In a later letter she says, "I now have his [the guardian's] solemn promise
that he will not remove her from my control. To some extent my sufferings
are allayed; and yet never, till she arrives at the age of twenty-one,
shall I fully trust." I wish that mothers who dwell in sheltered and happy
homes would try to bring to their minds the condition of a mother whose
possession of her only child rests upon the "promise" of a comparative
stranger. We should get beyond the meaningless cry, "I have all the rights
I want," if mothers could only remember that among these rights, in most
States of the Union, the right of a widowed mother to her child is not
included.

By strenuous effort, the law on this point has in Massachusetts been
gradually amended, till it now stands thus: The father is authorized to
appoint a guardian by will; but the powers of this guardian do not entitle
him to take the child from the mother.

"The guardian of a minor ... shall have the custody and tuition of
his ward; and the care and management of all his estate, except that
the father of the minor, if living, and in case of his death the
mother, they being respectively competent to transact their own
business, shall be entitled to the custody of the person of the
minor and the care of his education."[2]

Down to 1870 the cruel words "while she remains unmarried" followed the
word "mother" in the above law. Until that time, the mother if remarried
had no claim to the custody of her child, in case the guardian wished
otherwise; and a very painful scene once took place in a Boston court-room,
where children were forced away from their mother by the officers, under
this statute, in spite of her tears and theirs; and this when no sort of
personal charge had been made against her. This could not now happen in