where the lot of so many poor suffering souls seemed to me so much more
desolate than that of this unhappy lady, who had, I imagined, much to
console her. It even seemed to me that the grief I had witnessed was
somewhat morbid and overstrained; and, thinking that it would perhaps
divert her mind from brooding too much over her own troubles, I
ventured, when she had grown calm again, to tell her some of my
memories. I asked her to imagine a state of the world and the human
family, in which all women were, in one sense, on an equality--all
possessing the same capacity for suffering; and where all were, or would
be, wives and mothers, and without any such mysterious remedy against
lingering pain as she had spoken of. But I had not proceeded far with my
picture before she interrupted me.

"Do not say more," she said, with an accent of displeasure. "This, I
suppose, is another of those grotesque fancies you sometimes give
expression to, about which I heard a great deal when you first came to
us. That all people should be equal, and all women wives and mothers
seems to me a very disordered and a very repulsive idea The one
consolation in my pain, the one glory of my life could not exist in such
a state as that, and my condition would be pitiable indeed. All others
would be equally miserable. The human race would multiply, until the
fruits of the soil would be insufficient for its support; and earth
would be filled with degenerate beings, starved in body and debased in
mind--all clinging to an existence utterly without joy. Life is dark to
me, but not to others: these are matters beyond you, and it is
presumptuous in one of your condition to attempt to comfort me with idle
fancies."

After some moments of silence, she resumed: "The father has said to-day
that you came to us from an island where even the customs of the people