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88 BIANCA MIIiESI MOJON.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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About This Time Madame Mojon Lost Her Mo...
ness , " as " her biographer quaintly terms it , never rested from some effort in the cause of humanity . At one time she is occupied with
the condition of women in , Italy , pointing out particularly the evils of their habitual idleness . _" Useful women , "she says , " are
almost always respectable , and consequently _resjDected . " Again she attempts to democratize painting in her dear Italyby inducing
, painters to draw their subjects from what is immediately about them . She thought a great deal , too , on the subject of domestics .
" She had great deference towards those who accepted this voluntary slavery . In her house servants were respected as much as masters .
She would never encroach on . the time allotted to their rest or their leasures . Her orders were always given in the most polite form
p and if she thought she had given an unjust reproof , she hastened , to acknowledge and apologize for it . " It was no mere instinct of
kindness , but the deliberate acting on a settled principle . How clearly she brings out her views in reply to a friend who was hardly
prepared to follow her in so strange a departure from the beaten ways of the world : "No ; since we have all immortal soulswe are
, all equal . A servant sells us an article , in his services , like any other tradesman . When you say that domestics are not so well
brought up as we are , you point out a melancholy fact , but you no riht in favor of the man who has received a better
education prove . What g ! shall I humiliate the man whom I employ because I am the richer , the more powerful ? Shall I reprove him before a
childshall I teach the child that he may raise his voice in speaking to a poor , manand that the poor man may not answer for fear of
losing his bread , ? This is not to be endured . You will say , domestics have no sense of dignity , and do not , in fact , suffer from being
reproved before a child . That may be , but _tv 7 iy have they no sense of that precious human dignity which is such an incentive to well
doing ? It is because we deny it to them , because we have imbibed with mother ' s milkthe idea of hiher and lower classeswhich
our , g , is but another form of Aristotle ' s phrase , that there are two species of menslaves and freemen . ' " Madame Mojon also took a great
, interest in charitable institutions and devoted a g * reat deal of time and to plans and efforts for improving the
condition of some energy of them . She could never reconcile herself to the inequalities of fortune and condition among men . She was afraid
of not doing enough for the poor , and consulted Sismondi on the subject . "I do not ask you" she says"to enter into the old question
much of an a equal person distribution in my position of , wealth owes , to but , the I _j _3 should oor annuall like y to . know My igno how
rance on this _jDoiiit torments me . . . . Every time that my eyes rest on a picture of individual distress , and I stretch out my
hand to help , I ask myself what limit there should be to my help , that it may neither be exaggerated in the eyes of others , nor
fluities contemptible . " Sismondf in my own s answer , while discusses I am surrounded this difficult with question so many with super a -
88 Bianca Miiiesi Mojon.
88 BIANCA _MIIiESI MOJON .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1861, page 88, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041861/page/16/
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