Chapter III: Act V: A destroyed soul's eternity. No light; no music; no hope! (1)

Despair coiling around the heart with unutterable anguish. Blackness of darkness forever_.

Woe! Woe! Woe! I cannot bear longer to look. I close my eyes at this last act of the tragedy. Quick! Quick! Ring the bell and let the curtain drop.

THE INDISCRIMINATE DANCE.

It is the anniversary of Herod's birthday. The palace is lighted. The highways leading thereto are ablaze with the pomp of invited guests. Lords, captains, merchant princes, and the mightiest men of the realm are on the way to mingle in the festivities. The tables are filled with all the luxuries that the royal purveyors can gather,--spiced wines, and fruits, and rare meats. The guests, white-robed, anointed and perfumed, take their places. Music! The jests evoke roars of laughter. Riddles are propounded. Repartees indulged. Toasts drunk. The brain befogged. Wit gives place to uproar and blasphemy. And yet they are not satisfied. Turn on more light. Give us more music. Sound the trumpet. Clear the floor for the dance. Bring in Salome, the graceful and accomplished princess.

The doors are opened and in bounds the dancer. Stand back and give plenty of room for the gyrations. The lords are enchanted. They never saw such poetry of motion. Their souls whirl in the reel, and bound with the bounding feet. Herod forgets crown and throne,--everything but the fascinations of Salome. The magnificence of his realm is as nothing compared with that which now whirls before him on tiptoe. His heart is in transport with Salome as her arms are now tossed in the air, and now placed akimbo. He sways with every motion of the enchantress. He thrills with the quick pulsations of her feet, and is bewitched with the posturing and attitudes that he never saw before, in a moment exchanged for others just as amazing. He sits in silence before the whirling, bounding, leaping, flashing wonder. And when the dance stops, and the tinkling cymbals pause, and the long, loud plaudits that shook the palace with their thunders had abated, the entranced monarch swears unto the princely performer: "Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me I will give it to thee, to the half of my kingdom."

Now there was in prison a minister by the name of John the Baptist, who had made much trouble by his honest preaching. He had denounced the sins of the king, and brought down upon himself the wrath of the females in the royal family. At the instigation of her mother, Salome takes advantage of the king's extravagant promise and demands the head of John the Baptist on a dinner-plate.

There is a sound of heavy feet, and the clatter of swords outside of the palace. Swing back the door. The executioners are returning, from their awful errand. They hand a platter to Salome. What is that on the platter? A new tankard of wine to rekindle the mirth of the lords? No! It is redder than wine, and costlier. It is the ghastly, bleeding head of John the Baptist! Its locks dabbled in gore. Its eyes set in the death-stare. The distress of the last agony in the features. That fascinating form, that just now swayed so gracefully in the dance, bends over the horrid burden without a shudder. She gloats over the blood; and just as the maid of your household goes, bearing out on a tray the empty glasses of the evening's entertainment, so she carried out on a platter the dissevered head of that good man, while all the banqueters shouted, and thought it a grand joke, that, in such a brief and easy way, they had freed themselves from such a plain-spoken, troublesome minister.

What could be more innocent than a birthday festival? All the kings from the time of Pharaoh had celebrated such days; and why not Herod? It was right that the palace should be lighted, and that the cymbals should clap, and that the royal guests should go to a banquet; but, before the rioting and wassail that closed the scene of that day, every pure nature revolts.

Behold the work, the influence, and the end of an infamous dancer!

I am, by natural temperament and religious theory, utterly opposed to the position of those who are horrified at every demonstration of mirth and playfulness in social life, and who seem to think that everything, decent and immortal, depends upon the style in which people carry their feet. On the other hand, I can see nothing but ruin, moral and physical, in the dissipations of the ball-room, which have despoiled thousands of young men and women of all that gives dignity to character, or usefulness to life.

Dancing has been styled "the graceful movement of the body adjusted by art, to the measures or tune of instruments, or of the voice." All nations have danced. The ancients thought that Pollux and Castor at first taught the practice to the Lacedæmonians; but, whatever be its origin, all climes have adopted it.

In other days there were festal dances, and funeral dances, and military dances, and "mediatorial" dances, and bacchanalian dances. Queens and lords have swayed to and fro in their gardens; and the rough men of the backwoods in this way have roused up the echo of the forest. There seems to be something in lively and coherent sounds to evoke the movement of hand and foot, whether cultured or uncultured. Men passing the street unconsciously keep step to the music of the band; and Christians in church unconsciously find themselves keeping time with their feet, while their soul is uplifted by some great harmony. Not only is this true in cultured life, but the red men of Oregon have their scalp dances, and green-corn dances, and war dances. It is, therefore, no abstract question that you ask me--Is it right to dance?

The ancient fathers, aroused by the indecent dances of those days, gave emphatic evidence against any participation in the dance. St. Chrysostom says:--"The feet were not given for dancing, but to walk modestly; not to leap impudently like camels."

One of the dogmas of the ancient church reads: "A dance is the devil's possession; and he that entereth into a dance, entereth into his possession. The devil is the gate to the middle and to the end of the dance. As many passes as a man makes in dancing, so many passes doth he make to hell." Elsewhere, these old dogmas declare--"The woman that singeth in the dance is the princess of the devil; and those that answer are his clerks; and the beholders are his friends, and the music are his bellows, and the fiddlers are the ministers of the devil; for, as when hogs are strayed, if the hogs'-herd call one, all assemble together, so the devil calleth one woman to sing in the dance, or to play on some instrument, and presently all the dancers gather together."

This wholesale and indiscriminate denunciation grew out of the utter dissoluteness of those ancient plays. So great at one time was the offence to all decency, that the Roman Senate decreed the expulsion of all dancers and dancing-masters from Rome.

Yet we are not to discuss the customs of that day, but the customs of the present. We cannot let the fathers decide the question for us. Our reason, enlightened by the Bible, shall be the standard. I am not ready to excommunicate all those who lift their feet beyond a certain height. I would not visit our youth with a rigor of criticism that would put out all their ardor of soul. I do not believe that all the inhabitants of Wales, who used to step to the sound of the rustic pibcorn, went down to ruin. I would give to all of our youth the right to romp and play. God meant it, or he would not have surcharged our natures with such exuberance. If a mother join hands with her children, and while the eldest strikes the keys, fill all the house with the sound of agile feet, I see no harm. If a few friends, gathered in happy circle, conclude to cross and recross the room to the sound of the piano well played, I see no harm. I for a long while tried to see in it a harm, but I never could, and I probably never will. I would to God men kept young for a greater length of time. Never since my school-boy days have I loved so well as now the hilarities of life. What if we have felt heavy burdens, and suffered a multitude of hard knocks, is it any reason why we should stand in the path of those who, unstung by life's misfortunes, are exhilarated and full of glee?

God bless the young! They will have to live many a day if they want to hear me say one word to dampen their ardor or clip their wings, or to throw a cloud upon their life by telling them that it is hard, and dark, and doleful. It is no such thing. You will meet with many a trial; but, speaking from my own experience, let me tell you that you will be treated a great deal better than you deserve.

Let us not grudge to the young their joy. As we go further on in life, let us go with the remembrance that we have had our gleeful days. When old age frosts our locks, and stiffens our limbs, let us not block up the way, but say, "We had our good times: now let others have theirs." As our children come on, let us cheerfully give them our places. How glad will I be to let them have everything,--my house, my books, my place in society, my heritage! By the time we get old we will have had our way long enough. Then let our children come on and we'll have it their way. For thirty, forty, or fifty years, we have been drinking from the cup of life; and we ought not to complain if called to pass the cup along and let others take a drink.

But, while we have a right to the enjoyments of life, we never will countenance sinful indulgences. I here set forth a group of what might be called the dissipations of the ball-room. They swing an awful scythe of death. Are we to stand idly by, and let the work go on, lest in the rebuke we tread upon the long trail of some popular vanity? The whirlpool of the ball-room drags down the life, the beauty, and the moral worth of the city. In this whirlwind of imported silks goes out the life of many of our best families. Bodies and souls innumerable are annually consumed in this conflagration of ribbons.

This style of dissipation is the abettor of pride, the instigator of jealousy, the sacrificial altar of health, the defiler of the soul, the avenue of lust, and the curse of the town. The tread of this wild, intoxicating, heated midnight dance jars all the moral hearthstones of the city. The physical ruin is evident. What will become of those who work all day and dance all night? A few years will turn them out nervous, exhausted imbeciles. Those who have given up their midnights to spiced wines, and hot suppers, and ride home through winter's cold, unwrapped from the elements, will at last be recorded suicides.

There is but a short step from the ball-room to the grave-yard. There are consumptions and fierce neuralgias close on the track. Amid that glittering maze of ball-room splendors, diseases stand right and left, and balance and chain. A sepulchral breath floats up amid the perfume, and the froth of death's lip bubbles up in the champagne.

Many of our brightest homes are being sacrificed. There are families that have actually quit keeping house, and gone to boarding, that they may give themselves more exclusively to the higher duties of the ball-room. Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, finding their highest enjoyment in the dance, bid farewell to books, to quiet culture, to all the amenities of home. The father will, after a while, go down into lower dissipations. The son will be tossed about in society, a nonentity. The daughter will elope with a French dancing-master. The mother, still trying to stay in the glitter, and by every art attempting to keep the color in her cheek, and the wrinkles off her brow, attempting, without any success, all the arts of the belle,--an old flirt, a poor, miserable butterfly without any wings.

If anything on the earth is beautiful to my eye, it is an aged woman; her hair floating back over the wrinkled brow, not frosted, but white with the blossoms of the tree of life; her voice tender with past memories, and her face a benediction. The children pull at grandmother's dress as she passes through the room, and almost pull her down in her weakness; yet she has nothing but a cake, or a candy, or a kind word for the little darlings. When she goes away from us there is a shadow on the table, a shadow on the hearth, and a shadow in the dwelling.

But if anything on earth is distressful to look at, it is an old woman ashamed of being old. What with paint and false hair, she is too much for my gravity. I laugh, even in church, when I see her coming. One of the worst looking birds I know of is a peacock after it has lost its feathers. I would not give one lock of my mother's gray hair for fifty thousand such caricatures of old age. The first time you find these faithful disciples of the ball-room diligently engaged and happy in the duties of the home circle, send me word, for I would go a great way to see such a phenomenon. These creatures have no home. Their children unwashed. Their furniture undusted. Their china closets disordered. The house a scene of confusion, misrule, cheerlessness, and dirt. One would think you might discover even amid the witcheries of the ball-room the sickening odors of the unswept, unventilated, and unclean domestic apartments.

These dissipations extinguish all love of usefulness. How could you expect one to be interested in the alleviations of the world's misery, while there is a question to be decided about the size of a glove or the shade of a pongee? How many of these men and women of the ball-room visit the poor, or help dress the wounds of a returned soldier in the hospital? When did the world ever see a perpetual dancer distributing tracts? Such persons are turned in upon themselves. And it is very poor pasture!

This gilded sphere is utterly bedwarfing to intellect and soul. This constant study of little things; this harassing anxiety about dress; this talk of fashionable infinitesimals; this shoe-pinched, hair-frizzled, fringe-spattered group--that simper and look askance at the mirrors and wonder, with infinity of interest, "how that one geranium leaf does look;" this shrivelling up of man's moral dignity, until it is no more observable with the naked eye; this taking of a woman's heart, that God meant should be filled with all amenities, and compressing it until all the fragrance, and simplicity, and artlessness are squeezed out of it; this inquisition of a small shoe; this agony of tight lacing; this wrapping up of mind and heart in a ruffle; this tumbling down of a soul that God meant for great upliftings!

I prophesy the spiritual ruin of all participators in this rivalry. Have the white, polished, glistening boards ever been the road to heaven? Who at the flash of those chandeliers hath kindled a torch for eternity? From the table spread at the close of that excited and besweated scene, who went home to say his prayers?

To many, alas! this life is a masquerade ball. As, at such entertainments, gentlemen and ladies appear in the dress of kings or queens, mountain bandits or clowns, and at the close of the dance throw off their disguises, so, in this dissipated life, all unclean passions move in mask. Across the floor they trip merrily. The lights sparkle along the wall, or drop from the ceiling--a very cohort of fire! The music charms. The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. Gemmed hands, stretched out, clasp gemmed hands. Dancing feet respond to dancing feet. Gleaming brow bends low to gleaming brow. On with the dance! Flash, and rustle, and laughter, and immeasurable merry-making! But the languor of death comes over the limbs, and blurs the sight. _Lights lower!_ Floor hollow with sepulchral echo. Music saddens into a wail. _Lights lower!_ The maskers can hardly now be seen. Flowers exchange their fragrance for a sickening odor, such as comes from garlands that have lain in vaults of cemeteries. _Lights lower!_ Mists fill the room. Glasses rattle as though shaken by sullen thunder. Sighs seem caught among the curtains. Scarf falls from the shoulder of beauty,--a shroud! _Lights lower!_ Over the slippery boards, in dance of death, glide jealousies, disappointments, lust, despair. Torn leaves and withered garlands only half hide the ulcered feet. The stench of smoking lamp-wicks almost quenched. Choking damps. Chilliness. Feet still. Hands folded. Eyes shut. Voices hushed.

LIGHTS OUT!

THE MASSACRE BY NEEDLE AND SEWING-MACHINE.

Very long ago the needle was busy. It was considered honorable for women to toil in olden time. Alexander the Great stood in his palace showing garments made by his own mother. The finest tapestries at Bayeux were made by the Queen of William the Conqueror. Augustus the Emperor would not wear any garments except those that were fashioned by some member of his royal family. So let the toiler everywhere be respected!

The greatest blessing that could have happened to our first parents was being turned out of Eden after they had done wrong. Adam and Eve, in their perfect state, might have got along without work, or only such slight employment as a perfect garden, with no weeds in it, demanded. But, as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them was to be turned out where they would have to work. We know what a withering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old Ashbel Green, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said, "I do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a man who has a large amount of money to start with has no chance. Of the thousand prosperous and honorable men that you know, nine hundred and ninety-nine had to work vigorously at the beginning.

But I am now to tell you that industry is just as important for a woman's safety and happiness. The most unhappy women in our communities to-day are those who have no engagements to call them up in the morning; who, once having risen and breakfasted, lounge through the dull forenoon in slippers down at the heel and with dishevelled hair, reading George Sand's last novel; and who, having dragged through a wretched forenoon and taken their afternoon sleep, and having spent an hour and a half at their toilet, pick up their card-case and go out to make calls; and who pass their evenings waiting for somebody to come in and break up the monotony. Arabella Stuart never was imprisoned in so dark a dungeon as that.

There is no happiness in an idle woman. It may be with hand, it may be with brain, it may be with foot; but work she must, or be wretched forever. The little girls of our families must be started with that idea. The curse of our American society is that our young women are taught that the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, tenth, fiftieth, thousandth thing in their life is to get somebody to take care of them. Instead of that, the first lesson should be, how, under God, they may take care of themselves. The simple fact is that a majority of them do have to take care of themselves, and that, too, after having, through the false notions of their parents, wasted the years in which they ought to have learned how successfully to maintain themselves. We now and here declare the inhumanity, cruelty, and outrage of that father and mother, who pass their daughters into womanhood, having given them no facility for earning their livelihood. Madame de Staël said: "It is not these writings that I am proud of, but the fact that I have facility in ten occupations, in any one of which I could make a livelihood."

You say you have a fortune to leave them. O man and woman! have you not learned that, like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches have wings and fly away? Though you should be successful in leaving a competency behind you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in a night; or some elders or deacons of our churches may get up an oil company, or some sort of religious enterprise sanctioned by the church, and induce your orphans to put their money into a hole in Venango County; and if, by the most skilful derricks, the sunken money cannot be pumped up again, prove to them that it was eternally decreed that that was the way they were to lose it, and that it went in the most orthodox and heavenly style.

O the damnable schemes that professed Christians will engage in--until God puts his fingers into the collar of the hypocrite's robe and rips it clear down to the bottom!

You have no right, because you are well off, to conclude that your children are going to be as well off. A man died, leaving a large fortune. His son, a few months ago, fell dead in a Philadelphia grog-shop. His old comrades came in and said, as they bent over his corpse: "What is the matter with you, Boggsey?" The surgeon standing over him said: "Hush up! he is dead!"--"Ah, he is dead!" they said. "Come, boys, let us go and take a drink in memory of poor Boggsey!"

Have you nothing better than money to leave your children? If you have not, but send your daughters into the world with empty brain and unskilled hand, you are guilty of assassination, homicide, regicide, infanticide--compared with which that of poor Hester Vaughan was innocence. There are women toiling in our cities for three and four dollars per week, who were the daughters of merchant princes. These suffering ones now would be glad to have the crumbs that once fell from their father's table. That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears is the lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gaiters in which her mother walked; and that torn and faded calico had ancestry of magnificent brocade, that swept Broadway clean without any expense to the street commissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence, and fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace to them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea, prevalent in society, that though our young women may embroider slippers, and crochet, and make mats for lamps to stand on, without disgrace, the idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame for a young woman, belonging to a large family, to be inefficient when the father toils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a daughter to be idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is as honorable to sweep house, make beds, or trim hats, as it is to twist a watch-chain.

As far as I can understand, the line of respectability lies between that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the back of an armchair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy the chair. You may, with delicate brush, beautify a mantel-ornament, but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may learn artistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing "Ortonville" or "Old Hundred." Do nothing practical, if you would, in the eyes of refined society, preserve your respectability.

I scout these finical notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man, has a right to occupy a place in this world unless she pays a rent for it.

In the course of a lifetime you consume whole harvests, and droves of cattle, and every day you live breathe forty hogsheads of good pure air. You must, by some kind of usefulness, _pay_ for all this. Our race was the last thing created,--the birds and fishes on the fourth day, the cattle and lizards on the fifth day, and man on the sixth day. If geologists are right, the earth was a million of years in the possession of the insects, beasts, and birds, before our race came upon it. In one sense, we were innovators. The cattle, the lizards, and the hawks had pre-emption right. The question is not what we are to do with the lizards and summer insects, but what the 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 enough to fit her for _any_ position. She could stand beside the majority of your salesmen and dispose of more goods. She could go into your wheelwright shops and beat one-half of your workmen at making carriages. We talk about woman as though we had resigned to her all the light work, and ourselves had shouldered the heavier. But the day of judgment, which will reveal the sufferings of the stake and inquisition, will marshal before the throne of God and the hierarchs of heaven the martyrs of wash-tub and needle.

Now, I say, if there be any preference in occupation, let woman have it. God knows her trials are the severest. By her acuter sensitiveness to misfortune, by her hour of anguish, I demand that no one hedge up her pathway to a livelihood. O the meanness, the despicability of men who begrudge a woman the right to work anywhere, in any honorable calling!

I go still further, and say that women should have equal compensation with men. By what principle of justice is it that women in many of our cities get only two-thirds as much pay as men, and in many cases only half? Here is the gigantic injustice--that for work equally well, if not better done, woman receives far less compensation than man. Start with the National Government: women clerks in Washington get nine hundred dollars for doing that for which men receive eighteen hundred.

To thousands of young women of New York to-day there is only this alternative: starvation or dishonor. Many of the largest mercantile establishments of our cities are accessory to these abominations; and from their large establishments there are scores of souls being pitched off into death; _and their employers know it!_

Is there a God? Will there be a judgment? I tell you, if God rises up to redress woman's wrongs, many of our large establishments will be swallowed up quicker than a South-American earthquake ever took down a city. God will catch these oppressors between the two mill-stones of his wrath, and grind them to powder!

Why is it that a female principal in a school gets only eight hundred and twenty-five dollars for doing work for which a male principal gets sixteen hundred and fifty?

I hear from all this land the wail of woman-hood. Man has nothing to answer to that wail but flatteries. He says she is an angel. She is not. She knows she is not. She is a human being, who gets hungry when she has no food, and cold when she has no fire. Give her no more flatteries: give her _justice!_

There are thirty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York and Brooklyn. Across the darkness of this night I hear their death-groan. It is not such a cry as comes from those who are suddenly hurled out of life, but a slow, grinding, horrible wasting away. Gather them before you and look into their faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at their fingers, needle-picked and blood-tipped! See that premature stoop in the shoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough!

At a large meeting of these women, held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches were delivered, but a needle-woman took the stand, threw aside her faded shawl, and, with her shrivelled arm, hurled a very thunder-bolt of eloquence, speaking out of the horrors of her own experience.

Stand at the corner of a street in New York at half-past five or six o'clock in the morning, as the women go to their work. Many of them had no breakfast except the crumbs that were left over from the night before, or a crust they chew on their way through the street. Here they come! the working girls of New York and Brooklyn! These engaged in bead-work, these in flower-making, in millinery, enamelling, cigar making, book-binding, labelling, feather-picking, print-coloring, paper-box making, but, most overworked of all, and least compensated, the sewing-women. Why do they not take the city-cars on their way up? They cannot afford the five cents! If, concluding to deny herself something else, she get into the car, give her a seat! You want to see how Latimer and Ridley appeared in the fire: look at that woman and behold a more horrible martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing death! Ask that woman how much she gets for her work, and she will tell you six cents for making coarse shirts, and finds her own thread!

Last Sabbath night, in the vestibule of my church, after service, a woman fell in convulsions. The doctor said she needed medicine not so much as something to eat. As she began to revive in her delirium, she said, gaspingly: "Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight cents! I wish I could get it done! I am so tired! I wish I could get some sleep, but I must get it done! Eight cents! Eight cents!" We found afterwards that she was making garments for eight cents apiece, and that she could make but three of them in a day! Hear it! Three times eight are twenty-four! Hear it, men and women who have comfortable homes!

Some of the worst villains of the city are the employers of these women. They beat them down to the last penny, and try to cheat them out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or two before she gets the garments to work on. When the work is done it is sharply inspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and the wages refused, and sometimes the dollar deposited not given back. The Women's Protective Union reports a case where one of these poor souls, finding a place where she could get more wages, resolved to change employers, and went to get her pay for work done. The employer says: "I hear you are going to leave me?"--"Yes," she said, "and I have come to get what you owe me." He made no answer. She said: "Are you not going to pay me?"--"Yes," he said, "I will pay you;" and _he kicked her down the stairs_.

How are these evils to be eradicated? What have you to answer, you who sell coats, and have shoes made, and contract for the Southern and Western markets? What help is there, what panacea, what redemption? Some say: "Give women the ballot." What effect such ballot might have on other questions I am not here to discuss; but what would be the effect of female suffrage upon woman's wages? I do not believe that woman will ever get justice by woman's ballot.

Indeed, women oppress women as much as men do. Do not women, as much as men, beat down to the lowest figure the woman who sews for them? Are not women as sharp as men on washerwomen, and milliners, and mantua-makers? If a woman asks a dollar for her work, does not her female employer ask her if she will not take ninety cents? You say "only ten cents difference;" but that is sometimes the difference between heaven and hell. Women often have less commiseration for women than men. If a woman steps aside from the path of virtue, man may forgive,--woman never! Woman will never get justice done her from woman's ballot.

Neither will she get it from man's ballot. How, then? God will rise up for her. God has more resources than we know of. The flaming sword that hung at Eden's gate when woman was driven out will cleave with its terrible edge her oppressors.

But there is something for our women to do. Let our young people prepare to excel in spheres of work, and they will be able, after a while, to get larger wages. If it be shown that a woman can, in a store, sell more goods in a year than a man, she will soon be able not only to ask but to _demand_ more wages, and to demand them successfully. Unskilled and incompetent labor must take what is given; skilled and competent labor will eventually make its own standard. Admitting that the law of supply and demand regulates these things, I contend that the demand for skilled labor is very great, and the supply very small.

Start with the idea that work is _honorable_, and that you can do some one thing better than any one else. Resolve that, God helping, you will take care of yourself. If you are, after a while, called into another relation, you will all the better be qualified for it by your spirit of self-reliance; or if you are called to stay as you are, you can be happy and self-supporting.

Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak, and woman the vine that climbs it; but I have seen many a tree fall that not only went down itself, but took all the vines with it. I can tell you of something stronger than an oak for an ivy to climb on, and that is the throne of the great Jehovah. Single or affianced, that woman is strong who leans on God and does her best. The needle may break; the factory-band may slip; the wages may fail; but, over every good woman's head there are spread the two great, gentle, stupendous wings of the Almighty.

Many of you will go single-handed through life, and you will have to choose between two characters. Young woman, I am sure you will turn your back upon the useless, giggling, painted nonentity which society ignominiously acknowledges to be a woman, and ask God to make you an humble, active, earnest Christian.

What will become of this godless disciple of fashion? What an insult to her sex! Her manners are an outrage upon decency. She is more thoughtful of the attitude she strikes upon the carpet than how she will look in the judgment; more worried about her freckles than her sins; more interested in her bonnet-strings than in her redemption. Her apparel is the poorest part of a Christian woman, however magnificently dressed, and no one has so much right to dress well as a Christian. Not so with the godless disciple of fashion. Take her robes, and you take everything. Death will come down on her some day, and rub the bistre off her eyelids, and the rouge off her cheeks, and with two rough, bony hands, scatter spangles and glass beads and rings and ribbons and lace and brooches and buckles and sashes and frisettes and golden clasps.

The dying actress whose life had been vicious said: "The scene closes. Draw the curtain." Generally the tragedy comes first, and the farce afterward; but in her life it was first the farce of a useless life, and then the tragedy of a wretched eternity.

Compare the life and death of such an one with that of some Christian aunt that was once a blessing to your household. I do not know that she was ever offered the hand in marriage. She lived single, that untrammelled she might be everybody's blessing. Whenever the sick were to be visited, or the poor to be provided with bread, she went with a blessing. She could pray, or sing "Rock of Ages," for any sick pauper who asked her. As she got older, there were days when she was a little sharp, but for the most part Auntie was a sunbeam--just the one for Christmas-eve. She knew better than any one else how to fix things. Her every prayer, as God heard it, was full of everybody who had trouble. The brightest things in all the house dropped from her fingers. She had peculiar notions, but the grandest notion she ever had was to make you happy. She dressed well--Auntie always dressed well; but her highest adornment was that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price. When she died, you all gathered lovingly about her; and as you carried her out to rest, the Sunday-school class almost covered the coffin with japonicas; and the poor people stood at the end of the alley, with their aprons to their eyes, sobbing bitterly; and the man of the world said, with Solomon, "Her price was above rubies;" and Jesus, as unto the maiden in Judea, commanded: "I SAY UNTO THEE, ARISE!"

PICTURES IN THE STOCK GALLERY.

[NOTE.--This chapter, though largely devoted to "Oil," is to be construed as reaching any other "Kite" that the stock gambler flies--any other scheme which his unprincipled ideas of right and wrong will permit him to work to his own gain and others' loss. The oil mania was only a more popular or attractive _vice_ of the stock-boards, which is reproduced, in spirit and motive, almost every month of the year.]

At my entrance upon this discussion, I must deplore the indiscriminate terms of condemnation employed by many well-meaning persons in regard to stock operations. The business of the stock-broker is just as legitimate and necessary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries, or hardware; and a man may be as pure-minded and holy a Christian at the Board of Brokers as in a prayer-meeting. The broker is, in the sight of God, as much entitled to his commissions as any hard-working mechanic is entitled to his day's wages. Any man has as much right to make money by the going up of stocks as by the going up of sugar, rice, or tea. The inevitable board-book that the operator carries in his hand may be as pure as the clothing merchant's ledger. It is the work of the brokers to facilitate business; to make transfer of investment; to watch and report the tides of business; to assist the merchant in lawful enterprises.

Because there are men in this department of business, sharp, deceitful, and totally iniquitous, you have no right to denounce the entire class. Importers, shoe-dealers, lumbermen, do not want to be held responsible for the moral deficits of their comrades in business. Neither have you a right to excoriate those who are conscientiously operating through the channels spoken of. If they take a risk, so do all business men. The merchant who buys silk at five dollars per yard takes his chances; he expects it to go up to six dollars; it may fall to four dollars. If a man, by straightforward operations in stocks, meets with disaster and fails, he deserves sympathy just as much as he who sold spices or calicoes, and through some miscalculation is struck down bankrupt.

We have no right to impose restrictions upon this class of men that we impose upon no other. What right have you to denounce the operation "buyer--ten days" or "buyer--twenty days," when you take a house, "buyer--three hundred and sixty-five days?" Perhaps the entire payment is to be made at the end of a year, when you do not know but that, by that time, you will be penniless. Give all men their due, if you would hold beneficent influence over them. Do not be too rough in pulling out the weeds, lest you uproot also the marigolds and verbenas. In the Board of Brokers there are some of the most conscientious, upright Christian men of our cities--men who would scorn a lie, or a subterfuge. Indeed, there are men in these boards who might, in some respects, teach a lesson of morality to other commercial circles.

I will not deny that there are special temptations connected with this business even when carried on legitimately. So there are dangers to the engineer on a railroad. He does not know what night he may dash into the coal-train. But engines must be run, and stocks must be sold. A nervous, excitable man ought to be very slow to undertake either the engine or the Stock Exchange.

A clever young man, of twenty-five years of age, bought ten shares in the Pennsylvania Central Railroad. The stock went up five dollars per share, and he made fifty dollars by the operation. His mother, knowing his temperament, said to him, "I wish you had lost it." But, encouraged, he entered another operation, and took ten shares in another railroad and made two hundred dollars. By this time he was ready for the wildest scheme. He lost, in three years, forty thousand dollars, ruined his health, and broke his wife's heart. Her father supports them chiefly now. The unfortunate has a shingle up, in a small court, among low operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this commercial sphere. He would have been unfit for a pilot, unfit for military command, unfit for any place that demands steady nerve, cool brain, and well-balanced temperament.

But, while there is a legitimate sphere for the broker and operator, there are transactions every day undertaken in our cities that can only be characterized as superb outrage and villany; and there are members of Christian churches who have been guilty of speculations that, in the last day, will blanch their cheek, and thunder them down to everlasting companionship with the lowest gamblers that ever pitched pennies for a drink.

It is not necessary that I should draw the difficult line between honorable and dishonorable speculation. God has drawn it through every man's conscience. The broker guilty of "cornering" as well knows that he is sinning against God and man, as though the flame of Mount Sinai singed his eyebrows. He hears that a brother broker has sold "short," and immediately goes about with a wise look, saying: "Erie is going down--Erie is going down; prepare for it." Immediately the people begin to sell; he buys up the stock; monopolizes the whole affair; drags down the man who sold short; makes largely, pockets the gain, and thanks the Lord for great prosperity in business. You call it "cornering." I call it gambling, theft, highway robbery, villany accursed.

It is astonishing how some men, who are kind in their families, useful in the church, charitable to the poor, are utterly transformed of the devil as soon as they enter the Stock Exchange. A respectable member of one of the churches of the city went into a broker's office and said: "Get me one hundred shares of Reading, and carry it; I will leave a margin of five hundred dollars." Instead of going up, according to anticipation, the stock fell. Every few days the operator called to ask the broker what success. The stock still declined. The operator was so terribly excited that the broker asked him what was the matter. He replied: "To tell you the truth, I borrowed that five hundred dollars that I lost, and, in anticipation of what I was sure I was going to get by the operation, I made a very large subscription to the Missionary Society."

The nation has become so accustomed to frauds that no astonishment is excited thereby. The public conscience has for many years been utterly debauched by what were called fancy stocks, morus multicaulis, Western city enterprises, and New England developments.

If a man find on his farm something as large as the head of a pin, that, in a strong sunlight, sparkles a little, a gold company is formed; books are opened; working capital declared; a select number go in on the "ground floor;" and the estates of widows and orphans are swept into the vortex. Very little discredit is connected with any such transaction, if it is only on a large scale. We cannot bear small and insignificant dishonesties, but take off our hats and bow almost to the ground in the presence of the man who has made one hundred thousand dollars by one swindle. A woman was arrested in the streets of one of our cities for selling molasses candy on Sunday. She was tried, condemned, and imprisoned. Coming out of prison, she went into the same business and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Again she was arrested, condemned, and imprisoned. On coming out--showing the total depravity of a woman's heart--she again went into the same business, and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Whereupon the police, the mayor and the public sentiment of the city rose up and declared that, though the heavens fell, no woman should be allowed to sell molasses candy on Sunday. Yet the law puts its hands behind its back, and walks up and down in the presence of a thousand abominations and dares not whisper.

There are scores of men to-day on the streets, whose costly family wardrobes, whose rosewood furniture, whose splendid turn-outs, whose stately mansions, are made out of the distresses of sewing-women, whose money they gathered up in a stock swindle. There is human sweat in the golden tankards. There is human blood in the crimson plush. There are the bones of unrequited toil in the pearly keys of the piano. There is the curse of an incensed God hovering over all their magnificence. Some night the man will not be able to rest. He will rise up in bewilderment and look about him, crying: "Who is there?" Those whom he has wronged will thrust their skinny arms under the tapestry, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, and blow their sepulchral breath into his face, crying: "Come to judgment!"

For the warning of young men, I shall specify but two of the world's most gigantic swindles--one English, and the other American. In England, in the early part of the last century, reports were circulated of the fabulous wealth of South America. A company was formed, with a stock of what would be equal to thirty millions of our dollars. The government guaranteed to the company the control of all the trade to the South Sea, and the company was to assume the entire debt of England, then amounting to one hundred and forty millions of dollars. Magnificent project! The English nation talked and dreamed of nothing but Peruvian gold and Mexican silver, the national debt liquidated, and Eldorados numberless and illimitable! When five million pounds of new stock was offered at three hundred pounds per share, it was all snatched up with avidity. Thirty million dollars of the stock was subscribed for, when there were but five millions offered. South Sea went up, until in the midsummer month the stock stood at one thousand per cent. The whole nation was intoxicated. Around about this scheme, as might have been expected, others just as wild arose. A company was formed with ten million dollars of capital for importing walnut trees from Virginia. A company for developing a wheel to go by perpetual motion, with a capital of four million dollars. A company for developing a new kind of soap. A company for insuring against losses by servants, with fifteen million dollars capital. One scheme was entitled: "A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is--capital two million five hundred thousand dollars, in shares of five hundred each. Further information to be given in a month."

The books were opened at nine o'clock in the morning. Before night a thousand shares were taken, and two thousand pounds paid in. So successful was the day's work, that that night the projector of the enterprise went out of the business, and forever vanished from the public. But it was not a perfect loss. The subscribers had their ornamented certificates of stock to comfort them. Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, speaking of those times, says "that from morning until evening 'Change Alley was filled to overflowing with one dense mass of living beings composed of the most incongruous materials, and, in all things save the mad pursuit in which they were employed, the very opposite in habits and conditions."

What was the end of this chapter of English enterprise? Suddenly the ruin came. Down went the whole nation--members of Parliament, tradesmen, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, royal ladies, and poor needle-women--in one stupendous calamity. The whole earth, and all the ages, heard that bubble burst.

But I am not through. Our young men shall hear more startling things. We surpass England in having higher mountains, deeper rivers, greater cataracts, and larger armies. Yea, we have surpassed it in magnitude of swindles. I wish to unfold before the young men of the country, and before those in whose hands may now be the price of blood, the wide-spread, ghastly, and almost infinitely greater wickedness of the gamblers in oil stock. Now, the obtaining of lands, the transporting of machinery, and the forming of companies for the production of oil, is just as honorable as any organization for the obtaining of coal, iron, copper, or zinc. God poured out before this nation a river of oil, and intended us to gather it up, transport it, and use it; and there were companies formed that have withstood all commercial changes, and continued, year after year, in the prosecution of an honorable business. I have just as much respect for the man who has made fifty thousand dollars by oil as I have for him who has made it by spices.