asserting her claim to all the
immunities they enjoy. Woman must be willing to see herself as
she is, the slave of fashion, assuming all the Proteus forms she
invents, without reference to health or convenience. She must
remember how few of us give evidence of sufficient development to
warrant our claims; and whilst we feel a divine impulse to
proceed in achieving the enlargement of woman, whilst we hear a
voice saying, "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough; speak
to the people that they go forward," let us not be dismayed at
the hindrances we shall encounter from those whom we are laboring
to release from the swaddling bands of infancy, or the
grave-clothes of superstition, time-honored opinion and crushing
circumstances. We are now in a perilous and difficult position.
We feel all the inconveniences of our past condition, all the
disadvantages and uneasiness of the one we are constrained to
occupy, and see in bold relief all the advantages which a change
will yield us. But let us remember that our transition state,
although replete with temptations and suffering, is necessary to
our improvement; we need it to strengthen us and enable us to
bear hardships as good soldiers of truth.

To regard any state of society as fixed, is to regard it as the
ultimate good, as the best condition to which we can attain. But
when man has progressed, when his morality and his religion have
assumed a higher tone, it is impossible to perpetuate his
childhood, or to give permanence to institutions and opinions
whose days are numbered. When reform has truth for its basis and
is instinct with the life of progression, no power can dress it
in the habiliments of the grave, and bury it out of sight, either
in the Potter's-field or under the magnificent mausoleum. There
is nothing so precious to man as progress; he has defended it
with his heart's best blood, and according to his development has
aided it, although sometimes in his blindness he has scattered
fire and sword, destruction and misery around, in endeavoring to
force mankind to adopt the truths he thought essential to
progress. "Woman has come on the stage," says Horace Mann, "6,000
years after man, to profit by his misdeeds and correct his
errors." Until now, the world was not prepared to receive, in