who was saved--and brought in a bill against her estate for her
board and nursing while she was ill! Which one of those boys do you
think would be the best company for her in the next world?

It has always seemed to me that I would rather go to hell with a good
son than to heaven with a good Christian. I may be wrong, but with
my present light that is the way it looks to me; and for the sake of
humanity I am glad that it looks that way.




ACCIDENT INSURANCE.

A church member said to me some time ago that even though the Bible were
not "the word of God," even though it were not necessary to believe in
the creed in order to go to heaven, it could not do any harm to believe
it; and he thought it was "best to be on the safe side, for," said he,
"suppose after all it should happen to be true!"

So he carries a church-membership as a sort of accident insurance
policy.

I do not believe we have a right to work upon that basis. It is not
honest. I do not believe that any "suppose it should be" gives us the
right to teach "I know that it is." I do not believe in the honesty
and right of any cause that has to prop up its backbone with faith, and
splinter its legs with ignorance. I do not believe in the harmlessness
of any teaching that is not based upon reason, justice, and truth. I do
not believe that it is harmless to uphold any religion that is not noble
and elevating in itself. I do not believe that it is "just as well" to
spread any dogma that stultifies reason and ignores common-sense. I
do not believe that it is ever well to compromise with dishonesty and
pretence. And I cannot admit that it "can do no harm" to teach a belief
in the goodness of a God who sends an Emerson or a Darwin to hell
because Eve was fond of fruit, and who offers a reserved seat in heaven
to Christine Cox because a mob murdered Jesus Christ. It does not seem to
me good morals, and it is certainly poor logic.

And speaking of logic, I heard a funny story the other day about one of
those absurdly literal little girls who, when she heard people say they
"wanted to be an angel," did not know it was a joke.. She thought it was
all honor-bright. She was standing by the window killing flies, and
her mother called her and said, "My child, don't you know that is very
wicked? Don't you know that God made those dear little flies, and that
he loves them?" (Just imagine an infinite God in love with a blue-bottle
fly!) Well, the little girl thought that was queer taste, but she was
sorry, and said that she would not do it any more. By and by, however,
a great lazy fly was too tempting, and her plump little finger began to
follow him around slowly on the glass, and she said, "Oh you nice big
fly, did dod made you? And does dod love you? And does you love dod?"
(Down came the finger.) "_Well, you shall see him_."

Yet we all know Christians who love God better than anything else--"with
all their hearts and soul and strength"--who prefer to postpone seeing
him till the very last minute. They say it is because they have not
"fulfilled their allotted time." Why not be honest and say it is because
they like to live? They "long to put on immortality;" but their sleep is
sounder if they live next door to a good doctor.

People say that men are infidels because it is easier--to rid themselves
of responsibility. But it seems to me that anyone who advances the
doctrine of "morality and works" instead of that of "repentance and
faith," on the ground that it is easier, is laboring under a mistake. I
don't see how any one could ask for an easier way of getting rid of his
sins than the plan that simply unloads them on to another man. I fail to
see anything hard about that--except for the man who catches the load;
and I am unable to see anything commendable about it either. But it is
not always easy for a man to be brave enough to be responsible for his
own mistakes or faults. It is not always easy for a man to say "I did
it, and I will suffer the penalty." That is not always easy, but it is
always just. No one but a coward or a knave needs to shift his personal
responsibility on to the shoulders of the dead. Honest men and women
do not need to put "Providence" up between themselves and their own
motives.

A short time ago the wife of a very devout man apparently died, but her
body remained so lifelike and her color so natural that her relatives
decided that she could not be dead, and they summoned a physician. The
husband, however, refused to have him administer any restoratives. He
said that if the Lord had permitted her to go into a trance and was
anxious to bring her out alive he would do it. Meanwhile he did not
intend to meddle with Providence. His maxim was, "Whatever else you do,
don't interfere with Providence. Give Providence a good chance and if it
doesn't come round all right for Betsy, I think I can bear it--and she
will have to."

If we take care of our motives toward each other, "Providence" will take
care of itself.

Did you ever know a pious man do a real mean thing--that succeeded--who
did not claim that Providence had a finger in it? The smaller the trick,
the bigger the finger. He is perfectly honest in his belief too. He is
the sort of man that never has a doubt about hell--and that most people
go there. Thinks they all deserve it. Has entire confidence that God is
responsible for every word in the Bible, and that all other Bibles and
all other religions are the direct work of the devil. Probably prays for
people who don't believe that way. He is perfectly honest in it. That is
simply his size, and he usually pities anybody who wears a larger hat.




CHIEFLY WOMEN.

But they say this is not a matter of reason. This is outside of reason,
it is all a matter of faith. But whenever a superstition claims to be
so holy that you must not use your reason about it, there is something
wrong some place. Truth is not afraid of reason, nor reason of truth.

I am going to say something to-night about why I do not believe in a
religion of faith. I am going to tell you some of the reasons why I do
not believe that the Bible is "inspired;" why I, as a woman, don't
want to think it is the word of God; why I think that women, above all
others, should not believe that it is. And since women are the bulwarks
of the churches to-day, it seems to me they have the right, and that it
is a part of their duty, to ask themselves why. Since about seven-tenths
of all church-members are women, surely the churches should not deny
them the right to use their reason (or whatever serves them in that
capacity) in regard to their own work.

I saw some ladies begging the other day for money to pay off the debt of
a $200,000 church, on the corner-stone of which were cut the words,
"My kingdom is not of this world;" and I wondered at the time what the
property would have been like if the kingdom had been of this world. It
seemed to me that a few hundred such untaxed houses would be a pretty
fair property almost anywhere.

One of our prominent bishops, when speaking recently of
church-membership, said, "The Church must recruit her ranks hereafter
almost entirely with children;" and he added, "the time has passed
when she can recruit her ranks with grown men." Good! And the New York
_Evangelist_ (one of the strongest church papers) says, "Four-fifths of
the earnest young men of this country are sceptics, distrust the clergy,
and are disgusted with evangelical Christianity." Good again.

The Congregational Club of Boston has recently been discussing the
question how to win young men to Christianity. The Rev. R. R. Meredith
said: "The churches to-day do not get the best and sharpest young
men. They get the goody-goody ones easily enough; but those who do the
thinking are not brought into the church in great numbers. You cannot
reach them by the Bible. How many did Moody touch in this city during
his revival days? You can count them on your fingers. The man who wants
them cannot get them with the Bible under his arm. He must be like them,
sharp. They cannot be gathered by sentimentality. If you say to them,
'Come to Jesus,' very likely they will reply, ''Go to thunder.' [In
Boston!] The thing to be done with such a man is to first get into his
heart, and then lead him into salvation before he knows it."

I don't know how good this recipe is, but I should infer that it is a
double-back-action affair of some sort that could get into a man's heart
and lead him into salvation before he knew it, and that if the Church
can just get a patent on that she is all right; otherwise I suspect that
the goody-goody ones are likely to be about all she will get in large
numbers.

Do I need any stronger, plainer evidence than this to show that the
thought of the world is against it, and that it is time for women to ask
themselves whether a faith that can hold its own only by its grasp
upon the ignorance and credulity of children, a faith that has
made four-fifths of the earnest men sceptics, a faith that has this
deplorable effect upon Boston manners, is one that does honor to the
intellect and judgment of the women of to-day?

We hear women express indignation that the law classes them with idiots
and children; but from these orthodox statements it would seem that in
the Church they voluntarily accept about this classification themselves.
If only these church-people go to heaven, what a queer kindergarten
it will be, to be sure, with only a few male voices to join in the
choruses--and most of those tenor.

This religion and the Bible require of woman everything, and give her
nothing. They ask her support and her love, and repay her with contempt
and oppression. No wonder that four-fifths of the earnest men are
against it, for it is not manly and it is not just; and such men are
willing to free women from the ecclesiastical bondage that makes her
responsible for all the ills of life, for all the pains of deed and
creed, while it allows her no choice in their formation, no property in
their fruition. Such men are outgrowing the petty jealousies and musty
superstitions of narrow-minded dogmatists sufficiently to look upon the
question not as one of personal preference, but as one of human justice.
They do not ask, "Would _I_ like to see woman do thus or thus?"
but, "Have _I_ a right to dictate the limit of her efforts or her
energy?"--not, "Am I benefited by her ecclesiastical bondage and
credulity? Does it give me unlimited power over her?" but, "Have I
a right to keep in ignorance, have I a right to degrade, any human
intellect?" And they have answered with equal dignity and impersonal
judgment that it is the birthright of no human being to dominate or
enslave another; that it is the just lot of no human being to be born
subject to the arbitrary will or dictates of any living soul; and that
it is, after all, as great an injustice to a _man_ to make him a tyrant
as it is to make him a slave.

Whenever a man rises high enough to leave his own personality out of
the question, he has gone beyond the stage of silly platitudes. His own
dignity is too secure, his title to respect too far beyond question,
for him to need such little subterfuges to guard his position, either
as husband, as household-king, or as public benefactor. His home life is
not founded upon compulsory obedience; but is filled with the perfume of
perfect trust, the fragrance of loving admiration and respect. It is the
domestic tyrant, the egotistic mediocre, and the superstitious Church
that are afraid for women to think, that fear to lose her as worshipper
and serf.

You need go only a very little way back in history to learn that the
Church decided that a woman who learned the alphabet overstepped all
bounds of propriety, and that she would be wholly lost to shame who
should so far forget her modesty as to become acquainted with the
multiplication table.

And to-day, if she offers her opinion and her logic for what they are
worth, the clergy preach doleful sermons about her losing her beautiful
home character, about her innocence being gone, about their idea of her
glorious exaltation as wife and mother being destroyed. Then they grow
florid and exclaim that "man is after all subject to her, that he is
born for the rugged path and she for the couch of flowers!"*

     * "A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say
     that husbands indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to
     make fair concessions to their partners without being
     compelled to it, but that wives are not; that if allowed any
     rights of their own, they will acknowledge no rights at all
     in any one else, and never will yield in anything, unless
     they can be compelled, by the man's mere authority, to yield
     in everything. This would have been said by many persons
     some generations ago, when satires on women were in vogue,
     and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being
     what men made them.   But it will be said by no one now who
     is worth replying to. It is not the doctrine of the present
     day that women are less susceptible of good feeling and
     consideration for those with whom they are united by the
     strongest ties, than men are. On the contrary, we are
     perpetually told that women are better than men by those who
     are totally opposed