she has been induced to give publicity to her sorrows—­indeed, has occasioned them—­by peevishness or imprudence, or by something worse; and thus, by an, unfair, sometimes an altogether false, issue being raised, the unhappy victim not merely of oppression, but of downright brutality, is shut off from justly merited sympathy.  And women, too, who are more fortunately situated, in possessing somewhat kinder husbands, or in being possessed by them, shaping their views according to those entertained by the sterner sex, unite with them in the condemnation of a sorrow-stricken sister; and, instead of making her burden lighter, contribute to increasing its weight.  Such women having never felt the iron pierce their own souls, can not realize the woes of those in whose bosoms the barb is rankling at every pulsation, and they weakly fancy that the sorrows of those suffering ones are but the inventions of an ill-ordered mind, or, at most, that the picture has been overdrawn.

Unkind men are not the only class, however, who assert the inferiority of the gentler sex.  If they were, they might be disposed of in a very summary manner.  There is another class not less dangerous, not less tyrannical or less arrogant, though somewhat more plausible.  These speak, when occasion suits, quite eloquently, often with indecorous flippancy, of the “great influence which the ladies are capable of exerting upon society;” and for the qualified good which the orators graciously concede that women have accomplished, or may be capable of accomplishing, they bespatter them with a sort of sneering praise that is absolutely insulting to a woman of common sense.  This style of fulsome flattery, with some degree of soft attention, graciously bestowed upon women, these men deem adequate compensation for all the indignities put upon their so-called inferiors.  With what supreme contempt, therefore, must every right-minded woman listen to such harangues, or read them when in print!

Learned orators and divines and grave professors may, indeed sometimes do, soar away almost to the seventh heaven while recounting the heroic or generous actions of women in past ages.  Admiring audiences are told that “gentle women are the ministering angels, sent by the wisdom of God to be the comforters of mankind upon earth, as the beloved of our hearths and homes; that the world, without the gentle hand of woman to alleviate our sorrows, would be a dark and dreary solitude swept by the whirlwinds of despair.”  The delighted listeners are borne away on the wings of fancy—­alas! it is only fancy—­till, in imagination, it would appear that woman had escaped from her worse than Egyptian bondage, had crossed, without trouble, the Red Sea, passed the dreadful wilderness, moved out from the plains of Moab, and, by some peculiar magic of her own, had been deftly wafted over Jordan into the promised land; that already she had gloried in the tumbling-down of the walls of Jericho, and had enjoyed the triumph of having the delegation of Gibeonites coming, in their old garments, to seek an alliance with her as the chosen of the Lord.