will jump
to pick up a glove or bouquet for a silly girl of sixteen, whilst at
home he will permit his aged mother to carry pails of water and
armfuls of wood, or his wife to lug a twenty-pound baby, hour after
hour, without ever offering to relieve her. I have seen a great many
men priding themselves on their good breeding--gentlemen, born and
educated--who never manifest one iota of spontaneous gallantry toward
the women of their own household.

Divines may preach thanksgiving sermons on the poetry of the arm-chair
and the cradle; but when they lay down their newspapers, or leave
their beds a cold night to attend to the wants of either, I shall
begin to look for the golden age of chivalry once more. If a short
dress is to make the men less gallant than they now are, I beg the
women at our next convention to add at least two yards more to every
skirt they wear. And you mock us with dependence, too. Do not the
majority of women in every town support themselves, and very many
their husbands, too? What father of a family, at the loss of his wife,
has ever been able to meet his responsibilities as woman has done?
When the mother dies the house is made desolate, the children are
forsaken--scattered to the four winds of heaven--to the care of any
one who chooses to take them. Go to those aged widows who have reared
large families of children, unaided and alone, who have kept them all
together under one roof, watched and nursed them in health and
sickness through all their infant years, clothed and educated them,
and made them all respectable men and women, ask them on whom they
depended. They will tell you on their own hands, and on that
never-dying, never-failing love, that a mother's heart alone can know.
It is into hands like these--to these who have calmly met the terrible
emergencies of life--who, without the inspiration of glory, or fame,
or applause, through long years have faithfully and bravely performed
their work, self-sustained and cheered, that we commit our cause. We
need not wait for one more generation to pass away, to find a race of
women worthy to assert the humanity of women, and that is all we claim
to do.

Affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

FRANCES D. GAGE'S REPLY TO GERRIT SMITH.

[From Frederick Douglass' paper].

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.--_Dear Sir_:--In your issue of Dec. 1st, I find a
letter from Hon. Gerri