The Reformers

There is always danger in breaking suddenly away from the regular
progression of things and taking the lead in some new and
antagonistic movement. Such things must and will be; but they who
set up for social reformers must be men and women of pure hearts,
clear minds and the broadest human sympathies. They must be lovers
of their kind, not lovers of themselves; brave as patriots, not as
soldiers of fortune who seek for booty and renown.

Not many of these true reformers--all honor to them!--are found
among the noisy coteries that infest the land and turn so many
foolish people away from real duties.

One of the dangers attendant on association with the class to which
we refer lies in the fact that they draw around them certain
free-thinking, sensual personages, of no very stable morality, who
are ready for anything that gives excitement to their morbid
conditions of mind. Social disasters, of the saddest kind, are
constantly occurring through this cause. Men and women become at
first unsettled in their opinions, then unsettled in their conduct,
and finally throw off all virtuous restraint.

Mrs. Talbot, the new friend of Mrs. Emerson, belonged to the better
sort of reformers in one respect. She was a pure-minded woman; but
this did not keep her out of the circle of those who were of freer
thought and action. Being an extremist on the subject of woman's
social position, she met and assimilated with others on the basis of
a common sentiment. This threw her in contact with many from whom
she would have shrunk with instinctive aversion had she known their
true quality. Still, the evil to her was a gradual wearing away, by
the power of steady attrition, of old, true, conservative ideas in
regard to the binding force of marriage. There was always a great
deal said on this subject, in a light way, by persons for whose
opinions on other subjects she had the highest respect, and this had
its influence. Insensibly her views and feelings changed, until she
found herself, in some cases, the advocate of sentiments that once
would have been rejected with instinctive repugnance.