The Jericho Road eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 167 pages of information about The Jericho Road.

The Jericho Road eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 167 pages of information about The Jericho Road.

While studying language, I observed that most of my mistakes in grammar occurred in the feminine gender, and thinking over the cause of it, it dawned upon me that, belonging to the masculine sex, I was in the habit of thinking in that gender, and that my teachers were men, and that my text-books and grammars had been written by men, and that the masculine gender predominated so strongly in the exercises, that it was but natural for me to make the greatest number of mistakes in the gender to which the least attention had been given.  When dealing with the social and domestic question, the unbiased among us can not but observe a similar failing.  Many a serious mistake has been made by man when speaking or writing concerning women, because our speakers and writers and preachers and teachers belonged from the very beginning of civilization, almost exclusively to the masculine sex, a sex which has never tired in exalting itself at the expense of the weaker sex, in emphasizing woman’s inferiority to man, in asserting its rights, and in complaining about its wrongs, and as woman did not write or speak for herself, we have heard but little of her side of the story, know next to nothing of her just rights and of her grievous wrongs, seldom dream that she, too, has rights that must be respected, and suffers wrongs that must be corrected.

The universities, colleges and all great institutions of learning of this and other lands refused, until quite recently, to recognize woman as a human being possessing a mind in need of training, and therefore excluded her from their privileges, and the order of Odd-Fellows partook of the same spirit and excluded the better half of the human race from its lodge-rooms.  Man had ever been a selfish, conceited, cowardly tyrant from the day in which our father Adam disgraced his sex by taking without question the forbidden fruit; and, after eating it, crying with selfish, pusillanimous cowardice:  “The woman thou gavest to be with me gave me of the tree and I did eat,” and he has always sought to make and keep woman an inferior, dependent, submissive slave.  To this end he has striven to keep her in ignorance, exclude her from all the avenues of knowledge, and then, because she did not possess the knowledge that he had forbidden her, proclaimed throughout the world that she was mentally inferior to man, and in consequence unfit to be admitted to the various institutions and associations in which men sought to improve their minds.

The object of Odd-Fellowship is to improve and elevate the character of man, to enlighten his mind and enlarge the sphere of his affections, and of course woman, as being mentally weak and naturally inferior to man, was excluded from its sacred precincts.  Now, however, things are changed; nearly all educational institutions worthy of mention admit women, and the Rebekah of today, emulating the Rebekah of old, will be hand in hand with her brothers in all good works.  She will accompany him on his errands of mercy, watch beside the bedside of anguish, foregoing pleasure to follow in the path of duty.

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The Jericho Road from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.