between social vanities, and shows, and public meddling’s and mixings—­for where one woman is needed and doing really brave, true work, there are a hundred rushing forth for the mere sake of rushing—­is the primitive home, the power of heaven upon earth to slip away from among us?  Let us not build outsides which have no insides, let us not put a face upon things which has no reality behind it.  Beware lest we make the confusion that we need the suffrage to help us unmake; lest we tear to pieces that we may patch again.  Crazy patchwork that would be, indeed!

Are women’s votes required because men will not legislate away evils that they do not heartily wish away?  Is government corrupted because men desire shield and opportunity for dishonest speculation; authority and countenance for nefarious combinations?  The more need to go to work at the beginning rather than to plunge into the pitch and be defiled; more need to make haste and educate a better generation of men, if it be so we can not, except vi et armis, influence the generation that is.  But do you think that if women are in earnest—­enough in earnest to give up, as they seem to be to demand—­they might not bring their real power to bear even upon these evil things, in their root and inception, and even now?  Suppose women would not live in houses, or wear jewels and gowns, that are bought for them out of wicked millions made upon the stock exchange?

Suppose they would stop decorating their dwellings to an agony, crowding them hurriedly with this and that of the last and newest, just because it is last and new, making a show and rivalry of what is not a true-grown beauty of a home at all, but a mere meretriciousness; suppose they would so set to work and change society that displays and feastings, which use up at every separate one a year’s comfortable support for a quiet, modest family, should be given up as vulgarities; that people should care for, and be ready for, a true interchange of life and thought, and simple, uncrowded opportunities for these; suppose women would say, “No; I will not blaze at Newport, or run through Europe dropping American eagles or English sovereigns after me like the trail of a comet, or the crumbs that Hop-’o-my-thumb let fall from his pocket that the people at home might track the way he had gone; because if I have money, there is better work to be done with it; and I will not have the money that is made by gambling manipulations and cheats.”

Do you think this would have no influence?  More than that, and further back, and lowlier down, suppose they should say, every one, “I will not have the new, convenient house, the fresh carpetings, the pretty curtains, or even the least, most fitting freshness, until I know the means are earned for me with honest service to the world, and by no lucky turn of even a small speculation.”  Further back yet, suppose them to declare, “I will not have the home at all, nor my own happiness,