which, from the days of Homer to the present century, was accomplished in the centre of the family, has been transferred to the crowded manufactory."

The necessity of those reforms which many noble women are now urging upon public attention is clearly set forth in eloquent facts like these.

A curious instance of the temerity with which flagrant errors are pressed into the service of criticism is presented in some remarks in the N. Y. Nation. "There is probably," it says, "no incident of woman's condition which is more clearly natural than her passivity in all that relates to marriage. In waiting to be wooed, she not only complies with one of the conventional proprieties, but obeys what appears to be a law of sex, not amongst human beings only, but among all animals."

These remarks have been adopted by many American journalists, and have been accepted perhaps by many readers as settling[270] the whole question with scientific accuracy and force, so far as analogies drawn from the habits of the lower animals can settle it. But if the critic, while buttering his daily bread or putting cream into his daily coffee, had acquainted himself with the habits of the useful animal to which he is indebted, he would never have been guilty of so prodigious a blunder. So far from passively "waiting to be wooed," the cow, when the sexual impulse is awakened, will disturb the whole neighborhood by her bellowings. Should the critic reply that this is because she is kept in an unnatural state of restraint, such reply would add only additional force to the contradiction of the argument which he would offer.

[270]

Other examples in abundance, in confutation of his assumption, could no doubt be furnished. But even were that assumption true, we might sometimes be led to rather awkward results if we were to take the habits of the lower animals as authoritative. Certain animals have not infrequently an eccentric habit of destroying their offspring. Some of our Chinese brethren, borrowing a hint perhaps from the brute creation, are said to think it no sin to kill such female children as they have no use for. We hope that no enterprising critic will recommend such a solution as this of the woman problem.

THE END.

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