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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

211
Dof

39606

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PREFACE.

I HAVE called my book "The Complement to a New Atmosphere," to remove, if possible, the misapprehension of those who have given it the honor of their attention as it has appeared from week to week, and who have been disturbed by what has seemed to them a change of views.

Strictly speaking, it is impossible to obtain, and insolent to undertake to present an adequate idea of any subject or object without changing one's views. We are directed by very high authority to walk about Zion, and go round about her, not stand still and stare at her from one point. I suppose Zion looked very different seen from the Mount of Olives and the Fount of Gihon, but it was Zion all the while.

Change of views involves more or less change of opinions-is, indeed, made for the purpose of forming opinion. Looking but casually at Woman Suffrage, I regarded it with indifference. From a careful survey, I can not regard it but with apprehension. The more closely I scrutinize it, the more formidable seems to me the revolution which it implies, the more onerous seem the duties which it imposes. I feel, also, ever more and more vividly, that

"It is not ours to separate

The tangled skein of will and fate ;"

and many things which once I would have attributed to cold-blooded malice I would now attribute to partial growth, to imperfect adjustment, and so find it easier to hate, up

root, and cast away the sin, and yet love the sinner-if he is not too hateful! But of any change important enough to be spoken of-supposing any change worth speaking of— I am unconscious. I know that I have never swerved a hair's breadth from my belief that the only way out of our estate of sin and misery is the slow growth of individual excellence, and that it is in the home, in the family-more sacred than any church, the only divine institution—that this excellence must be chiefly nurtured.

Whether such a belief assigns to woman a commanding or a subordinate position in the world's economy I must leave to the judgment of my readers.

GAIL HAMILTON.

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