decides their punishment.
Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible
satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century--"Rude men
seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, cut off her
hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands."
What a picture of woman's position! Robbed of her natural rights,
handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to
fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall
back on herself for protection....

How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society,
deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter
insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must
play her part alone, where no human aid is possible!

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like
individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character
as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an
equal place, everywhere conceded--a place earned by personal
merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth,
family and position. Conceding then that the responsibilities of
life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the
same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The
talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the
sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the
compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for
he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer....

In music women speak again the language of Mendelssohn,
Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters of their
great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs,
and they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics
and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair,
plead at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital,
speak from the pulpit and the platform. Such is the type of
womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes to-day,
and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories
of the past.

Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day
within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the
spinning wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past? No,