“It was said by a distinguished clergyman of one who had passed away from earth, ‘She ate, she drank, she slept, she dressed, she danced and she died.’ Such may be truly said to be the history of many women of the present day. They eat, they drink, they sleep, they dress, they dance and at last die, without having accomplished the great purposes of their creation. Can woman be content with this aimless, frivolous life? Is she satisfied to lead a mere butterfly existence, to stifle and crush all aspirations for a nobler destiny, to dwarf the intellect, deform the body, sacrifice the health and desecrate all the faculties which the Almighty Father has given her and which He requires her to put to good use and give an account thereof to Him? While all other created things both animal and vegetable perform their allotted parts in the universe of being, shall woman, a being created in God’s own image, endowed with reason and intellect, capable of the highest attainments and destined to an immortal existence, alone be an idler, a drone, and pervert the noble faculties of her being from the great purposes for which they were given? “It will not always be thus; the public mind is undergoing a rapid change in its opinion of woman and is beginning to regard her sphere, rights and duties in altogether a different light from that in which she has been viewed in past ages. Woman herself is doing much to rend asunder the dark veil of error and prejudice which has so long blinded the world in regard to her true position; and we feel assured that, when a more thorough education is given to her and she is recognized as an intelligent being capable of self-government, and in all rights, responsibilities and duties man’s equal, we shall have a generation of women who will blush over the ignorance and folly of the present day. “A. B.” And for six months thereafter, the _Visitor_ contained nearly every week one or more articles from her pen. Some were on temperance, some on woman’s “fads” and foibles of that day. She aimed to sustain every good word and deed and to rebuke vice in all its forms. Of course she did not escape criticism in prosecuting her work. Especially, people at that early day would not listen quietly to her severe analysis of the laws bearing upon the legal rights of women. They sometimes denied her positions, and at other times doubted the wisdom of the changes which she advocated. Between her and the editor of another paper published in the city, quite an extended controversy arose which ran through several numbers of their respective papers, Mrs. Bloomer sustained her side of the debate with numerous quotations from legal writers, and she had the satisfaction of seeing her position substantially admitted by her opponents. PROSPERITY OF THE _LILY_.