ramped, dwarfed, and crippled her, to
get rid of our responsibility by standing back at last, and
saying, "There, we will let you go; stand up for yourself." If it
is true, as these women say, that we have wronged them for
centuries, we have got to do something more than mere negative
duty. By as much as we have helped to wrong them, we have got to
help to right them; by as much as we have discouraged them
heretofore, we have got to encourage them hereafter; and that is
why I wish to speak to women to-night of their duties, as these
women have spoken to us of ours. I want to remind them that the
time has come when men must appeal to them; for be assured that
when women are ready to claim their rights, men will be ready to
grant them.

There are three special obstacles, Mrs. President, to the
willingness of woman to do her simple duty to the Woman's Rights
movement. The first is the obstacle of folly--sheer,
unadulterated folly--the folly in which women are trained, and in
which we men help to train them, and for which we then denounce
them. The reason why many women don't like the Woman's Rights
movement, is because they have too little real thought in them to
appreciate it at all. They have been brought up as fashionable
society brings up woman on one side, or as mere household
drudgery brings them up on the other--in each case, without power
to appreciate a great principle--without power to appreciate a
sublime purpose--without power to appreciate anything but a "good
match," and the way to obtain it. On their entrance into life,
their choice lies, for social position, for enjoyment, for
occupation, for usefulness, in this narrow alternative--between a
husband and nothing; and that, as Theodore Parker once said, is
very often a choice between two nothings. These women may have
literary culture and social polish; but, for want of an idea to
light up their eyes and strengthen their souls, these things are
only glitter and worthlessness.

A certain celebrated French woman in the last century (Mlle. de
Launay), who made mathematical science her study, at last had a
lover; whereupon she partially forgot her mathematics, and only
remembered enough of it for practical purposes. And, in her
Memoirs, she mentions the fact that her lover at len