upon earth to slip away from
among us? Let us not build outsides which have no insides, let us
not put a face upon things which has no reality behind it. Beware
lest we make the confusion that we need the suffrage to help us
unmake; lest we tear to pieces that we may patch again. Crazy
patchwork that would be, indeed!

Are women's votes required because men will not legislate away
evils that they do not heartily wish away? Is government
corrupted because men desire shield and opportunity for dishonest
speculation; authority and countenance for nefarious combinations?
The more need to go to work at the beginning rather than to plunge
into the pitch and be defiled; more need to make haste and educate
a better generation of men, if it be so we can not, except _vi et
armis_, influence the generation that is. But do you think that if
women are in earnest--enough in earnest to give up, as they seem
to be to demand--they might not bring their real power to bear
even upon these evil things, in their root and inception, and even
now? Suppose women would not live in houses, or wear jewels and
gowns, that are bought for them out of wicked millions made upon
the stock exchange?

Suppose they would stop decorating their dwellings to an agony,
crowding them hurriedly with this and that of the last and newest,
just because it is last and new, making a show and rivalry of
what is not a true-grown beauty of a home at all, but a mere
meretriciousness; suppose they would so set to work and change
society that displays and feastings, which use up at every
separate one a year's comfortable support for a quiet, modest
family, should be given up as vulgarities; that people should care
for, and be ready for, a true interchange of life and thought, and
simple, uncrowded opportunities for these; suppose women would
say, "No; I will not blaze at Newport, or run through Europe
dropping American eagles or English sovereigns after me like the
trail of a comet, or the crumbs that Hop-'o-my-thumb let fall from
his pocket that the people at home might track the way he had
gone; because if I have money, there is better work to be done
with it; and I will not have the money that is made by gambling
manipulations and cheats."

Do you think this would have no influence? More than that, and
further back