f a quiet home, easy, healthful work, and certain wages, in
these refined and pleasant modern dwellings of ours."

"What is the reason of this?" said Bob.

"The reason is, that we have not yet come to the full development of
Christian democracy. The taint of old aristocracies is yet pervading
all parts of our society. We have not yet realized fully the true
dignity of labor, and the surpassing dignity of domestic labor. And I
must say that the valuable and courageous women who have agitated the
doctrines of Woman's Rights among us have not in all things seen their
way clear in this matter."

"Don't talk to me of those creatures," said Bob, "those men-women,
those anomalies, neither flesh nor fish, with their conventions, and
their cracked woman-voices strained in what they call public speaking,
but which I call public squeaking! No man reverences true women more
than I do. I hold a real, true, thoroughly good _woman_, whether in my
parlor or my kitchen, as my superior. She can always teach me
something that I need to know. She has always in her somewhat of the
divine gift of prophecy; but in order to keep it, she must remain a
woman. When she crops her hair, puts on pantaloons, and strides about
in conventions, she is an abortion, and not a woman."

"Come! come!" said I, "after all, speak with deference. We that choose
to wear soft clothing and dwell in kings' houses must respect the
Baptists, who wear leathern girdles, and eat locusts and wild honey.
They are the voices crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for a
coming good. They go down on their knees in the mire of life to lift
up and brighten and restore a neglected truth; and we that have not
the energy to share their struggle should at least refrain from
criticising their soiled garments and ungraceful action. There have
been excrescences, eccentricities, peculiarities, about the camp of
these reformers; but the body of them have been true and noble women,
and worthy of all the reverence due to such. They have already in many
of our States reformed the laws relating to woman's position, and
placed her on a more just and Christian basis. It is through their
movements that in many of our States a woman can hold the fruits of
her own earnings, if it be her ill luck to have a worthless, drunken
spendthrift for a husband. It is owing to their exertions that new
trades and professions are opening to woman; and all that I have to
say to them is, that in the su