eighbors; after which those of the company who
were able rose from the table, and hallooing, "We won't go home
till morning!" they hiccoughed their way home. This report is not
read with great derision or laughter. It is not felt that by this
performance women have been insulted and degraded.

Here, at this moment, in this audience, I have no doubt there is
many a man who is exclaiming with fervor--"Home, the
heaven-appointed sphere of woman." Very well. I don't deny it,
but how do you know it? How can you know it? There is but one law
by which any sphere can be determined, and that is perfect
liberty of development. I look into history and the society
around me, and I see that the position of women which is most
agreeable upon the whole to men is that which they call the
"heaven-appointed sphere" of woman. It may or may not be so; all
that I can see thus far is that men choose to have it so. A
gentleman remarks that it is a beautiful ordinance of Providence
that pear-trees should grow like vines. And when I say, "Is it
so?" he takes me into his garden, and shows me a poor, tortured
pear-tree, trained upon a trellis. Then I see that it is the
beautiful design of Providence that pear-trees should grow like
vines, precisely as Providence ordains that Chinese women shall
have small feet; and that the powdered sugar we buy at the
grocer's shall be half ground rice. These philosophers might as
wisely inform us that Providence ordains Christian saints to be
chops and steaks; and then point us to St. Lawrence upon his
gridiron.

Has nature ordained that the lark shall rise fluttering and
singing to the sun in the spring? But how should we ever know it,
if he were prisoned in a cage with wires of gold never so
delicate, or tied with a silken string however slight and soft?
Is it the nature of flowers to open to the south wind? How could
we know it but that, unconstrained by art, their winking eyes
respond to that soft breath? In like manner, what determines the
sphere of any morally responsible being, but perfect liberty of
choice and liberty of development? Take those away, and you have
taken away the possibility of determining the sphere. How do I
know my sphere as a man, but by repelling everything that would
arbitrarily restrict my choice?