An M. D.

“ Thus forage and fluids, with caution selected,
’Tis like, in the temper, will ripen reflected.
One species of felines in manner befitting
Will show in the impulse for scratching and spitting.
Another polemic Grimalkin, I’ll venture,
Peculiar sensation will wake by its stench, or
There’s nothing in breeding, and feeding, and teaching,
As doctors in physics and ethics are preaching.
Such regimen followed, with strictest attention,
Will breed you more squabbles than scribblers can mention. ”

“ The ocean ride and breast the whirlwind’s pow’r—
The pond’rous train, its head ablaze with light,
We’ll drive, like arrow, shooting through the night—
Tame the wild horse, and charm the tiger’s rage—
With deeds of valor brighten hist’ry’s page,
And triumph o’er the world! So woman’s honor,
Like robe of comfort loose shall hang upon her,
To doff or don, convenient disguise:
So all the world shall stare with wond’ring eyes,
All trifles note, with imbecile surprise;
Just how she wipes her nose, how wears her stocking,
And barely smile when she does something shocking. ”

“ Its trammels we’ll scatter to thunder.
’Tis woman shall shiver
Its artifice clever,
16For man may come and man may go
But we rush on forever.
Then hip, hurrah!
Sing fal, la, la!
The glorious day is breaking,
When love is free
To you and me—
You have it for the taking.
So don the breeches,
And leap like witches,
The very ground beneath us shaking;
Let impulse draw
By higher law
And we’ll obey it ever
For man may come, and man may go
But we rush on forever. ”

“ And ten shall school their brood in street and dust
Regardless of their highest holiest trust.
A hundred men shall, in their av’rage rate,
The manly part perform in home and state;
And ten, by selfishness and devilish hate
Humanity shall fairly desecrate.
Aforetime, woman dear, ’twas so with you,
And shall be so again—for God is true,
Nor will forget to gather, as of old,
56His wand’ring children in the heav’nly fold.
When clothed upon ye are, in calmer hour,
By soberness, and clad in reason’s pow’r,
Ye’ll marvel at the mad delirium
And weird delusions that with fever come. ”

“ For, “entre nous,” ’tis thought, my charming sisters,
Although you’re known of old as great persisters,
And, doubtless, versatile enough and tricky,
For easy roads—yet when the mud is sticky,
The wheeling rough, or up a heavy grade—
Perchance a weighty burden on you laid,
To carry which your backs were never made,
Coarse muscle in the wheelers might avail
To move a load when lighter beasts must fail. ”

“ No Eve, no sin, this fearful uproar keeping;
No sin, no death; no death, no mourners weeping;
Had luckless Adam not been captured sleeping
But up and dressed in reasonable season,
It stands to unassisted human reason
No sinful woman would have lived to be
Prolific source of so much misery.
* * * * * * * * * *
Hail, rain, thunder, tempest and hurricane!
Howl and shriek! Split your throats! ye’ll blow in vain
To drown the whirlwind, furious and wild,
That burst, from tongue and eye, on this poor child.
Hags and witches! ”

“ A gossip’s ripping bee with rags to mend it,—
A sick’ning witches stew with hags to tend it,—
A love-feast gross—a sacrament absurd
Of painted demirep and gallows bird—
A woman’s carnival, a crazy fair—
A vast impromptu home-made dinner where
All projects wild and visionary schemings,
Licentious crudities and zealots dreamings
Unwashed were tumbled in—each other spoiling—
9One single, mighty cauldron, hot and boiling
Till smell of everything but sulphur rose,
And made creation gladly hold its nose. ”

“ Must ever wake emotions melancholy.
But ah! when aged women takes to soaring,
And, motherhood forgetting, and ignoring
“The divinity that doth hedge” her round,
In strange and unbecoming walks is found,
Deserting sacred joys of hearth and home,
Delighting in forbidden paths to roam.
A gloom o’erhangs the soul, like fun’ral pall. ”

“ No more will cling like ivy to the oak,
(That horrible tho’ venerated joke,)
No more will coo round man, like petted dove,
To win the sweet amenities of love.—
Nor pay in woman’s anguish and despair
The costly tribute to his fost’ring care.
We’ll grind the curse beneath our conqu’ring heel
And heav’n itself besiege for its repeal.
Let all the list’ning earth attend the hour
When man shall abdicate the throne of pow’r;
When woman shall assume supreme command,
The sceptre of dominion in her hand.
Delicate are we, forsooth! and so weak
Our feebleness must man’s protection seek! ”

“ The weak must ever to the mighty bend;
And gravely show, with self-complacent mien,
How in the annals of the world ’tis seen,
Of all the host that ruled by “right divine”
Scarce one in thousands own the female line. ”

“ Myself a bottle, closely stoppered in.
And when the great millenium has met her,
When woman has no toil or care to fret her,
Does she design to live and reign forever?
Hath fate no pow’r the thread of life to sever? ”

“ Ye blind, whose self-conceit, of envy born,
A glorious Holland’s teachings laugh to scorn,
51Or hers whose genius bloomed in Afric’s night
And fruited in unequaled Pink and White.
Is it the throne or pow’r the throne behind
That makes the mass obedient and kind?
If leopards cling tenaciously to spots
And Ethiopians, the senseless sots,
At man’s command wont even change their skin
When white is cleaner far, will all within
By woman’s magic finger be remoulded
And mute rebellion sit with arms enfolded? ”

“ Since strong desire, ’tis said, hath power still
To work its own fulfillment, through the will,
We soon shall see the sprouting of her wings
And rare development of other things.
Tremble tyrants! no more shall slavish chain
Of sexual love our faculties restrain.
Woman no more shall live like gilded toy,
Your daily solace or your midnight joy.
Each weak, effem’nate grace henceforth we scorn,
And will no more of softer mould be born. ”

“ Creating debt no man succeeds in dodging.
A national debt foredoomed to last forever,
With tax not one evades, tho’ ne’er so clever.
Blind bard! who sweeter sung for want of eyes,
You blundered sadly once, to my surprise:
Sleeping (’tis true, the bible proves it so)
“Brought death into the world and all our woe.”
If aught is taught by Adam’s heavy fall
It teaches man should never sleep at all. ”

“ When woman to her proper “sphere” promoted,
On husbands shoulders shall be raised and toted.
I hate this silly rant on “woman’s sphere!”
’Tis simply nauseous to lib’ral ear,
The very word’s disgustingly offensive
28Suggesting bounds to woman’s plans extensive;
Implying still, whatever one’s pursuit is,
Existence wasted in a round of duties. ”

“ Ye’ll deem the compensation wondrous small
To make the laws ye must enforce for all!
But why on man the awful burden load
Of human miseries decreed of God?
Why charge to him all sorrow since the fall
When well ye know ’tis heritage of all? ”

“ Yet, humbly here would proffer a petition;
That, when her hopes are ripened to fruition,
And woman sits above us high and holy,
She’ll not forget to use us, (base and lowly
As we confess ourselves,) when powers brutal,
36Like courage, strength, and zeal, may suit all
The circumstances of the new connection
’Twixt vulgar man and feminine perfection,
Permit us still, as an especial favor
From ruder toils and war’s alarms to save her:
The priv’lege grant, to fight, and toil, and swelter,
To furnish her support, and peace, and shelter ”

“ That is, with actual malice “in prepense.”
Tho’ human frailty may, at times, creep in
And give the merest semblance of a sin.
Yet priests themselves, like all, when myst’ries blind ’em,
Must needs interpret as they chance to find ’em. ”

“ Eclipse the dull experience of man;
And, tho’ to work is not her special mission,
She lifts great loads “by woman’s intuition”
Therefore, in order that the race may thrive
The man should hold the plow and woman drive. ”

“ Beauty in ev’ry style from brown to fair
Widows, with smiles and wiles in rare perfection,
Seeking a mart for second hand affection.
Old maids, whose charms tho’ wholly unprotected
Blind man to seize had cruelly neglected.
Unfortunate beings whom nature unkind
10Had stinted in powers of body or mind.
Whom love had deluded or envy had sour’d,
In gloomy recesses now huddled and cowered,
Chewed cardamon fiercely and balefully glower’d ”

“ And wipe them with your penitential hair!
55That woman hath more wrongs, with man they cause,
Than man, from being woman’s partner draws,
Is false as——well, I would not wish to swear,
But truth I’ll tell, for truth is only fair,
And, since ye dare the reading of the roll
Ye can’t complain when I display the scroll.
Go through the town, inquire from street, to street,
And this the truthful record ye shall meet.
A hundred men shall study day and night
How best promote the family’s delight ”

“ When after lengthened ages of debating,
And after all the heavn’ly host were tired of waiting,
Th’ orig’nal plan was reached for man’s creating,
’Twas found before the work had far proceeded,
A rare, peculiar kind of dirt was needed ”

“ Of labor as perhaps a wise provision.
’Tis seen that dogs and other beastly samples
Teach us to hunt in pairs, by their examples.
Though women shirk the part of baby-feeders,
They still might work in double-teams—as leaders. ”

“ Whose pow’r, ’tis boasted by the science makers,
Increases, spread o’er fifty thousand acres.
She dismal talked of terrible “upheaving”
Of systems and peoples, quite past believing.
31“Upheaved” the church, “upheaved” the contract civil;
“Upheaved” poor man, but couldn’t eject the devil. ”