represent a divinity--if she is to fill
the niche of wife and counsellor to true and noble men, if she is
to be the mother, the educator of a race of heroes or martyrs, of
a Napoleon, or a Jesus--then must the type of womanhood be on a
larger scale than that yet carved by man.

In vain would the rejected artist have reasoned with the
Athenians as to the superiority of his production; nothing short
of the experiment they made could have satisfied them. And what
of your experiment, what of your wives, your homes? Alas! for the
folly and vacancy that meet you there! But for your club-houses
and newspapers, what would social life be to you? Where are your
beautiful women? your frail ones, taught to lean lovingly and
confidingly on man? Where are the crowds of educated
dependents--where the long line of pensioners on man's bounty?
Where all the young girls, taught to believe that marriage is the
only legitimate object of a woman's pursuit--they who stand
listlessly on life's shores, waiting, year after year, like the
sick man at the pool of Bethesda, for some one to come and put
them in? These are they who by their ignorance and folly curse
almost every fireside with some human specimen of deformity or
imbecility. These are they who fill the gloomy abodes of poverty
and vice in our vast metropolis. These are they who patrol the
streets of our cities, to give our sons their first lessons in
infamy. These are they who fill our asylums, and make night
hideous with their cries and groans.

The women who are called masculine, who are brave, courageous,
self-reliant and independent, are they who in the face of adverse
winds have kept one steady course upward and onward in the paths
of virtue and peace--they who have taken their gauge of womanhood
from their own native strength and dignity--they who have learned
for themselves the will of God concerning them. This is our type
of womanhood. Will you help us raise it up, that you too may see
its beautiful proportions--that you may behold the outline of the
goddess who is yet to adorn your temple of Freedom? We are
building a model republic; our edifice will one day need a
crowning glory. Let the artists be wisely chosen. Let them begin
their work. Here is a temple to Liberty, to human rights, on
who