[p. 148]
THE LAST VAGARY OF THE GREELEY CLIQUE--
THE WOMEN, THEIR RIGHTS AND THEIR CHAMPIONS.
THE WOMEN, THEIR RIGHTS AND THEIR CHAMPIONS.
The assemblage of rampant women which convened at the Tabernacle yesterday was an interesting phase in the comic history of the nineteenth century. We saw, in broad daylight, in a public hall in the city of New York, a gathering of unsexed women--unsexed in mind all of them, and many in habiliments--publicly propounding the doctrine that they should be allowed to step out of their appropriate sphere, and mingle in the busy walks of every day life, to the neglect of those duties which both human and divine law had assigned to them. We will not stop to argue against so ridiculous a set of ideas. We will only inquire who are to perform those duties which we and our fathers before us have imagined belonged solely to women. Is the world to be depopulated? Are there to be no more children? Or are we to adopt the French mode, which is too well known to need explanation.
Another reason why we will not answer the logic which is poureod [sic] out from the lips of such persons as Lucy Stone, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, and their male coadjutors, Greeley, Garrison, Oliver Johnson, Orson Burleigh, and others, is because they themselves do not believe in the truth or the feasibility of the doctrines they utter. In some cases eccentricity is a harmless disease, but the idiosyncrasies of these people spring from another source. They admit the principle that fame and infamy are synonymous terms. Disappointed in their struggle for the first, they grasp the last, and at the same time pocket all the money they can wring from the 'barren fools' who can be found in any community eager to grasp at any doctrine which is novel, no matter how outrageous it may be.
It is almost needless for us to say that these women are entirely devoid of personal attractions. They are generally thin maiden ladies, or women who perhaps have been disappointed in their endeavors to appropriate the breeches and the rights of their unlucky lords; the first class, having found it utterly impossible to induce any young or old man into the matrimonial noose, have turned out upon the world, and are now endeavoring to revenge themselves upon the sex who have slighted them. The second, having been dethroned from their empire over the hearts of their husbands, for reasons which may easily be imagined, go vagabondising [sic] over the country, boring unfortunate audiences with long essays lacking point or meaning, and only amusing from the imprudence displayed by the speakers in putting them forth in a civilized country. They violate the rules of decency and taste, by attiring themselves in eccentric habiliments, which hang loosely and irregularly upon their forms, making that which we have been educated to respect, to love, and to admire, only an object of aversion and disgust. A few of these unfortunate women have awoke from their momentary trance, and quickly returned to the dress of decent society, but we saw yesterday many disciples of the Bloomer school at the Tabernacle. There was yesterday, and there will be to-day, a wide field for all such at the Tabernacle. All who desire to see them will put a shilling in their pockets, and journey toward the Tabernacle. A sufficient amount of entertainment is gurantied [sic] for the money invested, and those who have a taste for the singular will undoubtedly be on hand.--Bennett's Herald.