“In this, as in all other reforms, persecution and opposition strengthen the cause they would crush. The result of the anti-slavery movement should convince all that any God-ordained progressive movement, though it may be stayed for a time, cannot be killed and buried because men will it so.” PETTICOAT PRESENTATION. Some ladies of Quincy having presented a petticoat to some obnoxious individual, Mrs. Bloomer wrote as follows: “It has long been customary for men, when they wish to express great contempt for the action of an individual, or to hold him up to the scorn and ridicule of the world, to present him with a _petticoat_. No matter whether the action be one of meanness and cowardice, or one of heroism in defense of a good cause, the man so acting must be degraded in the eyes of the world by the offer of a woman’s garment—no other being found sufficiently expressive of the disgust of its contemners. It has always seemed strange to me that men were willing to dishonor the mothers who bore them and the wives they have chosen for life-companions by thus selecting one of their garments as the most fitting badge of cowardice, of meanness, of treachery, of weakness, of littleness of soul; and I have never heard of an instance of the kind but my cheek has tingled with shame and indignation—shame that men could thus unblushingly offer insult to woman, indignation that woman must receive and submit tamely to the insult. “But if such action on the part of men has been painful to me, much more so is the action of the women of Quincy as given in last week’s _Chronotype_. It is bad enough for men thus to dishonor and insult us; but when woman imitates them in wrongdoing and desecrates her own garment to so bad a use, it is doubly to be deplored, for it is an admission that we are guilty of all the weakness and meanness they attribute to us and that our garment is chosen to represent. It should rather be woman’s part to frown down all such acts with any part of her costume, and ever stand ready to defend it from dishonor.