gain, I see young men selling artificial flowers, and laces and
embroidery, crinolines and balmorals, and I think to myself they
had better be out digging coal or making brick. When I go back
home to the West, I could take a car-load with me, and set them
to work, and I would greatly benefit their condition, while the
places they vacate here might be filled by the girls who are now
starving in your garrets. (Applause). At a shoe-store, instead of
finding a sprightly miss, to select and fit the ladies gaiters,
you often see a strong, healthy man, kneeling before the customer
with a gallantry that would be admirable in a drawing-room, and
worth infinitely more than the price of the article he is
selling; and he fusses over the gaiters and over the lady's foot,
until you wonder if she is not tempted to propel him into a more
appropriate sphere. (Laughter). Whatever possessed men to imagine
that God designed them to fit ladies' gaiters, is more than I can
imagine. (Applause). I am unable to realize how they obtained the
revelation that for a woman to thus officiate would take her out
of her appropriate sphere. Shall I be held to my principles here,
and told that these men succeed in business, and success being
the test of sphere, therefore they are in their place? It remains
to be proved that they have succeeded. A man may jump Jim Crow
from morning till night, or make a fool of himself in any other
way, and succeed admirably in pleasing auditors and gathering
pennies; but when you take into consideration his high and
heavenly origin, and the noble purposes for which he was made,
you can hardly call it a success. Neither should I think a woman
was in suitable business, even if it were ever so lucrative and
well done, unless that business developed her talents; made her
stronger, more self-reliant, and better fitted her for life and
its duties. These stores would be a good discipline for young
girls, but not for men.

This whole question lies in a small compass. Our reform would
leave woman just where God placed her--a moral, accountable
being, endowed with talents whose scope and character indicate
the work she is to do; and who is responsible primarily to her
Creator for the use she makes of those talents. He says to every
man and to every woman,