d not think so in my youth. My schooling was that
Japheth was a white man, Shem a red man and Ham was black; that it was
a divine decree that the descendants of Japheth should dwell in the
tents of Shem and send for the children of Ham to be their servants,
thereby supporting the white man in his dealings with the black and
red races. As the Bible was used to justify slavery, so it is quoted
today in favor of the liquor traffic, and against the new woman
movement. Yet it's the Bible that has given woman her broader liberty.
It was the Bible that broke the chains that harnessed woman to a plow
by the side of an ox. In the vision of John, a woman is crowned with
stars, the burnt-out moon is her footstool and the wings of a great
eagle given to bear her above the floods that would engulf her.

The viewpoint of schooling has much to do with our convictions and
prejudices. When the bicycle craze first came upon us, women bicycle
clubs were formed throughout the country. Wheels were made specially
for woman, and to facilitate the pleasure and comfort, bloomers were
worn by women in all our cities. The fat and lean, tall and short, old
and young wore bloomers. At that time if a man from the country
neighborhood where I was reared, one given to dancing, had gone to
Chicago and seen these bloomer-clad women, he would have thought the
whole sex disgraced. And I must admit I didn't like the bloomer girl
myself. I can appreciate the Yankee farmer who lived between Boston
and Wareham, Mass. A young woman who lived in Boston had a friend in
Wareham, and donning her bloomers she mounted her wheel and started
for the village. Passing several diverging points, and thinking
possibly she had missed the right road, she decided to inquire at the
next house. Seeing the Yankee farmer at the front gate she rode up,
dismounted and said: "Sir, will you please tell me, is this the way to
Wareham?"

The farmer, with eyes fixed upon the new garb, said: "Miss, you'll
have to excuse me. I can't tell you, for I never saw anything like
them before."

I said our opinions are based upon schooling. Let the man from the
dancing community leave Chicago, go back to Kentucky, attend a country
ball, see a young woman with low neck dress and short sleeves, in the
arms of a man she never met before, and he thinks her the picture of
propriety, as well as grace and beauty. Yet the bloomer girl was
completely clad from her chin to the soles of her feet while the