f our ends were accomplished
all the public and private virtues would be melted as in a
crucible and thrown upon the ground, thence to cry aloud to
heaven like the blood of righteous Abel. Were it not that
curiosity is largely developed in this class, they would go down
to their graves wholly uninformed of our true principles,
motives, and aims. They look upon us as black beetles or
death's-heads, to be turned away from with horror; but their
curiosity overcomes their repugnance, and they would investigate
some of our properties, as a naturalist does those of a noxious
animal. (Cheers and laughter).

There is another class, that of genuine bigots, with hearts so
ossified that no room can be found for one noble and expansive
principle within those little stony cells. Many of this class may
be persons of excellent intentions; they would do us good if they
could, but they approach us with somewhat of the feeling with
which Miss Ophelia regarded Topsy, the abhorrence that is
experienced on drawing near a large black spider. They try to
show us our errors, but if we attempt to justify by argument the
ground we have taken, they cry aloud that we are obstinate and
unreasonable, especially when we quote text for text, as Christ
did when talking with a certain person of old.

But the most hopeless and spiteful of our opponents is that large
class of women whose merits are not their own; who have acquired
some influence in society, not by any noble thoughts they have
framed and uttered, not by any great deed they have done, but by
the accident of having fathers, brothers, or husbands whose
wealth elevates them to the highest wave of fashion, and there
enables them to roll in luxurious and indolent pomp, like Venus
newly risen from the ocean. They feel how much easier it is to
receive the incense of honor and respect (however insincerely
paid to them) without any effort of their own, than to undergo
the patient toil after excellence which wrings from the heart of
all that homage of true honor which can not be denied to it.
They, unused to any noble labor (as all labor is), either
physical or mental, will be careful, to a degree of splenetic
antagonism, how they will allow the introduction, into the
acknowledged rights and duties of their sex, of a