Don't drive the former mad and the latter distracted.
Remember that insanity is on the increase, and that accommodations in
asylums are limited. Take warning before you undermine the reason of an
entire continent. Beware! Beware!
I hear much and see more of the physical weakness of woman. Michelet
tells the sentimental world that woman is an exquisite invalid, with a
perennial headache and nerves perpetually on the rack. It is a mistake.
When I gaze upon German and French peasant-women, I ask Michelet which
is right, he or Nature? And since my introduction to Barnum's female
gymnast,--a good-looking, well-formed mother of a family, who walks
about unflinchingly with men and boys on her shoulders, and carries a
300-pound gun as easily as the ordinary woman carries a
clothes-basket,--I have been persuaded that "the coming woman," like
Brother Jonathan, will "lick all creation." In that good time, woman
will have her rights because she will have her muscle. Then, if there
are murders and playful beatings between husbands and wives, the wives
will enjoy all the glory of crime. What an outlook! And what a sublime
consolation to the present enfeebled race of wives that are having their
throats cut and their eyes carved out merely because their biceps have
not gone into training! Barnum's female gymnast is an example to her
sex.
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