Helen H. Gardener

“ Katherine had watched her daughter's face as she talked, and now the girl's lips were moving and she read audibly: "be, and is hereby enacted, that henceforth the legal age in the state of New York whereat a female may give consent to the violation of her own person shall be reduced to ten years."
Gertrude dropped the paper in her lap and looked up like a frightened, hunted creature. "Great God!" she exclaimed, with an intensity born of a sudden revelation. "Great God! and they call themselves men! And other men keep silence—furnish all the soil and nurture for infamy like that! ”

“ Who is ever at once her first, most severe, and most sympathetic critic, whose encouragement and interest in her work never flags; whose abiding belief in human rights, without sex limitations, and in equality of opportunity leaves scant room in his great soul to harbor patience with sex domination in a land which boasts of freedom for all, and embodies its symbol of Liberty in the form of the only legally disqualified and unrepresented class to be found upon its shores. ”

“ As the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts of science, I hail with pleasure all such attempts by the young writers of our day. The slave has had his novelist and poet, the farmer his, the victims of ignorance and poverty theirs, but up to this time the refinements of cruelty suffered by intelligent, educated women, have never been painted in glowing colors, so that the living picture could be seen and understood. ”

“ She knew as she looked that she was too handsome to pass for a man. It was a woman's face. Then, too, how could she live with and care for Ettie? "No, I'll have to go to them for help," she said, desperately to herself, and turning, faced Selden Avery coming across the street. The color flew into her face, but she saw at a glance that he did not think of their last meeting—or, at least, not of its ending. "I was just wishing I could see you and Miss Gertrude," she said, bluntly, her courage coming back when he paused, recognizing that she wished to speak further with him than a mere greeting. ”

“ Those who keep silence are as guilty as the rest! Those who try to prevent women from knowing—oh, mamma!" Her eyes were intense. She sprang to her feet; "and John Martin, who thinks he loves me is one of those men! Knowing such a bill as that is pending, his indignation is aroused, not at the bill, not at the men who try to smuggle it through, not at the awful thing it implies, but that so strict a silence is not kept that such as we may not know of it! ”

“ All men hold that such a boy is not old enough to make such a contract. That any one older than he, who leads him into a crime or misdemeanor, or the transfer of property, or his personal rights and liberty, is guilty of legal offence. The boy is without blame, and his contract is absolutely void—illegal. But in more than one state we hold that a little girl of ten may make the most fatal contract ever made by or for woman, and that she is old enough to be held legally responsible for her act and for her judgment. ”

“ You say that love brings people near together. Do you know I am beginning to think that nothing could be a greater calamity than that? Drawn together by a love that rests on a physical basis for those who refuse to allow it root in a common sympathy and a community of thought it must fail sooner or later. A humbled acceptance of the crumbs of her husband's life, or a resentful endurance of it, may result from the accursed faithfulness or the pitiful dependence of wives, but surely—surely no greater calamity could befall her and no worse fate lie in wait for him. ”

“ Gertrude Foster opened her Russian leather purse and Mrs. Spillini's eyes brightened shrewdly. There was no need for the hesitancy and choice of words that gave the young girl so much care and pain. Familiarity with all the mean and gross of life from childhood until one is the mother of six living and four dead children, does not leave the finest edge of sentiment and pride upon the poverty-cursed victims of fate. ”

“ And I tell you, gentlemen, with my one term's experience in the Legislature and what it has taught me—I tell you that there is no outrage which wealth and power can commit upon man that it cannot and does not commit doubly upon woman! There is no cruelty upon all this cruel earth half so terrible as the tyranny of sex! And again, I tell you that to woman every man is a capitalist in wealth and in power, and I reiterate:—the destruction of the poor is their poverty. ”

“ If, from an objective point of view, a writer could thus eloquently portray the sorrows of a subject race, how much more graphically should some woman describe the degradation of sex.
In Helen Gardener's stories, I see the promise, in the near future, of such a work of fiction, that shall paint the awful facts of woman's position in living colors that all must see and feel. The civil and canon law, state and church alike, make the mothers of the race a helpless, ostracised class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization. ”

“ It was her first glimpse into a grade of life to which all things, even birth and death, take on a strictly commercial aspect; where not only the edge of sentiment is dulled by dire necessity, but where the sentiment itself is buried utterly beneath the incrustations of an ignorance that is too dumb and abject to learn, and a poverty that is too insistent to recognize its own ignorance and degradation. ”

“ Alas! for the degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away all that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten years, you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the tangled forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England and America, the leading nations on the globe.
Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public disgust. ”

“ Then she fell asleep, and dreamed of rescuing Ettie from the fangs a maddened dog, and Francis stood by and looked scornfully at Gertrude's lacerated hands, and then pointed to her little friend's mangled body and the smile upon her dead lips.
"She never knew what hurt her, and she teased the dog to begin with," she said. "You are maimed for life, and may go mad, just trying to help her—and she never knew and she never cared." ”

“ Her daughter's eyes were upon her in surprise. Mrs. Foster laughed a little nervously, and kissed the girl's hand as it lay in her own. "It seems rather droll for your gay little mother to caution you against losing control of yourself, doesn't it?" she asked. "You who were always all balance wheel, as your father says. But—"
"Mamma, don't you think Mr. Avery did perfectly right to send me that letter and this to you?" broke in Gertrude, as if she had not heard the admonition of her mother, and had followed her own thoughts from some more distant point. ”

“ Look at the awful, the horrible, the beastly laws we pass for women, while we carefully keep them in a position where they cannot legislate for themselves. Do you know there is no law in any state—and no legislature would dare try to pass one—which would bind a ten-year-old boy to any contract which he might have been led, driven, or coaxed into, or have voluntarily made, if that contract should henceforth deprive him of all that gives to him the comforts, joys, or decencies of life! ”

“ I had no idea that Gertrude would be so utterly unreasonable. It is a girl's whim. She'll get over it, but it is deucedly uncomfortable while it lasts."
"Mamma," said Gertrude, when she reached her mother's pretty room on the third floor. "Mamma, do you suppose if a girl really and truly loved a man that she would stop to think whether he had a high or a low estimate of womanhood?" ”

“ Honor protected by knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.
A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable, less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in every relation in life.
Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and she must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is the great primal fact of her existence ”

“ Her absolute financial dependence upon men has given him the power and—alas, that I should be compelled to say it!—the will, to deny her all that is best and loftiest in life, and even to crush out of her the love of liberty and the dignity of character which cares for the better things. ”

“ So when she sat, with dainty folded hands whose jeweled softness found fitting background on the crimson velvet of her trailing gown, and announced that she could endure everything associated with, and felt deep sympathy for, the poor if it were not for the besetting sin of uncleanliness that found its home almost invariably where poverty dwelt, it would be unjust to pronounce her hard-hearted or base. ”

“ It was the hand Avery had held so long within his own, as it lay upon his arm. At last the girl drew the glove off, and going to her drawer, took out her finest handkerchief and lay the glove within, wrapping it softly and carefully. She was breathing hard, and her face was set and pained. At two o'clock she had fallen asleep, and under her tear-stained cheek there was a glove folded in a bit of soft cambric. Poor Francis King! The world is a sorry place for such as you, and even those who would be your best friends often deal the deadliest wounds. Poor Francis King! ”

“ Avery, were chairman of that committee, that such a bill as that would ever have been presented? Do you suppose, if any mother on earth held the veto power, that such a bill would ever disgrace a statute book? Are there enough men, even of a class who generally go to the Legislature, who, in spite of their fatherhood, in spite of the fact that they have little sisters, are such beasts as to pass a bill like that? A ten-year-old girl! A mere baby! And—oh, mamma! it is too hideous to believe, even of—such a bill could never pass. Never on earth! ”

“ IV. The visit to the Spillini family had, indeed, led to strange complications and far-reaching results. No one who had known young Seldon Avery and his social life would ever have suspected him, or any member of his set, of a desire to take part in what, by their club friends or favorite reviews, was usually alluded to as the "dirty pool of politics." For the past decade political advancement, at least in New York, had grown to be looked upon by many as a mere matter of purchase and sale, and as quite beneath the dignity of the more refined and cultured men. ”

“ Avery is to be congratulated that he has the splendid courage to try to do something distinctly useful for other people, than simply for the few of us who are outside or above most of the horrors of life. I do—" Avery suddenly lifted her hand to his lips, and his eyes told the rest. "Mr. Foster," he said, still holding the girl's hand, and blushing painfully, "there can never be but one horror in the world too awful for me to face, and that would be to lose the full respect and confidence of your daughter. I know I have those now, and for the rest —" He glanced again at Gertrude. ”

“ Am I right, mamma?"
Her mother drew her hand to her lips, and then with a quick action she threw both arms about the girl and whispered in her ear: "I shall go back to the old way. Swim if you can, daughter. You are right. If only you are strong enough. That is the question. If only you are strong enough. I am not. I shall remain in the old way." There was a steadiness and calm in her voice which matched oddly enough with the fire in her eyes and the flush on her cheeks.
"Little mother, little mother," murmured Gertrude, softly, as she stroked her mother's hand. ”

“ The men laughed again.
"Gertrude, has your mamma read her essay yet before the Ladies' Artistic and Ethical Club on the 'Self-Inflicted Sorrows of the Poor?'" asked Mr. Foster, pinching his daughter's chin, and allowing a chuckle of humorous derision to escape him as he glanced at their guest.
"No," said the girl, a trifle uneasily; "Lizzie Feedour read last time. Mamma's is next, and she has read her paper to me. It is just as good as it can be. Better than half the essays used to be at college, not excepting Mr. Holt's prize thesis on economics. I wish the poor people could hear it. ”