docility and some natural quickness.  The hardest cases to be managed are not of those who have been taught nothing, but of those who have been taught wrongly,—­who come to you self-opinionated, with ways that are distasteful to you, and contrary to the genius of your housekeeping.  Such require that their mistress shall understand a least so much of the actual conduct of affairs as to prove to the servant that there are better ways than those in which she has hitherto been trained.”

“Don’t you think, mamma,” said Marianne, “that there has been a sort of reaction against woman’s work in our day?  So much has been said of the higher sphere of woman, and so much has been done to find some better work for her, that insensibly, I think, almost everybody begins to feel that it is rather degrading for a woman in good society to be much tied down to family-affairs.”

“Especially,” said my wife, “since in these Woman’s-Rights Conventions there is so much indignation expressed at those who would confine her ideas to the kitchen and nursery.”

“There is reason in all things,” said I.  “Woman’s-Rights Conventions are a protest against many former absurd, unreasonable ideas,—­the mere physical and culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with puddings and shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast upon the sex.  Many of the women connected with these movements are as superior in everything properly womanly as they are in exceptional talent and culture.  There is no manner of doubt that the sphere of woman is properly to be enlarged, and that republican governments in particular are to be saved from corruption and failure only by allowing to woman this enlarged sphere.  Every woman has rights as a human being first, which belong to no sex, and ought to be as freely conceded to her as if she were a man,—­and first and foremost, the great right of doing anything which God and Nature evidently have fitted her to excel in.  If she be made a natural orator, like Miss Dickenson, or an astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of her powers.  Nor can there be any reason shown why a woman’s vote in the State should not be received with as much respect as in the family.  A State is but an association of families, and laws relate to the rights and immunities which touch woman’s most private and immediate wants and dearest hopes; and there is no reason why sister, wife, and mother should be more powerless in the State than in the home.  Nor does it make a woman unwomanly to express an opinion by dropping a slip of paper into a box, more than to express that same opinion by conversation.  In fact, there is no doubt, that, in all matters relating to the interests of education, temperance, and religion, the State would be a material gainer by receiving the votes of women.