Of the anti-slavery movement I can personally testify—­and I have heard the same point fully recognized among my elders, such as Garrison, Phillips, and Quincy—­that the women contributed their full share, if not more than their share, to the steadiness of that movement, even in times when the feelings were most excited, as, for instance, in fugitive-slave cases.  Who that has seen mobs practically put down, and mayors cowed into decency, by the silent dignity of those rows of women who sat, with their knitting, more imperturbable than the men, can read without a smile these doubts of the “steadiness” of that sex?  Again, among Quaker women, I have asked the opinion of prominent Friends, as of John G. Whittier, whether it has been the experience of that body that women were more flighty and unsteady than men in their official action; and have been uniformly answered in the negative.  And finally, as to benevolent organizations, a good test is given in the fact,—­first pointed out, I believe, by that eminently practical philanthropist, Rev. Augustus Woodbury of Providence,—­that the whole tendency has been, during the last twenty years, to put the management, even the financial control, of our benevolent societies, more and more into the hands of women, and that there has never been the slightest reason to reverse this policy.  Ask the secretaries of the various boards of State Charities, or the officers of the Social Science Associations, if they have found reason to complain of the want of steadfast qualities in the “weaker sex.”  Why is it that the legislation of Massachusetts has assigned the class requiring the steadiest of all supervision—­the imprisoned convicts—­to “five commissioners of prisons, two of whom shall be women”?  These are the points which it would be worthy of our journals to consider, instead of hastily generalizing from single instances.  Let us appeal from the typical woman of the editorial picture,—­fickle, unsteady, foolish,—­to the nobler conception of womanhood which the poet Wordsworth found fulfilled in his own household:—­

“A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller betwixt life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will; Endurance, foresight, strength and skill; A perfect woman, nobly planned To warn, to comfort, to command, And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.”

ALLURES TO BRIGHTER WORLDS, AND LEADS THE WAY

When a certain legislature had “School Suffrage” under consideration, the other day, the suggestion was made by one of the pithiest and quaintest of the speakers, that men were always better for the society of women, and therefore ought to vote in their company.  “If all of us,” he said, “would stay away from all places where we cannot take our wives and daughters with us, we should keep better company than we now do.”  This expresses a feeling which grows more and more common among the better class of men, and which is the key to much progress in the condition of women.  There can be no doubt that the increased association of the sexes in society, in school, in literature, tends to purify these several spheres of action.  Yet, when we come to philosophize on this, there occur some perplexities on the way.