from Eliot's pulpit,
she declaimed with great earnestness and passion, nothing short of anger, on the
injustice which the world did to women, and equally to itself, by not allowing
them, in freedom and honor, and with the fullest welcome, their natural
utterance in public.
    »It shall not always be so!« cried she. »If I live another year, I will lift
up my own voice, in behalf of woman's wider liberty.«
    She, perhaps, saw me smile.
    »What matter of ridicule do you find in this, Miles Coverdale?« exclaimed
Zenobia, with a flash of anger in her eyes. »That smile, permit me to say, makes
me suspicious of a low tone of feeling, and shallow thought. It is my belief -
yes, and my prophecy, should I die before it happens - that, when my sex shall
achieve its rights, there will be ten eloquent women, where there is now one
eloquent man. Thus far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole
heart and her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of
society throttles us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats! We mumble a few
weak words, and leave a thousand better ones unsaid. You let us write a little,
it is true, on a limited range of subjects. But the pen is not for woman. Her
power is too natural and immediate. It is with the living voice, alone, that she
can compel the world to recognize the light of her intellect and the depth of
her heart!«
    Now - though I could not well say so to Zenobia - I had not smiled from any
unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims which she is beginning to
put forth. What amused and puzzled me, was the fact, that women, however
intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or
wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual affections chance to lie in
idleness, or to be ill at ease. They are not natural reformers, but become such
by the pressure of exceptional misfortune. I could measure Zenobia's inward
trouble, by the animosity with which she now took up the general quarrel of
woman against man.
    »I will give you leave, Zenobia,« replied I, »to fling your utmost scorn
upon me, if you ever hear me utter a sentiment unfavorable to the widest liberty
which woman has yet dreamed of. I would give her all she asks, and add a great
deal more,