ts, affections,
aspirations; and for that epoch the genius of woman has been reserved. The
spirit of the age has always kept pace with the facts, and outstripped the
statutes. Till the fulness of time came, woman was necessarily kept a slave
to the spinning-wheel and the needle; now higher work is ready; peace has
brought invention to her aid, and the mechanical means for her emancipation
are ready also. No use in releasing her till man, with his strong arm, had
worked out his preliminary share in civilization. "Earth waits for her
queen" was a favorite motto of Margaret Fuller Ossoli; but it would be more
correct to say that the queen has waited for her earth, till it could be
smoothed and prepared for her occupancy. Now Cinderella may begin to think
of putting on her royal robes.

Everybody sees that the times are altering the whole material position of
woman; but most people do not appear to see the inevitable social and moral
changes which are also involved. As has been already said, the woman of
ancient history was a slave to physical necessities, both in war and peace.
In war she could do too little; in peace she did too much, under the
material compulsions which controlled the world. How could the Jews, for
instance, elevate woman? They could not spare her from the wool and the
flax, and the candle that goeth not out by night. In Rome, when the bride
first stepped across her threshold, they did not ask her, Do you know the
alphabet? they asked simply, Can you spin? There was no higher epitaph than
Queen Amalasontha's,--_Domum servavit, lanam fecit_. In Boeotia, brides
were conducted home in vehicles whose wheels were burned at the door, in
token that they were never to leave the house again. Pythagoras instituted
at Crotona an annual festival for the distaff; Confucius, in China, did the
same for the spindle; and these celebrated not the freedom, but the
serfdom, of woman.

And even into modern days this same tyrannical necessity has lingered. "Go
spin, you jades! go spin!" was the only answer vouchsafed by the Earl of
Pembroke to the twice-banished nuns of Wilton. Even now, travellers agree
that throughout civilized Europe, with the partial exception of England and
France, the profound absorption of the mass of women in household labors
renders their general elevation impossible. But with us Americans, and in
this age, when all these vast labors are being more and more transferred to
arms of brass and iron; when