illustrates the actual state of affairs in many a home. At the root
of a stately cedar, sprang up, twenty years ago, a shoot of that most
hardy and beautiful of native creepers, the wild woodbine or American
ivy. It crept steadily upward, laying hold of branch and twig, casting
out, first, tendrils, then ropes, to make sure its hold--a thing of
beauty all summer, a coat of many colors in autumn, until it reached
the top of the tree. To-day, the only vestige of cedar-individuality
that remains to sight, is in the trunk, the bare branches, stripped of
all slight twigs, and at the extremity of one of these, a few tufts of
evergreen verdure, that proclaim "This was a tree."

In the novels and poems that set forth the eternal fitness of the
cling-twine-and-depend school, the vine is always feminine, the oak
(or cedar?) masculine. Not one that I know of depicts the gradual
strangling of the independent tree by the depending parasite.

Leaving the object-lesson to do its part, let us reason together
calmly upon this vexed subject. When a man solemnly, in the sight of
Heaven and human witnesses, endows his wife at the altar with his
worldly goods, it is either a deed of gift, or an engagement to allow
her to earn her living as honestly as he earns his, a pledge of an
equal partnership in whatever he has or may acquire. That it is not an
absolute gift is proved by his continued possession of his property
and uncontrolled management of the same; furthermore, by his custom of
bestowing upon his wife such sums, and at such periods as best suit
his convenience and pleasure--and by his expectation that she will be
properly grateful for lodging, board and raiment. If he be liberal,
her gratitude rises proportionably. If he be a churl, she must submit
with Christian resignation.