“It is still exceedingly difficult for me to realize that woman could ever take such a bold step as to practically declare her independence of man. Although I have always known of a few so-called strong-minded women, yet these were not only covertly ridiculed by the men, but by the majority of their own sex as well. It certainly has been generally supposed, and with much apparent reason, that woman, as a whole did not possess that strength and earnestness of character that would ever enable her to carry out any great concerted movement for what she might suppose to be her emancipation. I confess,” I continued, with a new and sudden sense of shame, “that now I think of it, I have always regarded woman myself somewhat as I would a beautiful toy, the sweetest and most charming accessory to life’s happiness, but still so much devoted to personal ornament as to be forever incapable of any serious, persistent contention of a principle. The sight of a gay ribbon or the prospect of a new bonnet was, it was believed, sufficient to divert woman from any such vagary as man denominated her ‘rights’ to be. Moreover, at the time that I last gave any attention to the subject, woman’s vaulting social ambition was preternaturally active in seeking and buying, through marriage, the titled coronets of a profligate and imbecile nobility. How then could there be a transformation of character so sudden, and a precipitate movement requiring such sheer, desperate earnestness as this Woman’s strike?”