_They_ can stand it!--with a good house over their independent heads, secured and paid for by their own honest industry. They can stand it!--with greenbacks and Treasury notes stowed away against a rainy day. _They_ can stand it!--with any quantity of "admirers" who, not having pluck or skill enough to earn their own living, would gladly share what these enterprising women have accumulated. May a good Providence multiply female lecturers, female sculptors, female artists of every sort, female authors, female astronomers, female book-keepers, female--anything that is honest, save female _sempstresses_, with their pale faces, hollow eyes and empty pockets, and a City Hospital or Almshouse in prospective.
Certainly these earnest women lecturers are in pleasant contrast to many of the young men of the present day, to whom nothing is sacred, to whom everything in life is levelled to the same plane of indifference. Nothing is worth a struggle; nothing worth a sacrifice to them. Evils, they say, must come; and, folding their hands idly, they say--let them come. In _their_ moral garden, weeds have equal chance with the flowers; and it is very easy to see which are in the ascendant. To be in the blighting proximity of such a person is to breathe the air of the bottomless pit. Every noble aspiration, every humane and philanthropic feeling, shrivels in such an atmosphere. What is it to them that the poor bondman points to his chains? What is it to them that the world groans with wrong that they can and should at least begin to redress. The mountain is steep, the top is hidden in clouds, and they have no eye to discern that they are even now parting that a glory may gild its summit. It is bad enough--humiliating enough--to hear the aged express such chilling sentiments. One can have a pitying patience with them; but when masculine youth and vigor, born to the glorious inheritance of 1864, tricks itself out in these old moth-eaten, time-worn garments, instead of buckling on sword and helmet for God and the right, it is the saddest, most disheartening sight that earth can show.
And speaking of young men, did you ever, when shopping in New York, notice the different varieties of clerks one sees. There is your zealous clerk, who thinks fuss is impressive. When you enter, he places one hand on the counter and turns a somerset over to the other side, with an astonishing agility equalled only at the circus; he twitches down the desired piece of goods from the shelf and slaps it down on the counter with a whirlwind velocity that would send your bonnet through the door into the street were it not fastened firmly on by the strings. You catch your breath and sneeze at the dust he has raised, and trust that _this_ part of the performance is over. Not at all; he repeats it with another elevation of the piece of goods in the air, announcing the price per yard, just as its second flapping descent makes said announcement inaudible. You sneeze again as the dust fills your nostrils, and stoop to pick up your handkerchief which he has sent flying to the floor. By this time, if you can recollect what it is you came to buy, or how many yards of the same you desire, you have more self-possession and patience than I.