She spoke so that all could hear her, saying, "You are not gentlemen, or you would not let a woman stand." The workingman looked up, and replied, "Did I not just hear you speak in behalf of woman's rights?" The woman, supposing she had found a friend, replied in the affirmative. "Well," said he, "I will stand up any time, with pleasure, for a housewife or a kitchen girl; but you contend for an equality of rights with men; take it, and stand up among them." The shout of approbation proved that the argument was not on the side of woman. She did not herself believe in the theory advanced. Down in her heart she felt that, because she was a woman, she was entitled to be treated with love and respect, with honor and consideration. The right which exempts her from certain things which men must endure, _grows out of her right to be a woman_. We feel that it is her privilege and her right to be relieved from the necessity of working in the field, from doing many things which it is manly in man to do. We do not object to woman's sharing in the toil of the store, the shop, or the factory. Better this than idleness and want; yet there is a reason for pondering the question whether woman is wise in trying to displace man for her own advantage. If any one must be idle, let it be woman, and not man. It has been well said, "There are in Massachusetts over seventy thousand more females than males, and probably twice that number in the State of New York. It is an unnatural condition of things. At the West the number of men greatly preponderates." "Our young men go off early in life, leaving fathers, mothers, and sisters behind them. The prospect for their sisters to marry, then, is lessened by every emigration." Now, what shall be done in behalf of these thousands of virtuous, educated, and noble girls? The cry is, make them into clerks, and bookkeepers, and bankers, and give them all the employments of men. Think it over. Suppose now we make these girls into clerks in stores and counting-rooms, say ten thousand in Massachusetts, and twenty thousand in New York--don't we displace so many young men; drive them off to the West; prevent so many new families from being established here; take away thirty thousand chances of marriage from these females, and enhance the evil we are trying to remedy? Is it a blessing to woman to lessen her opportunities of marriage? Again, a woman can be idle, and not be lost. Whereas man, if left unemployed, runs to mischief, if not to crime.