MANY MATTERS.
The period of the _Visiter_ was one of great mental activity--a period
of hobbies--and it, having assumed the reform roll, was expected to
assume all the reforms. Turkish trowsers, Fourierism, Spiritualism,
Vegetarianism, Phonetics, Pneumonics, the Eight Hour Law, Criminal
Caudling, Magdaleneism, and other devices for teaching pyramids to stand
on their apex was pressed upon the _Visiter_, and it held by the
disciples of each as "false to all its professions," when declining to
devote itself to its advocacy. There were a thousand men and women, who
knew exactly what it ought to do; but seldom two of them agreed, and
none ever thought of furnishing funds for the doing of it. Reformers
insisted that it should advocate their plan of hurrying up the
millenium, furnish the white paper and pay the printers. Pond parents
came with their young geniuses to have them baptized in type from the
_Visiter_ font. Male editors were far away folks, but the _Visiter_
would sympathize with family hopes.
Ah, the crop of Miltons, Shakespeares, and Drydens which was growing up
in this land, full forty years ago. What has ever become of them? Here
conscience gives a twinge, for that wicked _Visiter_ did advise that
parents should treat young genius as scientists do wood, which they wish
to convert into pure carbon, _i.e._, cover it up with neglect and
discouragement, and pat these down with wholesome discipline, solid
study and useful work, and so let the fire smoulder out of sight.
The policy of the _Visiter_ in regard to Woman's Rights, was to "go
easy," except in the case of those slave-women, who had no rights. For
others, gain an advance when you could. Educate girls with boys, develop
their brains, and take away legal disabilities little by little, as
experience should show was wise; but never dream of their doing the
world's hard work, either mental or physical; and Heaven defend them
from going into all the trades.
The human teeth proved that we should eat flesh, and the human form
proved that men should take the ore out of the mines, subdue the inertia
of matter and the ferocity of animals; that they should raise the grain,
build the houses, roads and heavy machinery; and that women should do
the lighter work. As this work was as important as the heavier, and as
it fell principally on wives and mothers, they in these relations should
receive equal compensation with the husband and father. By this plan,
the estate acquired by a matrimonial firm, would belong equally to both
parties, and each could devise his or her share, so that a woman would
know that her accumulations would go to her heirs, not to her successor.
Consequently, every wife would have an incentive to industry and
economy, instead of being stimulated to idleness and extravagance as by
existing laws.
Women should not weaken their cause by impracticable demands. Make no
claim which could not be won in a reasonable time. Take one step at a
time, get a good foothold in it and advance carefully. Suffrage in
municipal elections for property holders who could read, and had never
been connected with crime, was the place to strike for the ballot. Say
nothing about suffrage elsewhere until it proved successful here.
Intemperance was then under treatment by Washingtonianism. By this
philosophy it was held that each man consists of about thirty pounds of
solid matter, wet up with several buckets of water; that in youth his
mother and sweetheart, kneads, rolls, pats and keeps him in shape, until
his wife takes charge of him and makes him into large loaves or little
cakes, according to family requirements; but must not stop kneading,
rolling, patting, on pain of having him all flatten out.
The diagnosis of drunkenness was that it was a disease for which the
patient was in no way responsible, that it was created by existing
saloons, and non-existing bright hearths, smiling wives, pretty caps and
aprons. The cure was the patent nostrum of pledge-signing, a
lying-made-easy invention, which like calomel, seldom had any permanent
effect on the disease for which it was given, and never failed to
produce another and a worse. Here the cure created an epidemic of
forgery, falsehood and perjury.
Napoleon selected his generals for their large noses. Dr. Washingtonian
chose his leaders for their great vices. The honors bestowed upon his
followers were measured by their crimes, and that man who could boast
the largest accumulation was the hero of the hour. A decent, sober man
was a mean-spirited fellow; while he who had brought the grey hair of
parents in sorrow to the grave, wasted his patrimony and murdered his
wife and children, was "King o' men for a' that." The heroines were
those women who had smilingly endured every wrong, every indignity that
brutality could inflict; had endured them not alone for themselves but
for their children; and she who had caressed the father of her child
while he dashed its brains out, headed the list in saintship; for love
was the kneading trough, and obedience the rolling pin, in and with
which that precious mess called a man was to be made into an angel.
The _Visiter_ held that the law-giver of Mount Sinai knew what was in
man, and had not given any such account of him; that the commands, "Thou
shalt," and "Thou shalt not," were addressed to each individual; that
the disease of opening one's mouth and pouring whisky into it was under
the control of the mouth-opener; that drunkenness was a crime for which
the criminal should be punished by such terms of imprisonment as would
effectually protect society and prevent its confirmation. It told women
that that dough ought to be baked in the furnace of affliction; that
the coil of an anaconda was preferable to the embraces of a drunken man;
that it is a crime for a woman to become the mother of a drunkard's
child; that she who fails to protect her child from the drunken fury of
any man, even to the extent of taking his life on the spot, if possible,
is a coward and a traitor to the highest impulses of humanity.
These sentiments made a stir in temperance ranks, and there was much
defense of the dear fellows. The organization, seemed to be principally
occupied in teaching, that among men, only rumsellers are free moral
agents, and that they and the women are to bear the iniquity of us all.
One Philadelphia woman, engaged in scattering rose-leaf remedies over
the great cancer of the land, concluded that the editor of the _Visiter_
horsewhipped the unfortunate man she called husband, once a day, with
great regularity. Much sympathy was expressed for that much-abused man;
and this was amusing to those who knew he could have tied four such
tyrants in a sheaf, and carried them off like a bundle of sticks. But
people had found a monster, a giantess, with flaming black eyes, square
jaws and big fists, who lived at the top of a very high bean-pole, and
ate nothing but the uncooked flesh of men.
However, the man-eating idea came to be useful, and proved that a bad
name is better than none.
In '49, the _Visiter_ began a weekly series of "Letters to Country
Girls," which were seized upon as a new feature in journalism, were very
extensively copied, and won golden opinions from all sorts of men. In
'54 they were collected in book form, and "mine ancient enemy," George
D. Prentiss, gave them kindly notice.