f, however, there were a great decline at Oberlin, it
would simply show a transfer of students to other colleges, since
neither Professor Tyler nor President Eliot will deny that the
total statistics of colleges show a rapid increase in the number
of women.

Moreover, I confess that my confidence in Professor Tyler's sense
of accuracy is greatly impaired by these assertions about
Oberlin, and also by his statement, which I must call reckless,
at least, in regard to the inferiority in truth, purity and
virtue of those women who seek the suffrage. He asserts (page
456) that "women--women generally--the truest, purest and best of
the sex--do not wish for the right of suffrage." Now, if the
women who oppose suffrage are truest, purest and best, the women
who advocate it must plainly be inferior at all these points; and
that is an assertion which not only these women themselves, but
their brothers, husbands and sons are certainly entitled to
resent. Mr. Tyler has a perfect right to argue for his own views,
for or against suffrage, but he has no right to copy the Oriental
imprecation, and say to his opponents, "May the grave of your
mother be defiled!." He claims that he holds official relations
to one "woman's college," one "female seminary" and one "young
ladies' institute." Will it conduce to the moral training of
those who enter those institutions that their officers set them
the example of impugning the purity and virtue of those who
differ in opinion from themselves?

But supposing Professor Tyler not to be bound by the usual bonds
of courtesy or of justice, he is at least bound by the
consistency of his own position. Thus, he goes out of his way to
compliment Mrs. Somerville and Miss Mitchell. Both these ladies
are identified with the claim for suffrage. He lauds "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," but Mrs. Stowe has written almost as ably for the
enfranchisement of woman as for the freedom of the blacks. He
praises the "sacramental host of authoresses," who, he says,
"will move on with ever-growing power, overthrowing oppression,
restraining vice and crime, reforming morals and manners,
purifying public sentiment, revolutionizing business, society and
government, till every yoke is broken and all nations are won to
the truth." But it has been again