and so much has been done to find some
better work for her, that insensibly, I think, almost everybody begins
to feel that it is rather degrading for a woman in good society to be
much tied down to family affairs."

"Especially," said my wife, "since in these Woman's Rights Conventions
there is so much indignation expressed at those who would confine her
ideas to the kitchen and nursery."

"There is reason in all things," said I. "Woman's Rights Conventions
are a protest against many former absurd, unreasonable ideas,--the
mere physical and culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with
puddings and shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal burdens which the
laws of harsher ages had cast upon the sex. Many of the women
connected with these movements are as superior in everything properly
womanly as they are in exceptional talent and culture. There is no
manner of doubt that the sphere of woman is properly to be enlarged,
and that republican governments in particular are to be saved from
corruption and failure only by allowing to woman this enlarged sphere.
Every woman has rights as a human being first, which belong to no sex,
and ought to be as freely conceded to her as if she were a man,--and,
first and foremost, the great right of doing anything which God and
Nature evidently have fitted her to excel in. If she be made a natural
orator, like Miss Dickinson, or an astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville,
or a singer, like Grisi, let not the technical rules of womanhood be
thrown in the way of her free use of her powers. Nor can there be any
reason shown why a woman's vote in the state should not be received
with as much respect as in the family. A state is but an association
of families, and laws relate to the rights and immunities which touch
woman's most private and immediate wants and dearest hopes; and there
is no reason why sister, wife, and mother should be more powerless in
the state than in the home. Nor does it make a woman unwomanly to
express an opinion by dropping a slip of paper into a box, more than
to express that same opinion by conversation. In fact, there is no
doubt that, in all matters relating to the interests of education,
temperance, and religion, the state would be a material gainer by
receiving the votes of women.

"But, having said all this, I must admit, _per contra_, not only a
great deal of crude, disagreeable talk in these conventions, but a
too great tendency of the age to make the education