86
CHIVALRY.
the cities where many clerical positions are filled by women, it has become the custom of shop-keepers, and even of the proprietors of the largest and most respectable houses, so called, to employ female help at such prices as are not sufficient for their maintenance.
If women are to be admitted into vocations where they may become self-supporting, and such an admission is necessary, it is a crying shame that their employers are too stingy to pay them living wages. The denunciations of popular opinion ought to be so severe upon an employer who, for the sake of avarice, will starve his clerks, as to drive him from business and from the society of all honorable men. For proof that such a condition of things exists, you need only to refer to the wages paid to female clerks in cities, and to the reputations they sustain upon such salaries. You may say that a consideration of such a subject does not belong in this connection; but that the sexes should be equal, seems their proper condition, for which modern knights should labor, and when the knights of the nineteenth century in their recognition of the equality of woman, in their recognition of woman's rights, in their extreme courtesy, admit woman to professions where she may earn a livelihood, might they not well imitate the knights of the 14th century, and bind themselves to defend her in the enjoyment of her rights? If the 19th century has made an advance and admitted woman to full equality, ought it not to extend to her the courtesy she was wont to receive? Can society, when woman has proved herself the peer of any, sit calmly by and see her rights trampled in the mire and her struggling alone? Ancient chivalry would have burned to avenge such a wrong.
Aside from courtesy to woman, there is another feature of chivalry which deserves attention. Not only were the knights attentive to the rights of woman, but they also practiced common courtesy even to enemies. They did not exalt woman at the expense of man, but they recognized the obligation to respect the rights of all—the very foundation-stone of society. We talk to-day of the perfect adjustment of society. We say that every man receives his due; that no one is oppressed by his neighbor, and that all are respecters of right and justice, and in the face of our words act to the very contrary. We boast of our generosity, and yet in this day of enlightenment how seldom do we hear of generosity for the faults, or respect for the opinions, of others. How often does criticism, whose office is to perform a friendly service, become the weapon of war. We daily hear criticised, in the most blood-curdling terms, the careers or acts of men whose hearts we know were good; but for lack of generosity or fairness, their good deeds are classed among their bad ones in such a manner that it requires a glass of the highest magnifying power to distinguish them. And yet do not generosity for the faults and respect for the opinions and feelings of another, come within the province of courtesy? Certainly, and he who, for one moment, forgets it, is guilty of the greatest discourtesy.
It is the boast of our civilization that it is far in advance of anything previously known; that it even surpasses old chivalry in its attention to the rights of the weak and the oppressed; that woman was never so respected before; that courtesy reigns supreme, and yet it seems that this wealth-seeking race of ours has almost forgotten the courtesy, generosity and liberal-mindedness which really constituted the flower of ancient chivalry. We are too apt to consider the privileges accorded us as ours by inherent right, by virtue of which right we may demand them, and therefore liable to have