ubservient to those of statesman and
politician? How many of these husbands return to their homes as happy
and contented, as pure and loving, as when they left? Not one in
ten.... Experience has taught us that man has discovered the most
profitable branches of industry, and we demand a place by his side.
Inasmuch, therefore, as we have the same objects in life, namely, the
full development of all our powers, and should, to some extent, have
the same employments, we need precisely the same education; and we
therefore claim that the best colleges of our country be open to
us.... This point, the education of boys and girls together, is a
question of the day; it was prominent at the late Educational
Convention in Newark, and it is fitting that in our Convention it
should be fully discussed. My ground is, that the boy and the girl,
the man and the woman, should be always together in the business and
pleasures of life, sharing alike its joys and sorrows, its distinction
and fame; nor will they ever be harmoniously developed until they are
educated together, physically, intellectually, and morally.

I hope, therefore, that in the proposed People's College, some place
will be provided where women can be educated side by side with man.
There is no better test of the spirituality of a man, than is found in
his idea of the true woman. Men having separated themselves from women
in the business of life, and thus made their natures coarse by contact
with their own sex exclusively, now demand separate pleasures too; and
in lieu of the cheerful family circle, its books, games, music, and
pleasant conversation, they congregate in clubs to discuss politics,
gamble, drink, etc., in those costly, splendid establishments, got up
for such as can not find sufficient excitement in their own parlors or
studios. It seems never to enter the heads of these fashionable
husbands, that the hours drag as heavily with their fashionable wives,
as they sit alone, night after night, in their solitary elegance,
wholly given up to their own cheerless reflections; for what subjects
of thought have they? Gossip and fashion will do for talk, but not for
thought. Their theology is too gloomy and shadowy to afford them much
pleasure in contemplation; their religion is a thing of form and not
of life, so it brings them no joy or satisfaction. As to the reforms
of the day, they are too genteel to feel much interest in them. There
is no class more pitiable than the