the wife, or the chief wife. After the community has advanced to
settled habits of life, wife-capture from hostile tribes becomes
impracticable as a customary source of supply. Where this
cultural advance has been achieved, the chief wife is ordinarily
of gentle blood, and the fact of her being so will hasten her
exemption from vulgar employment. The manner in which the concept
of gentle blood originates, as well as the place which it
occupies in the development of marriage, cannot be discussed in
this place. For the purpose in hand it will be sufficient to say
that gentle blood is blood which has been ennobled by protracted
contact with accumulated wealth or unbroken prerogative. The
women with these antecedents is preferred in marriage, both for
the sake of a resulting alliance with her powerful relatives and
because a superior worth is felt to inhere in blood which has
been associated with many goods and great power. She will still
be her husband's chattel, as she was her father's chattel before
her purchase, but she is at the same time of her father's gentle
blood; and hence there is a moral incongruity in her occupying
herself with the debasing employments of her fellow-servants.
However completely she may be subject to her master, and however
inferior to the male members of the social stratum in which her
birth has placed her, the principle that gentility is
transmissible will act to place her above the common slave; and
so soon as this principle has acquired a prescriptive authority
it will act to invest her in some measure with that prerogative
of leisure which is the chief mark of gentility. Furthered by
this principle of transmissible gentility the wife's exemption
gains in scope, if the wealth of her owner permits it, until it
includes exemption from debasing menial service as well as from
handicraft. As the industrial development goes on and property