anything which God and Nature evidently have
fitted her to excel in. If she be made a natural orator, like Miss
Dickenson, or an astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like
Grisi, let not the technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of
her free use of her powers. Nor can there be any reason shown why a
woman's vote in the State should not be received with as much respect as
in the family. A State is but an association of families, and laws
relate to the rights and immunities which touch woman's most private and
immediate wants and dearest hopes; and there is no reason why sister,
wife, and mother should be more powerless in the State than in the home.
Nor does it make a woman unwomanly to express an opinion by dropping a
slip of paper into a box, more than to express that same opinion by
conversation. In fact, there is no doubt, that, in all matters relating
to the interests of education, temperance, and religion, the State would
be a material gainer by receiving the votes of women.

"But, having said all this, I must admit, _per contra_, not only a great
deal of crude, disagreeable talk in these conventions, but a too great
tendency of the age to make the education of women anti-domestic. It
seems as if the world never could advance, except like ships under a
head-wind, tacking and going too far, now in this direction, and now in
the opposite. Our common-school system now rejects sewing from the
education of girls, which very properly used to occupy many hours daily
in school a generation ago. The daughters of laborers and artisans are
put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and the higher mathematics,
to the entire neglect of that learning which belongs distinctively to
woman. A girl cannot keep pace with her class, if she gives any time to
domestic matters; and accordingly she is excused from them all during
the whole term of her education. The boy of a family, at an early age,
is put to a trade, or the labors of a farm; the father becomes impatient
of his support, and requires of him to care for himself. Hence an
interrupted education,--learning coming by snatches in the winter months
or in the intervals of work. As the result, the females in our
country-towns are commonly, in mental culture, vastly in advance of the
males of the same household; but with this comes a physical delicacy,
the result of an exclusive use of the brain and a neglect of the
muscular system, with great inefficiency in p