waists and high-heeled boots forbidden, for deep thinking requires
deep breathing. The whole upper floor of her new building is a
spacious gymnasium, where her pupils exercise every day under the
instruction of a skillful German; and on every Saturday morning
they take lessons from the best dancing master in the city. The
result is, she has no dull scholars complaining of headaches. All
are alike happy in their studies and amusements.
Mrs. Sewall is a preeminently common-sense woman, believing that
sound theories can be put into practice. Although her tastes are
decidedly literary and aesthetic, she is a radical reformer. Hence
her services in the literary club and suffrage society are alike
invaluable. And as chairman of the executive committee of the
National Association, she is without her peer in planning and
executing the work.
As her husband, Mr. Theodore L. Sewall, is also at the head of a
classical school, and equally successful in training boys, it may
be said that both institutions have the advantage of the united
thought of man and woman. As educators, Mr. and Mrs. Sewall have
reaped much practical wisdom from their mutual consultations and
suggestions, the results of which have been of incalculable benefit
to their pupils.
Peering into the homes of the young women in the suffrage movement,
one cannot but remark the deference and respect with which these
intelligent, self-reliant wives are uniformly treated by their
husbands, and the unbounded confidence and affection they give in
return. For happiness in domestic life, men and women must meet as
equals. A position of inferiority and dependence for even the best
organized women, will either wither all their powers and reduce
them to apathetic machines, going the round of life's duties with a
kind of hopeless dissatisfaction, or it will rouse a bitter
antagonism, an active resistance, an offensive self-assertion,
poisoning the very sources of domestic happiness. The true ideal of
family life can never be realized until woman is restored to her
rightful throne. Tennyson, in his "Princess," gives us the
prophetic vision when he says:
"Everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life,
Two plummets dropped for one, to sound the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind."
FOOTNOTES:
[325] See Vol. I., page 306.
[326] The cal
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