for the children and the household. The very laws of nature, by giving her
the children to bear and rear, absolve her from the duty of their support,
so long as he is alive who was left free by nature for that purpose. Her
task on the average is as hard as his: nay, a portion of it is so
especially hard that it is distinguished from all others by the name
"labor." If it does not earn money, it is because it is not to be measured
in money, while it exists,--nor to be replaced by money, if lost. If a
business man loses his partner, he can obtain another: and a man, no doubt,
may take a second wife; but he cannot procure for his children a second
mother. Indeed, it is a palpable insult to the whole relation of husband
and wife when one compares it, even in a financial light, to that of
business partners. It is only because a constant effort is made to degrade
the practical position of woman below even this standard of comparison,
that it becomes her duty to claim for herself at least as much as this.

There was a tradition in a town where I once lived, that a certain Quaker,
who had married a fortune, was once heard to repel his wife, who had asked
him for money in a public place, with the response, "Rachel, where is that
ninepence I gave thee yesterday?" When I read in "Scribner's Monthly" an
article deriding the right to representation of the Massachusetts women who
pay two millions of tax on one hundred and thirty-two million dollars of
property,--asserting that they produced nothing of it; that it was only
"men who produced this wealth, and bestowed it upon these women;" that it
was "all drawn from land and sea by the hands of men whose largess
testifies alike of their love and their munificence,"--I must say that I am
reminded of Rachel's ninepence.