st before it eats it, and
the Bible gives an intimation that the first duty of an idler is to
starve when it says: "If he will not work, neither shall he eat."
Idleness ruins the health; and very soon nature says: "This man has
refused to pay his rent, out with him!" Society is to be reconstructed
on the subject of woman's toil. A vast majority of those who would
have woman industrious shut her up to a few kinds of work. My judgment
in this matter is that a woman has a right to do anything that she can
do well. There should be no department of merchandise, mechanism, art,
or science barred against her. If Miss Hosmer has genius for
sculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa Bonheur has a fondness for
delineating animals, let her make "The Horse Fair." If Miss Mitchell
will study astronomy, let her mount the starry ladder. If Lydia will
be a merchant, let her sell purple. If Lucretia Mott will preach the
Gospel, let her thrill with her womanly eloquence the Quaker
meeting-house.

It is said, If woman is given such opportunities she will occupy
places that might be taken by men. I say, If she have more skill and
adaptedness for any position than a man has, let her have it! She has
as much right to her bread, to her apparel, and to her home, as men
have. But it is said that her nature is so delicate that she is
unfitted for exhausting toil. I ask in the name of all past history
what toil on earth is more severe, exhausting, and tremendous than
that toil of the needle to which for ages she has been subjected? The
battering-ram, the sword, the carbine, the battle-ax, have made no
such havoc as the needle. I would that these living sepulchers in
which women have for ages been buried might be opened, and that some
resurrection trumpet might bring up these living corpses to the fresh
air and sunlight.

Go with me and I will show you a woman who by hardest toil supports
her children, her drunken husband, her old father and mother, pays her
house rent, always has wholesome food on her table, and when she can
get some neighbor on the Sabbath to come in and take care of her
family, appears in church with hat and cloak that are far from
indicating the toil to which she is subjected. Such a woman as that
has body and soul enough to fit her for any position. She could stand
beside the majority of your salesmen and dispose of more goods. She
could go into your wheelwright shops and beat one half of your workmen
at making carriages. We ta