Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/277

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ERNESTINE L. ROSE
269

Nor has she found the life of a disciple of liberty a rose-bestrewn path. She has met with discouragements, rebuffs, slights, sneers; insults, from those opposed to her; and has been misunderstood and maligned by even those who called themselves her friends and colaborers. But she has shown the steadfastness of her faith in the ultimate triumph of the cause she had espoused by her constant laboring for it, in the face of all these disheartenings. Her motto seems to have ever been that of the German poet—

"Haste not, rest not—calmly wait,
Meekly bear the storms of fate;
Duty be thy polar guide—
Do the right, whate’er betide."

“In the winter of '37,” she says, in an article published in the New York Revolution, “when soliciting names for a petition to the Legislature to give married women the right to hold real estate in their own name, I was met with, ‘I have rights enough’; or, ‘The gentlemen will laugh at