he lizards and
summer insects are to do with us.

If we want a place in this world we must _earn_ it. The partridge
makes its own nest before it occupies it. The lark, by its morning
song, earns its breakfast 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 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-axe have made no such havoc as the
needle. I would that these living sepulchres 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