[1] This does not mean the supervision of father and mother, but that into colleges, universities, medical schools, and whatever educational institutions may be named, the controlling and protecting influence of both sexes should be carried. I believe that every university should have a cultivated and elegant woman (not necessarily the wife of any of its officers), whose duty it should be to preside over its social life, and offer such allurements to virtuous pleasure that gambling-houses and worse shall lose their present fascinations. If young men could associate with virtuous and lovely women, under suitable sanction, in their college life, they would not, in general, go out of it in search of the vicious and unlovely. No one who lives within three miles of a large university need doubt the meaning of this paragraph. An age and a religious faith which discards the cloister, should discard a cloisteral fashion, wherever it exists.

[2] "Society offered her no welcome." I am very well aware that this statement, taken with what I shall elsewhere indicate, will be considered an exaggeration; but, with a somewhat wide and varied experience of the United States and of Canada, I maintain it to be true. I am not to say what is true in the eyes of others, but what is true in my own. "What!" some one will exclaim, "education not a passport to social honor! Where was there ever a country where the teacher was respected as she is in New England?" Theoretically, this is true; and I have known a few instances in New England, in which teachers of private schools, of good family, successful in acquiring wealth (not necessarily through their schools), kept an eminent social position. Men generally keep a fair position; women, rarely. To test the truth of this, let me press the question. To whom do we all, to whom does the Commonwealth, owe a sacred debt, if not to the teachers of the primary and the grammar schools? Among these women, I have found some of the most delicate, high-bred, and cultivated women whom I have ever known of the same age. Let any one who sees them collected on public occasions glance at them, and judge; but, in cities at least, these women are never in society. Their meagre salaries prevent them from dressing as ladies must be dressed for a large company. For the same reason, their boarding-places are obscure and lonely. The middle class of artisans, &c., who send their children to the public schools, seek no intercourse with those whose refinement seems to isolate them; the upper class look down upon them very kindly, but never think of inviting them to meet distinguished people, of showing them rare books or pictures, of stimulating their worn-out faculties in any way. Why do we not make these teachers our first care? Should we not be more than repaid—if pay we must have—by the cheer and comfort added to the schoolroom in which our children are to be taught? I have tried the experiment of bringing these tired souls into contact with those who ought to refresh them. It does marvellously well, until the crucial question is asked, "Who is she?" If I answer, "The teacher of a primary school," what a change of countenance, what a fading of the cordial smile, what passive indifference! and this, in cases where, in refinement and delicacy of manner, the young lady might pass unchallenged anywhere. But let the subject of my experiment be a girl of genius; with such cultivation only as a Normal School could add to the education of a country home; deficient still in the minor graces of deportment; too energetic and adventurous, perhaps, to be elegant; and who will take a motherly interest in her, draw her within the charmed circle where she shall learn to carry herself with reserve and dignity, and to veil her flashing powers, that they may warm where they have hitherto consumed?

No: I do not exaggerate. I believe we are all concerned to know in what sort of homes, under what influences, with what helps to health and happiness, these lonely and isolated girls pass the hours when they are not engaged in teaching. It concerns us, in the first place, of course, because theirs are the direct influences which mould our children; but I scorn that argument. It concerns us far more because they are the children of the same Father, engaged in the most trying of human vocations, and entitled as women, especially as unprotected women, to the sympathy of all mothers.

Some years ago, a lady not yet out of her teens, and suddenly reduced in fortune, went to Virginia to teach. She had letters from persons of distinction, who had known her in her early home. The letters were delivered; but there the matter ended. But she was one of those persons who make a place for themselves; and, after the neighborhood grew proud of her, she was called down one day to meet the wife of a lieutenant in the navy, to whom one of her letters had been addressed. "I am sorry I have not called before," apologized the visitor; "but there are so many of these teachers!" She had no time to say more: the young girl's cheek kindled. "Madam," said she, springing to her feet, "I desire no attention from you which would not under any circumstances be accorded to your daughter's teacher;" and she left the room. It is a matter of small importance, that, in this case, the young teacher was soon placed in a position in which her good-will became important to the lieutenant's wife.

"This," you will say, "was at the South. It grew out of that spirit of 'caste' which died with slavery." Is it indeed dead? Is there no spirit of caste in Massachusetts?

[3] Un Passo Avanti nella Cultura Femminile Fesi e Progetto di Anna Maria Mozzoni Mitano. 1866.

[4] I would gladly expunge the bitter reproof of these lines; but they record a fact which occurred at a medical school, where such an application was made, and must stand as history.

[5] The three parts of this book have been made to conform to the census and statistics of the year 1850. To bring them up to the year 1860 would require a repetition of all the labor originally devoted to the question. That would be unwise if it were possible, for it could not alter the bearing of any statements; and it is not possible, because we have now no certain values in America. I had from the first intended to indicate in notes any important changes that had taken place in this decade. I had earnestly hoped to be able to contradict here the statements in the text in regard to medical opportunities for women, and the proper training of sick nurses, in England. But my English correspondents assure me that I have no occasion to change any thing; that the facts remain substantially what they were when my manuscript was written.

"But," says some watchful woman, "has not Miss Garrett taken her degree from Apothecaries' Hall? and have not a few women at least been trained as sick nurses?"

There is still no institution for the training of sick nurses, as the text asserts. Some few have been trained in hospitals and the like, on conditions of service, or to supply the need of such institutions themselves. How does the matter stand with Miss Garrett? The press has made the most of her success: it lies with us to exhibit the naked truth. After applying in vain to the various medical colleges, Miss Garrett went to Apothecaries' Hall. Here they refused her; but she looked up their charter. She found the word indicating to whom degrees should be granted indeterminate, with no character of sex attached to it. Lawyers told her the hall must grant her a degree, or surrender its charter. She was wealthy, and in earnest. She pushed her advantage. "The Apothecaries' Hall" prescribed certain courses of instruction to be pursued and certified before the degree could be granted. These she pursued in private, paying the most exorbitant rates for her instruction. In one instance, for a course of lectures, to which a man's fee would have been five guineas, she paid fifty; and I am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory steps must have amounted to two thousand pounds. All honor to Miss Garrett! Should her genius as a physician equal her energy and her wealth, she may gain something for the cause she has espoused, by the honor and consideration she will win for her sex. Apart from this, it will be seen, she has gained nothing. Bribery is not possible to ordinary mortals; and the conditions of the degree, in the present state of public feeling, would make it wholly impracticable.

The case, as it has been stated to us, is an exemplification, on a gigantic scale, of all that we complain of; and proves our statement, that women have not won an education for themselves, till they win with it its legitimate results. For their opportunities as things now stand, all over the world, women pay a premium on the terms offered to men. Let them take these opportunities as tools, and try to win their bread with them, and the wages offered are, as a rule, a large discount on those offered to men. Political economy has nothing to do with the exceptional cases in which this is most evident,—only the common, habitual idea, that the wages of women must be kept down; and that, to do it, the value of superior labor must not be recognized, as in the case of the female teacher quoted in the text.

In the Report of St. Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children, in Marylebone, I find Miss Elizabeth Garrett mentioned as the General Medical Attendant. The Devonshire-square Nursing Institute, established, I think, by Mrs. Fry, twenty years ago, sends out nurses on the request of clergymen. Several sisters give their whole time to it.

King's College pays one thousand pounds annually for nurses to St. John's Home.

St. Thomas's Hospital, where nurses are being trained by the Nightingale fund, rejected fifty applications in six months.

The excitement in England has had a wholesome effect upon colonial action. The East-Indian Government has lately given Lady Canning twenty thousand rupees, to assist in building a home for the Calcutta Nurses' Institute; and a movement is making in India to educate native women as physicians. See, in the Appendix, the account of Miss Nightingale's School for Nurses in Liverpool.

Since the above was written, in January, 1867, three ladies have taken their degrees at Apothecaries' Hall, having passed a good examination, in Euclid, arithmetic, English history, and Latin. The cost of these degrees has not transpired.

[6] See Appendix.

[7] Manners and Customs of Greece, vol. i. p. 337.

[8] Memoirs of S.M. Fuller, vol. i.p. 337.

[9] I have sustained this assertion in two articles on Hypatia, published in "Historical Sketches," 1855.

[10] In allusion to the Unitarianism of Florence Nightingale.

[11] "Now that we can produce artificially, and from waste and even noisome materials, the ethereal liquids to which the fragrance of the pear, the pineapple, and the melon are due, and can manufacture spirits of wine from coal-gas and oil of vitriol, we can scarcely be over-sanguine as to what we shall yet effect as competitors with living organisms in the production of certain compounds."—George Wilson's Life of Forbes, p. 129.

[12] What I mean here will be understood by a reference to Emile Souvestre's "Philosophe sous les Toits." In a pretty story of two women employed in a clasp-factory, he speaks of their low wages, and says, that, having worked for thirty years, they had seen ten masters grow wealthy and retire from business, without having changed, in any degree, their own position.

These claspmakers certainly supported these ten masters and their families in ease; and, wonderful to relate, these two did not fall.

An angel, clothed in white, sat on the sepulchre wherein their hopes were buried, all through that thirty years.

[13] This may strike some readers like the hardihood of willing vice; but it is only callousness, born of exposure to hopeless cold and hunger.

[14] When a woman wishes to get slop-work, she must find some friend, who will either deposit, or become responsible for, a sum equal to the value of the work she is permitted to carry home. This person is called her "security." The longer she works, the lower she falls; and, on the death of the "security," it is often impossible to replace him. The custom does not seem to be general in this country.

[15] Those who are unaccustomed to this class of women will be inclined to think that the state of things represented in the text has long passed away. People who know nothing of the value of money talk a great deal about "increase of wages," and are apt to say that any honest woman can now get a living. Women's wages are at this moment of less value than they were before the war; and, to confirm the foregoing statements, I add here the statements of my friend Mrs. Corbin, which reach me as I go to press:—

"At a meeting of the Liberal Christian League, held at Rev. Robert Collyer's church, on Sunday evening, Feb. 3, a report was read by the Chairman of the Committee on Friendless Women, from which the following is an extract:—

Your Committee aimed [in visiting houses of ill-fame], in Chicago, to find out, as nearly as possible, the general facts concerning the lives of this class of women.

It was found that these women of pleasure, as they are called, instead of leading the idle and luxurious life which many imagine, are, in fact, the most steadily employed of any class in the community, and have the least available leisure. Your Committee have never yet visited a house of this kind, staying on the average half an hour, but they have found male visitors, either there when they entered, or coming in before they left; and this in the open day. Inquiries put to the women concerning their hours of leisure developed incidentally the fact, that it is only at certain times, on certain days, that they can get out; and then it must be strictly in the prosecution of their calling. The terms on which these women are kept, are usually a certain stipulated sum per week for room rent, and, over and above this, the half of their earnings; which makes it necessary for the keepers to have a constant eye upon the girls, to prevent their taking money outside. The number of men supporting these houses is, moreover, so much greater than the number of women supported therein, that every girl is kept in constant requisition, either at the house, or as a walking advertisement on the street and at public places.

Your Committee, before making these visits, were constantly assured that these women preferred this way of life, and would scout the efforts of their own sex at reforming them. Your Committee take great pleasure in reporting, that, in every instance, they have found this charge utterly unsustained. Everywhere doors were freely opened to them; they were treated with as much politeness and cordiality as they have ever received in the most respectable houses; and the conversation was of the freest and most satisfactory character.

'Are you happy in this life?' was asked of a delicate girl in her teens, who had been seen, five minutes before, dancing and singing about a man in an adjoining apartment in the most wanton manner,—'Are you happy in this life?'

Tears, sudden and sincere, with a look of indignant protest, filled her eyes, as she answered,—

'Think how we have to treat the men: that of itself is enough to prevent any woman from being happy.'

'But you do not always talk this way to men?' was the reply.

'Oh, no!' she said; 'I would never tell a man that. We always tell the men that we like this life, and would not live any other, if we could; but women know.'

Another voluntarily mentioned the intemperance with which they are universally and justly charged, as one of the hard necessities of their position. Women ought not to drink, she admitted; but they would die if they did not, or go mad with anguish and despair.

Your Committee feel, that, at the present stage of investigation, it may seem premature to speak of the causes of this terrible evil; this slavery, which their observation assures them is more degrading and horrible than any other upon the face of the earth: but two causes have met them so constantly face to face, that they cannot in justice refrain from mentioning them.

The first is the terribly prevalent and everywhere tolerated licentiousness of men. Your Committee believe it to be an admitted fact, that, if to-day every woman of abandoned life could suddenly be removed from the dens of this city and placed in a respectable position, it would not be six months before their places would be filled, from the ranks of women who are now virtuous; and they have no faith in any system of reform which does not strike effectual blows at this, the mainspring of the evil.

Over against this, the first great pillar of the institution, stands the almost equally colossal one of poverty, and the exclusion of women from the ordinary fields of labor.

'Here is what I work for,' said a fine, strong-looking woman, as she placed her hand on the head of a bright boy of two years. 'He is my child. I have him to support. There is no other way in which I could earn a comfortable subsistence for myself and him.'

Another, the keeper of a house of ill-fame, an intelligent, graceful, refined-looking woman,—a woman who would have been an ornament to any society,—said:—

'I was left suddenly poor, with my mother to support. I had never been used to work, and there seemed no work I could do that would support us both. The circumstances of my life seemed to force me into this way of living;' which meant, of course, that some man stood ready to offer her kindness, protection, support, every thing but marriage, and she accepted it. 'My mother, to-day, is as innocent of any knowledge of my way of life, as a saint in heaven. I live in daily terror and solicitude lest she should find it out, for it would kill her. I am going soon on a visit to her, and shall carry with me twelve hundred and fifty dollars, with which to secure her a home for life; so that, whatever happens to me, she will be provided for.'

In confirmation of this story, a hack came to the door while she was speaking, to carry her to the train she had previously indicated; which fact, together with her earnest and sincere manner, left no doubt in the minds of your Committee concerning the truthfulness of her story.

In regard to the series of meetings proposed to be inaugurated, your Committee are obliged for the present to report unfavorably, for the following reasons:—

The proposition was everywhere cordially met among the women. They readily agreed to the usefulness of the project, and mentioned only one objection, and that to time. 'Sunday,' was the invariable answer, 'is our busiest day. We could hardly get away at all on that day; but we will try to do so.' Your Committee saw at once the blunder they had made in forgetting that Sunday is the leisure day of men; and therefore went to the first appointed meeting, through a cold and blinding snowstorm, with little hope of success. They found the room already occupied by some six or eight street roughs, evidently waiting for what might transpire. They left the room very soon, but took their station about the door, and remained there as long as the Committee did. Subsequent inquiries confirmed the impression, that they were sent there by some of the men who had been in the houses at the time of the visits, to break up the meetings, for which purpose, of course, only their presence would be necessary.

Beyond this determined opposition which would no doubt be encountered at the hands of the male supporters of the institution, your Committee see but one serious difficulty; and that is, the deep-rooted scepticism which prevail among the women concerning any general sentiment of Christian charity in their behalf. They have so long been persecuted with unjust opprobrium, abandoned, outcast, left to live or die as they might, without one word of pity or encouragement, while the men who shared their sins, and were oftentimes the guiltier partners, were the honored and trusted associates of Christian women, pillars perhaps in Christian churches, that they have naturally come to feel, that the sympathy of one or two good women, however earnest and grateful it may be in itself, will be of little avail against the malignity of the whole banded world.

Still your Committee have seen nothing, so far, to discourage them in their efforts, but every thing to impress upon them the feeling of imperative duty in this direction.

(Signed) Mrs. C.F. Corbin, Chairman.

"The plan of action proposed by this Committee was to visit the women in a friendly, Christ-like spirit, inaugurate a series of meetings among them, organize efforts in the direction of saving their money, so that they might be able to take an independent position, with only such moral support as should be necessary to enable them to face the opposition of the world, and to direct their lavish free-heartedness into channels of benevolence toward the old and worn-out of their number. Pure and healthful pleasures would also be provided for them, good music, the reading of fine poems and interesting stories, and so a beginning made toward introducing principles of steadiness and sobriety into their now totally abandoned and desperate lives."

[16] This expression, used in all such places to denote the food, tea, coffee, or gin, used by the overstrained girls, is terribly significant.

[17] I do not know that any person has ever practically carried out LegouvÉ's estimate of labor as a moral help, but Marie de Lamourous, the foundress of the House of Mercy at Bourdeaux. This was a refuge for ruined women, whom she trained to self-support. Some one offered her a sum sufficient to insure her family a comfortable living; but she wisely refused it. "No false pretences," she said: "if we are not compelled to labor, we shall not labor. An idle mind makes its own temptations. I can do nothing without work."

[18] When woman's power to work is called in question, men almost always remark, that she has shown no inventive genius whatever. Should a proper history of the arts ever be written, this will be found to be an entire mistake. Patentees are not always inventors; and many of these, after hopeless labor carried on for years, have owed a final success to some woman's power of adaptation. We need not, however, take refuge in general statement, nor in the traditional fact that she invented spindle, distaff, needle, and scissors. Any new-born barbarian, pressed by necessity, might accomplish so much. The most delicate and beautiful obstetrical instruments were invented by Madame Boivin. Madame Ducoudray invented the manikin; Madame Breton, the system of artificial nourishment for babes; Morandi and BihÉron adapted wax to the purposes of medical illustration; and it was to the observations of Mademoiselle BihÉron, recorded in wax, that Dr. Hunter owed the illustrations of his best work. He was her generous friend; but she preceded him seven years in this direction, and may possibly have given him the right to use her observations as his own. Madame Rondet has, in the present century, invented a tube to be used in cases of restoration from asphyxia. It is easy to quote these cases from the history of medicine, because an honest French physician has taken pains to preserve them; but the following instances of inventive and mechanical power may be less known:—

In 1823, the first patent of invention was taken out in Paris by Madame Dutillet, for the formation of artificial marble. This was so successful a patent, that she sold it in 1824; and the purchaser renewed it, with still further improvements.

In 1836, Burrows, an Englishman, took out a patent for cement. Madame Bex, of Paris, found this cement a failure in damp places, and published a method of less limited application, in which bitumen was employed.

In 1840, Mrs. Marshall, once of Manchester, England, and now of Edinburgh, was struck with the idea, that the electric forces evolved by decaying animal and vegetable matter, acting upon calcareous substances, must have much to do with the natural formation of marble. In five years, by upwards of ten thousand experiments, she perfected an artificial marble, whose constituents and manufacture were entirely within control, and which could be made in hours or months, at the maker's volition. To this cement she gave the simple Italian name of intonuca. It is singular that she should so intuitively have seized this secret; for, under Madame Dutillet's patent, we are expressly informed that all vegetable matter must be removed from the composition, if we would have the cement indestructible. The example is an interesting one; for the ten thousand disagreeable experiments show that one woman at least possessed the power of persistent application, of long-protracted labor, so often denied.

Starch first came into use in England in 1564. It was carried thither by a Mrs. Dinghen Vanden Plasse, of Flanders, who set up business as a professed starcher, and instructed others how to use the article for five pounds, and how to make it for twenty pounds.

Side-saddles for ladies first came into use in 1138. Anne, queen of Richard II., introduced these to the English ladies.

The braiding of straw in this country was first begun in Providence, in 1798, by Mrs. Betsey Baker, lately residing in Dedham, Mass. The first bonnet she made was of seven straws with bobbin let in like open-work, and lined with pink satin.

I had hoped to add to these names that of a peasant woman, who successfully drained a large estate in France after her own original fashion, and was sent from Paris to do the same in French Guiana for the government; but, although no phantom, she eludes my researches.

[19] Historical Pictures of the Middle Ages, in Black and White.

[20] Ernest LegouvÉ.

[21] While these papers were preparing for the press, the record of another such sale, in August, 1859, disgraced the English nation. Opposite the brewery, at Dudley, in Staffordshire, not many miles from Kidderminster and Birmingham, a man named Pensotte sold his wife, with a halter round her neck, for sixpence. He had previously dragged her—a three weeks' bride—three quarters of a mile in this state. It is intimated in this case, that she was not faithful; but it is the first time I ever saw such a charge attached to such an account. Americans are anxious to understand this outrage. Is it possible that a government which forbids the sale of a negro cannot forbid the sale of a Saxon wife? What shadow of law sustains the custom? Is the woman supposed to be sold into wifehood or servitude? I have taken it for granted that the word "mare" shows that she is regarded as a beast of burden. It is impossible for the fairest and loftiest woman in England—nay, for Victoria herself—not to suffer, in some degree, from the public opinion which such transactions, ever so rarely occurring, tend to form.

[22] When I first began to lecture, many persons, sincerely interested in my success, objected to what they called the "antagonistic" tone occasionally adopted. They thought I ought to take for granted the cheerful co-operation of the world, and that the woman's cause was the loser whenever the audience was reminded of actual difficulties in the way. But it would be hardly worth while for a woman to enter the desk, only to hedge it in with compromise and evasion. The simple truth is the "utmost skill" she needs to seek; and no reform built upon an inaccurate survey can be lasting. Only by telling our brothers openly what we think of their jealousy can we ever hope to shame them out of it. That the day of opposition is not passed; that the way of duty cannot, even in America, be trod in satin slippers,—the following extract, cut from a weekly paper while I am writing this note, will plainly show:—

"The Pennsylvania Medical Society has exhibited a narrow-mindedness altogether disgraceful to its members, by adopting a resolution recommending 'the members of the regular profession to withhold from the faculties and graduates of Female Medical Colleges all countenance and support; and that they cannot, consistently with sound medical ethics, consult or hold professional intercourse with their professors or alumni.' The Female Medical Colleges of Pennsylvania, it should be remembered, are strictly allopathic: so we are forced to conclude, that the objection to them is founded solely upon the fact that they afford the means of education to women. We echo the sentiment of the 'Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch:' 'Shame upon the men who, while prating about their respectability, would combine to rob women of the means of supporting themselves and their families! Such infinitesimal littleness cannot benefit them. The public are ever willing to aid the weak, and support them against the strong. The war against women cannot be sustained by the public voice: it will recoil upon and injure those who are so arbitrary and selfish as to endeavor to interfere with them.'"—Antislavery Standard, July, 1859.

"The medico-chirurgical school of Lisbon has granted the diploma of pharmacienne to Mesdames Marie Fajardo and Caroline de Matos, after a legal examination. These illustrious pharmaceuticas have a regular knowledge of their business, and passed a preliminary examination in 1859. 'The Gazette' does not say if they are religieuses charged with the management of a private pharmacy, or whether they are acting as civil pharmaciennes. In one of the hospitals of the city is a female dispenser, whose knowledge, accuracy, and care are said to be reliable and satisfactory."

[23] I first saw Mrs. Hillman the day after the destruction of the steam-bakery at the North End. She was sitting up, reading the account of it, without glasses, and eloquent in behalf of the trade, and against innovations. Since the above passage was written, she has passed away.

[24] I do not dwell upon this watch factory in the text, because, although fifty women are at work with one hundred and fifty men, they are only "tending machines;" so that, although employment is open, a career can hardly be said to be. The watches made at Waltham by machinery are said to be so superior to all others, that they are used by preference on the race-courses to time the horses. Men and women do not compete with each other there; but both are at service, with a steam-engine for their master.

For the first two months, the women earn two dollars and fifty cents a week; for the third, three dollars; and, after that, four dollars. The men earn from five shillings to two dollars a day. It seems that no special skill is required in the women, while the men in a few departments are still paid according to their ability. The steam-engine, it appears, has not yet learned how to cook dials! In this case, the operator must hold the dial, turning it evenly, as if he were a smoke-jack, which requires judgment and "faculty"!

[25] Livingstone's "Africa." Paul Kane's "Travels in the North-west."

[26] I am happy to find, on the authority of the "London AthenÆum," that this statement was, when I wrote it, untrue. "Germany," it says, on the 23d of July, 1859,—"Germany has lost one of her most famed and eminent female scholars. Frau Dr. Heidenreich, nÉe Von Siebold, died at Darmstadt a fortnight ago. She was born in 1792, studied the science of midwifery at the Universities of GÖttingen and Giessen, and took her doctor's degree in 1817; not, honoris causÂ, by favor of the Faculty, but, like any other German student, by writing the customary Latin dissertation, as well as by bravely defending, in public disputation, a number of medical theses. After that, she took up her permanent abode at Darmstadt, indefatigable in the exercise of her special branch of science, and universally honored as one of its first living authorities."

"Universally honored as one of its first living authorities," that was what I was in search of; and French and German papers confirm the statement. Dr. Heidenreich came of a family highly distinguished in her specialty. It was ancient and noble: she was a baroness in her own right. All readers of English works on midwifery know the authority given to the name of Von Siebold. Her father founded the famous hospital at Berlin; and her brother, still living, stands high in medical fame, having written the best history of midwifery extant.

Rosa Bonheur, also, is as unquestionably at the head of her department as Sir Edmund Landseer. The three pictures Boston has had a chance to see this autumn ought to fill every woman's bosom with a glow of honest pride.

I can find no better place than this, perhaps, to introduce the following facts, to which my attention has been directed by the kindness of Miss Mary L. Booth, of New York.

In the History of Southold, N.Y.,—one of the oldest towns in the United States,—it appears that women have practised there as "doctresses" and "midwives" from the first settlement of the country. From 1740 to the present time,—more than one hundred years,—the town of Southold has had a trustworthy female physician. The first of these, Elizabeth King, who practised from 1740 until her death in 1780, attended at the birth of more than one thousand children.

During this time,—from 1760 to 1775,—a Mrs. Peck was also known in the same town as an excellent midwife. The direct successor of Mrs. King was, however, a Mrs. Lucretia Lester, who practised from 1745 to 1779. Of her my authority says, "She was justly respected as nurse and doctress to the pains and infirmities incident to her fellow-mortals, especially her own sex;" a remark which shows she attended both. "She was, during thirty years, conspicuous as an angel of mercy; a woman whose price was beyond rubies. It is said she attended at the birth of thirteen hundred children, and, of that number, lost but two."

A Mrs. Susannah Brown practised from 1800 to 1840, and attended at the birth of fourteen hundred children. From the number of patients these women must have had, it would seem as if they were sustained by the whole neighborhood. The book just published speaks highly of them, as what Henry Ward Beecher would call a "means of grace," and pleads, from the precedent, for the education of women to medicine.

Southold is in Suffolk County, on Long Island; and was settled in the early part of the seventeenth century. It has now three churches, and less than five thousand inhabitants.

The instance of so creditable a practice being maintained for a whole century, by three women, stands alone, so far as I know, in this country. Mrs. King probably studied abroad, and taught her next successor, and possibly Mrs. Peck, who seems to have assisted both. That three of the four women named should have practised forty years each, seems very remarkable.

[27] See Appendix, sketch of Mrs. Roberts, and other female preachers.

[28] I did not think, certainly, when I wrote the above passage, of Arthur Helps's "Companions of my Solitude;" but, taking up the book during a day of illness, I find a parallel passage in what he writes of the "sin of great cities." In speaking of the many excuses which ought to be made for fallen women, he says: "And then there is nobody into whose ear the poor girl can pour her troubles, except she comes as a beggar. This will be said to be a leaning, on my part, to the confessional. I cannot help this: I must speak the truth that is in me."

It seems to me, that the "narrow" church, against which so much is intimated in our times, is nowhere so narrow as in its human sympathies. Oh that our clergymen knew how many utterly friendless souls sit before them clothed in "purple and fine linen"! It is not to be taken for granted, that, because a woman has a home, a father and mother, and a genial, social circle, she has a friend, or even a counsellor. It is not the beggar-girl alone who needs a "Confessor" within our Protestant churches. Many of the most refined, the most noble, and the most wealthy, are hurried into unfit marriages, because they dare not live alone, and think the superficial confidences of common courtship only a prelude to something deeper which never comes.

Why should not the "Comforter" have come to our churches, with some special significance, before this? If stout-hearted Luther could say, "When I am assailed with heavy tribulations, I rush out among my pigs, rather than remain alone by myself," why should any of us blush to confess our need of help? Herein, it seems to me, lies the vital want of the modern church. Here and there, the rare personal gifts of a single pastor lessen the evil; but what we want, in every religious circle, is a friend to whom we can go, without the smallest danger of being suspected of impertinence or egotism, under the sanction of the divine words, "Bear ye one another's burdens." The burdens of temptation must be borne alone; but the burdens of poverty, sickness, and grief, should be shared in every Christian church, without regard to the social condition of the sufferer. Oftentimes the rich man is poorer than the pauper. I know all the objections that will be raised. I feel, to this day, how I saw one clergyman shrink, years ago, from a tale which he ought to have heard from one agonized woman's lips; and how others, admirable in the usual pulpit and pastoral charge, will think themselves unfit for this. Under such circumstances, let a clergyman call upon those of his congregation who are willing to become the friends of the rest, to meet in his study. From the half-dozen who will have at once the modesty and the courage to come forward, let a man and a woman be chosen to act as a "Committee of Comfort." This might be done with the utmost quietness; the minister alone need know the names of those willing to serve; but if it were an understood thing, that every church had such officers, the blessing would be beyond belief.

In many cases, no actual help could be given, beyond patient listening, a mutual prayer, or tender soothing; but in every church there are souls that need these far more than eloquent preaching,—souls that ask for nothing, except some one to hear and consider who is not in a hurry, some one to appoint those to their true uses who stand idle in a waiting world. I claim such an institution for the sake of friendless women; but such substitutes for it as the world has hitherto had, have been by no means useless to men.

[29] I must suggest, in this connection, a thought which I have not had time to elaborate in the text. Very much needed in Boston is a restaurant for the lower classes, presided over by the highest skill and intelligence, where well-cooked, well-flavored, and stimulating food could be offered at all times; and where a judicious alternation of pea soup, baked beans, and very simple dishes, with roast meat and broths, might secure daily nourishment for a very low price. There is a great deal of very cheap food, which an epicure might desire, but which the poor have never been taught to prepare. Hundreds of wretched families in Boston ought never to try to make a cup of tea for themselves. In hot weather, the shavings and wood necessary to boil the water are worth as much as the tea itself. Crime of all sorts, and especially intemperance, will retreat before a proper provision of nourishing and stimulating food for the lower classes. Gallons of oyster liquor are thrown away every day by dealers who sell the fish "solid," which would make the most nourishing of soups and stews; for no food replenishes the vital essences so rapidly as the oyster: hence its inseparable connection with all places of dissipation and vicious resort. If men would only make a good instead of an evil use of the few natural secrets they discover! With such a restaurant,—which should, of course, be self-supporting,—a capital training-school for cooks might easily be associated; and so it would become an infinite blessing, in the end, to the kind hearts and wise heads of those who should project it.

[30] This allusion was made before an American audience, to show that the defeats suffered in a noble cause are honored in time as victories. So strong is our popular delusion on this point, that few of the common people can be found willing to believe that we were actually defeated at Bunker Hill. It was our "first battle." All honor to all such!

[31] I cannot allude to the subject of Intelligence-offices without saying, that all such institutions ought to be brought, in some new and effective manner, under public supervision and control.

A private Intelligence-office, kept in the superintendent's own house, cannot be interfered with, unless it can be proved a nuisance; and how difficult it is to abate a nuisance I need not tell anybody who has ever tried the experiment.

The keeper of a General or Public Intelligence-office makes application for a license to the city government, sustained by a certain number of respectable vouchers, and pays, I believe, a yearly fee of one dollar.

This looks fair enough; and, if every officer of the city government, from the lowest police-officer to the mayor, were immaculate, it would be so; but we all know what the fact is. It is an open secret, that, in all our largest cities, the marts of vice are stocked from these places, and that they serve the purposes of bad men better than houses of professedly vicious resort. One of the most excellent and respectable women I know, who superintends one of these offices, told me herself that four women made assignations on her premises, and went out of her office to keep them, without her having power to prevent it. She proved the correctness of her suspicions by employing one of her vouchers to watch the result. If this happens under the eyes of the virtuous and vigilant, what may not happen when the head of the establishment is in the pay of interested parties? I do not know in what way this wickedness can be broken up; but, in the words of Dr. Gannett, "what must be done, can be." Is it not a terrible thought, that fashionable women and tender girls should supply themselves with servants from the very brink of that hell they believe they have never touched? Is it not a far more terrible thought, that an innocent stranger cannot seek her daily bread without running the risk of certain perdition? How real these possibilities are, there are those in this city able to testify.

Ought not the ministers at large, of all denominations, and our overseers of the poor, to unite in prompt and efficient action in this regard?

[32] Of course, I do not mean to be understood here as objecting to any temperate and earnest attempt by men or women to amend law.

[33] It will easily be conjectured that I do not feel competent to treat the great subject of Roman legislation for women, in the noble and extended manner which is at once, as it seems to me, necessary and possible. Perhaps I shall never become so.

It seems to me proper, however, that I should indicate my dissatisfaction with existing methods in the clearest manner, and drop a few hints, as I do in the text, as to the difficulties in the way.

Roman sepulchral inscriptions, of the era generally considered the most licentious, bear witness in the fullest manner to the existence of chastity and domestic virtue. A sepulchral inscription, it may be argued, is a poor witness to facts. I would suggest in reply, that a nation ceases to commemorate the virtue which has ceased to exist, or which it has, through a general depravity of manners, ceased to respect.

[34] The great body of all law is of small practical importance, because, in spite of the five points of Calvinism and the long faces of many bearded philosophers, the majority of mankind not only obey the law, but transcend it,—do better than it requires. It is only the few who transgress; and thus many absurdities are never or very rarely dragged into the light of a "decision."

[35] A curious instance of the immoral result of holding marriage sacramental, and indissoluble under all circumstances, comes within my personal experience while I am correcting these pages for the press, Oct. 11, 1861.

A young Catholic girl was divorced some years ago, immediately after marriage, on account of the bad conduct of her husband. She was received into the family of a brother-in-law, in every way highly respectable. For the last two years, she has been courted by an officer in the navy of the United States; but nowhere in New England could a Catholic priest be found willing to marry them. The church still holds her responsible to her first vows. The officer honestly desired to marry her; but the natural result of her ignorance and perplexity followed. Expecting to become a mother, and rejected by her family, she came to me for advice. As the officer is a Protestant, I recommended that they should be married by a minister of that faith. She again consulted her priest, and was told that it was less sinful for her to remain in her present relation to her lover than to receive a sacrament from unholy hands; the priest ignoring utterly the legal protection and maintenance which she might thus receive.

[36] The only excuse for considering this point, in an essay pleading especially for women, is that the law bears unequally on the two sexes; pressing hardest on woman, on account of her pecuniary dependence, and general subordination to man.

A woman, every reader will understand, would find it impossible to free herself from her obligations, like the men referred to in the text; nor is it desirable that she should free herself, but that the law should free her.

[37] National Rev., Apr. 1861, pp. 291, 292.

[38] "A man who is guilty of adultery is branded by public opinion as a forger or bigamist is elsewhere, and is not eligible to public office during the whole of his life; which, under such a government, is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted. A man who breaks his promise of betrothal, or who in any way betrays a woman to mortification and shame, is heaped with the same scorn that women receive elsewhere. The woman who is betrayed is censured; but the man is henceforth an outcast."—Cottages of the Alps, p. 288.

[39] In reprinting for his collected works Mrs. Mill's article on "The Enfranchisement of Women," Mr. Mill more lately says, "All the more recent of these papers were the joint production of myself, and one whose loss, even in a merely intellectual point of view, can never be repaired or alleviated. But the following essay is hers in a peculiar sense; my share in it being little more than that of editor or amanuensis. Its authorship having been known at the time, and publicly attributed to her, it is proper to state, that she never regarded it as a complete discussion of the subject which it treats of; and, highly as I estimate it, I would rather it remained unacknowledged, than that it should be read with the idea, that even the faintest image can be found in it of a mind and heart, which, in their union of the rarest, and what are deemed the most conflicting excellences, were unparalleled in any human being that I have known or read of. While she was the light, life, and grace of every society in which she took part, the foundation of her character was a deep seriousness, resulting from the combination of the strongest and most sensitive feelings with the highest principles. All that excites admiration, when found separately, in others, seemed brought together in her,—a conscience at once healthy and tender; a generosity bounded only by a sense of justice, which often forgot its own claims, but never those of others; a heart so large and loving, that whoever was capable of making the smallest return of sympathy always received tenfold; and, in the intellectual department, a vigor and truth of imagination, a delicacy of perception, an accuracy and nicety of observation, only equalled by her profundity of speculative thought, and by a practical judgment and discernment next to infallible. So elevated was the general level of her faculties, that the highest poetry, philosophy, oratory, or art, seemed trivial by the side of her, and equal only to expressing some part of her mind; and there is no one of these modes of manifestation in which she could not easily have taken the highest rank, had not her inclination led her for the most part to content herself with being the inspirer, prompter, and unavowed co-adjutor, of others.

"The present paper was written to promote a cause which she had deeply at heart; and, though appealing only to the severest reason, was meant for the general reader. The question, in her opinion, was in a stage in which no treatment but the most calmly argumentative could be useful; while many of the strongest arguments were necessarily omitted, as being unsuited for popular effect. Had she lived to write out all her thoughts on this great question, she would have produced something as far transcending in profundity the present essay, as, had she not placed a rigid restraint upon her feelings, she would have excelled it in fervid eloquence.

"Yet nothing that even she could have written on any single subject would have given an adequate idea of the depth and compass of her mind. As, during life, she detected, before any one else had seemed to perceive them, those changes of time and circumstances, which, ten or twelve years later, became subjects of general remark; so I venture to prophesy, that, if mankind continue to improve, their spiritual history for ages to come will be the progressive working out of her thoughts, and the realization of her conceptions."

Such tributes, borne by noble men to noble women, are so frequently hidden away in the heavy volumes which lie out of ordinary reach, that I take pleasure in bringing them to support my own plea; and I only wish I could as easily add to that in the text the charming acknowledgments of Alexis de Tocqueville to his wife.

[40] In an article in the "Edinburgh Weekly Journal" for Jan. 10, 1827, written by Sir Walter Scott, the following allusion is made to abuses which had crept into the army in the middle of the eighteenth century:—

"To sum up this catalogue of abuses, commissions were in some instances bestowed upon young ladies, when pensions could not be had. We know ourselves one fair dame who drew the pay of a captain in the —— dragoons, and was probably not much less fit for the service than some who at that period actually did duty."

[41] "In the little brown duodecimo which contains the jottings of 'that famous lawyer, William Tothill, Esquire,' there is the following entry, of the date of James I.:—

"'Fleshward contra Jackson. Money given to a feme covert for her maintenance, because her husband is an unthrift. The husband pretends the money to be his; but the court ordered the money to be at her own disposal.'"—London Quarterly, July, 1861. A very ancient germ of a "Married Woman's Property Law."

[42] A law, apparently favorable to all widows, passed the Massachusetts Legislature at the last session. It seems to me, however, to bear the marks of a law passed for a special case. I have made several applications in the proper quarters for information concerning it, but have received nothing in return.

Chap. 164.—An Act concerning the Provisions for Widows in certain Cases.

Be it enacted, &c., as follows:—

Sect. 1.—When a man dies, having lawfully disposed of his estate by will, and leaving a widow, she may, at any time within six months after the probate of the will, file in the probate-office, in writing, her waiver of the provisions made for her in the will; and shall, in such case, be entitled to such portion of his real and personal estate as she would have been entitled to if her husband had died intestate: provided, however, that, if the share of the personal estate to which she would thus become entitled shall exceed the sum of ten thousand dollars, she shall, in such case, be entitled to receive in her own right the said amount of ten thousand dollars, and to receive the income only of the excess of said share above said sum of ten thousand dollars during her natural life. If she makes no such waiver, she shall not be endowed of his lands, unless it plainly appears by the will to have been the intention of the testator that she should have such provisions in addition to her dower.

Sect. 2.—Upon application, made by the widow or any one interested in the estate, the judge of probate may appoint one or more trustees, to receive, hold, and manage, during the lifetime of the widow, the portion of the personal estate of her deceased husband, exceeding ten thousand dollars, of which she is entitled to receive under this act.

Sect. 3.—The twenty-fourth section of the ninety-second chapter of the General Statutes is hereby repealed.

Approved April 9, 1861.

In a case on trial in the Superior Court to-day (Oct. 3, 1861), Chief-Justice Allen ruled, that the law of 1855, allowing married women to do business on their own account, separate and apart from their husbands, did not exclude them from entering into business-partnerships with men other than their husbands.

[43] On the 7th of April, 1861, the Ohio Legislature passed a bill concerning the Rights and Liabilities of Married Women.

Sect. 1 conveys the impression, that all married women may control their rents and issues of real estate belonging to them at marriage, or separately received after.

Sect. 5, however, says "that this law shall not affect any rights which may have become vested in any person at the time of its taking effect;" which, of course, cuts off from its beneficial results all persons previously married.

It seems a perfectly simple matter to a woman to obviate the difficulties and disappointments which arise in this way.

Let parties married under the old law, but desiring to benefit by the new, go before a magistrate, and state their wish; and then let the decision in their favor be published in the regular way.

Such a method would not benefit parties at variance; but it would benefit a large class of women engaged, or desiring to engage, in independent business.

The Ohio law repeals a former law of 1857, which secured to all married women the control of the sale or the disposal of personal property exempt from execution: so its benefits are of a nature by no means unmixed.

[44] See note, page 349.

[45] See Appendix.

[46] This passage was originally prompted by some reflections on the changes which have occurred in domestic life in Boston.

Here the family, even among those of the highest social rank, had once a sacred simplicity pleasant to remember. Men were accustomed to take their three meals with their wives and children. The latest dinner-hour was two, p.m.; and suppers were unheard of. The evening party began at seven; and young girls went freely and uninvited from house to house, with their needle or their book.

How greatly all this is changed, my readers, many of them, feel still more deeply than I; and, with this change, the formation of "clubs" of various kinds has brought about others far more important.

A young married lady of rank and fashion was lately lamenting to me the isolation of husbands and wives, fathers and children, consequent upon club-life.

"But," she concluded with a sigh, "if my husband had no club, he would expect a hot supper for a friend two or three times a week; and how could I ever accomplish that?"

This indolence of women lies at the bottom of many serious social evils. The woman who will not, health and fortune permitting, make herself responsible in such a case for any number of hot suppers, deserves to see her own happiness wither, her own hearth made desolate.

It is needless to add, that if women would educate themselves to be true and noble companions to their husbands, and resign on their own part all that is unsound, and therefore unbecoming, in fashionable life, hot suppers would cease to be a desideratum, and men would pass pleasant evenings without them.

[47] These have been supplied since my return to Boston.

[48] The application is declined, as we go to press, on the ground that no provision has been made at Cambridge for women.

[49] I believe I am indebted for some of these items to Miss Howitt's book, but I have not yet seen it.

[50] This word distinguishes a peculiar Unitarian Church, something like the Methodist.

[51] I wish to say in advance, that while the statistics in "The College" and "The Market" are based on a gold value, and are wholly reliable, I place no reliance on those furnished in this Appendix. The varying price of gold, and of the cost of provision and clothing, at the time the tables are made, are nowhere given, and are important elements in a sound calculation.