Mrs. Strongitharm's Report
Mr. Editor,--If you ever read the "Burroak Banner" (which you will find among your
exchanges, as the editor publishes your prospectus for six weeks every year, and sends no
bill to you) my name will not be that of a stranger. Let me throw aside all affectation of
humility, and say that I hope it is already and not unfavorably familiar to you. I am
informed by those who claim to know that the manuscripts of obscure writers are passed
over by you editors without examination--in short, that I must first have a name, if I hope
to make one. The fact that an article of three hundred and seventy-five pages, which I
sent, successively, to the "North American Review," the "Catholic World," and the
"Radical," was in each case returned to me with MY knot on the tape by which it was
tied, convinces me that such is indeed the case. A few years ago I should not have meekly
submitted to treatment like this; but late experiences have taught me the vanity of many
womanly dreams.
You are acquainted with the part I took (I am SURE you must have seen it in the
"Burroak Banner" eight years ago) in creating that public sentiment in our favor which
invested us with all the civil and political rights of men. How the editors of the
"Revolution," to which I subscribe, and the conventions in favor of the equal rights of
women, recently held in Boston and other cities, have failed to notice our noble struggle,
is a circumstance for which I will not try to account. I will only say--and it is a hint which
SOME PERSONS will understand--that there are other forms of jealousy than those
which spring from love.
It is, indeed, incredible that so little is known, outside the State of Atlantic, of the
experiment--I mean the achievement--of the last eight years. While the war lasted, we did
not complain that our work was ignored; but now that our sisters in other States are acting
as if in complete unconsciousness of what WE have done--now that we need their aid and
they need ours (but in different ways), it is time that somebody should speak. Were
Selina Whiston living, I should leave the task to her pen; she never recovered from the
shock and mortification of her experiences in the State Legislature, in '64--but I will not
anticipate the history. Of all the band of female iconoclasts, as the Hon. Mr. Screed called
us in jest--it was no jest afterwards, HIS image being the first to go down--of all, I say,
"some are married, and some are dead," and there is really no one left so familiar with the
circumstances as I am, and equally competent to give a report of them.
Mr. Spelter (the editor of the "Burroak Banner") suggests that I must be brief, if I wish
my words to reach the ears of the millions for whom they are designed; and I shall do my
best to be so. If I were not obliged to begin at the very beginning, and if the interests of
Atlantic had not been swallowed up, like those of other little States, in the whirlpool of
national politics, I should have much less to say. But if Mr. George Fenian Brain and
Mrs. Candy Station do not choose to inform the public of either the course or the results
of our struggle, am I to blame? If I could have attended the convention in Boston, and
had been allowed to speak--and I am sure the distinguished Chairwoman would have
