For an instant Imelda was startled. She had never seen Mrs. Leland and had pictured to herself a different woman; but as she looked again she could see the likeness between mother and daughter, and there crept into her heart a thought of her own mother, and she contrasted the weary, fretful, listless woman with this mother of her friend, who, after the life of trials and sorrows that had been hers, had arisen in such splendid self-confidence; who had burst the chains that bound her; who now dared to hurl such scathing truths, like firebrands into a magazine of powder, as it were, ready to stand by the result the explosion must bring forth. She began to understand the source whence her young friend received her strength of character.
Mrs. Leland’s words, even more than those of the lecturer, burned into her heart as her thoughts wandered to her almost worshiped father, now sleeping under the ground. Over her tortured heart crept a fear that possibly even he had not been to that fretful, oft-times unjust mother, all that he might have been. There might have been pitfalls carefully hidden from her sight—for her mother never made a confidante of her child. But she knew of the inharmonious life that had been theirs. She could not remember ever having caught sight of the holy flame of love between them. And yet—the babes had come. She knew the mother had not desired them. She felt dazed. Her head swam, as these thoughts coursed through it in much less time than it takes to trace them here.
But again someone was speaking, and again the horrors of married life were pictured. How woman is sold! Woman has no outlet for her overcharged feelings save in tempestuous temper and tears. Generally, in time, the temper is subdued and the tears alone remain, and the world wonders why woman so soon loses her attractive powers; why the sparkling girl overflowing with magnetism turns so soon into the pale, weary, hollow-eyed woman who finds life’s happiness turned to Dead Sea fruit upon her lips.
As Imelda listened she felt as though a cold hand were clutching at her throat. The world seemed slipping from beneath her feet. Then another rose and in his turn spoke of the holiness of marriage, of the holiness of the church, of the holiness of the state. Like hollow mockery the words echoed and re-echoed in Imelda’s ears. What could be holy now after she had seen the evil withdrawn and the sickening truth exposed to view. Like one in a dream she listened and wondered that any one could still be sincere in uttering such words as in all good faith this man seemed to speak. It seemed as if, all in a moment, where had heretofore appeared rose-strewn paths, she now saw only pitfalls whose yawning depths were ready to engulf those who foolishly set their feet upon the treacherous edge. Still, as in a daze, she realized that the speaker was done, that once more Althea Wood was speaking. The clear, sweet voice resounded through the room.
“My friends,” she said, “it would be indeed difficult to express the pleasure I have felt listening to the discussion this afternoon. Nor can I express how thankful I am that my cause has been so warmly championed, notwithstanding the efforts of those who cannot as yet see this question in the new light in which it is viewed by many of you. I agree with those of my friends who claim that this vexed question does not receive the attention that it deserves. It is sad and pitiful, but true, that the average man and woman are so unwilling to hear this subject discussed that it requires a great effort to speak of it. They may be willing to pick up a book that treats on this subject, and, screened in the seclusion of a private room, try to digest the writer’s ideas, but under the fire of other eyes to hear from the lecturer’s lips these tabooed subjects is quite another thing. So long, however, as sex is considered impure, something for which the human race should blush, just so long will it be not only a difficult but painful subject for lecturers to discuss. The consciousness that we would probably be misunderstood is unpleasant.
“O, that I might live to see the hour when this beautiful earth shall be freed from the crushing fetters of custom; from the deadly poison of superstition and prejudice; from the grinding heel of monopoly,—to see a race of men and women enlightened, liberated, self-reliant, free. Not an enforced freedom, keeping them ever on their guard, fearing the lurking enemy in the entrenchments, back of the bulwarks of authority and the fortifications of avarice and low desires. No! the time for such hypocrisy will then have vanished. We shall then hail the time when a race of freemen shall exist because of the universal demand for and recognition of it. The race will have become purified in the fires of truth, love and justice. When it shall have risen to the height where it will have attained the full knowledge of its worth; where and when it shall have demanded its rightful birthright, the right to own itself; the right to the product of its toil; the right to recognize truth wherever it is found.
“Just so soon as you make that demand, earnestly and sincerely, your right will have come to you. Begin with recognizing the great truth that you are an individual, that you are rightfully sole owner of your own mind, of your own brain capacity. Let no outside influence enthrall you; break your chains, set your mind at liberty, and it will soon work out the salvation of the body. When once you can see that there are fetters the desire to break them will come; the effort to break them will follow the desire.
“Before I close I will say to my Christian critics that if there were not so many laws there would not be so much of the ignorance of which they now complain. Laws and customs keep the masses in the old ruts, destroying the strength wherewith they otherwise could elevate themselves to nobler heights. To the everlasting disgrace of the church it must be said that its influence keeps the deluded masses in their benumbed condition, content to spend their miserable lives in abject slavery. Pitiable is the fact, but cruelly true, that many of them desire nothing more ennobling than to seek oblivion of their troubles in the depths of the intoxicating bowl.
“But Freethought is not the cause of this desire. Her mission is to break the fetters that bind man’s mind; to sweep away the cobwebs and mists of superstition; to slay the tyrant prejudice that bars the entrance to the new and the true.
“When the truths of science shall have been mastered by the law-ridden and priest-ridden people, when they shall have obtained the right to own themselves, then with the disappearance of ignorance will also disappear vice and crime. My heart aches at sight of this poor, deluded, cheated people, daily robbed more and more by laws that were made for none but slaves to obey. The rich man makes them and of course never expects to come in contact with them otherwise than to inflict them upon those who produce his wealth. Love needs no fetters. Nothing binds human hearts but Love.
“So, once again I urge you to awake; to come to a realization of your own thralldom, and then in turn to help others to awake to a consciousness of this yoke of slavery borne by you all. Then the world will move onward; will move rapidly toward that millennium that is to be the realization of evoluted humanity.”