colors that all must see and feel. The civil and canon law, state and church alike, make the mothers of the race a helpless, ostracised class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization. In view of woman's multiplied wrongs, my heart oft echoes the Russian poet who said: "God has forgotten where he hid the key to woman's emancipation." Those who know the sad facts of woman's life, so carefully veiled from society at large, will not consider the pictures in this story overdrawn.

The shallow and thoughtless may know nothing of their existence, while the helpless victims, not being able to trace the causes of their misery, are in no position to state their wrongs themselves.

Nevertheless all the author describes in this sad story, and worse still, is realized in everyday life, and the dark shadows dim the sunshine in every household.

The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees, one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When it was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a great public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men hastened to Albany to defeat the measure.

But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or Senate would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to these infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for the degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away all that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten years, you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the tangled forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England and America, the leading nations on the globe.

Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the innocent to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority of people do not watch legislative proceedings.

To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the dangers that beset their path on every side.

Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.

A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable, less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in every relation in life.

Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and she must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is the great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its incidents.

This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very traits that ultimately lead to her failure.

Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please, compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin.

The danger of such training is well illustrated in the sad end of Ettie Berton. When the trials and temptations of life come, then each one must decide for herself, and hold in her own hands the reins of action. Educated women of the passing generation chafe under the old order of things, but, like Mrs. Foster in the present volume, are not strong enough to swim up stream. But girls like Gertrude, who in the college curriculum have measured their powers and capacities with strong young men and found themselves their equals, have outgrown this superstition of divinely ordained sex domination. The divine rights of kings, nobles, popes, and bishops have long been questioned, and now that of sex is under consideration and from the signs of the times, with all other forms of class and caste, it is destined soon to pass away.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?

I

To say that Mrs. Foster was cruel, that she lacked sympathy with the unfortunate, or that she was selfish, would be to state only the dark half of a truism that has a wider application than class or sex could give it; a truism whose boundary lines, indeed, are set by nothing short of the ignorance of human beings hedged in by prejudice and handicapped by lack of imagination. So when she sat, with dainty folded hands whose jeweled softness found fitting background on the crimson velvet of her trailing gown, and announced that she could endure everything associated with, and felt deep sympathy for, the poor if it were not for the besetting sin of uncleanliness that found its home almost invariably where poverty dwelt, it would be unjust to pronounce her hard-hearted or base.

"It is all nonsense to say that the poor need be so dirty," she announced, as she held her splendid feather fan in one hand and caressed the dainty tips of the white plumes with the tips of fingers only less dainty and white.

"I have rarely ever seen a really poor man, woman, or child who was at the same time really clean looking in person, and as to clothes—"

She broke off with an impatient and disgusted little shrug, as if to say—what was quite true—that even the touch of properly descriptive words held for her more soilure than she cared to bear contact with.

John Martin laughed. Then he essayed to banter his hostess, addressing his remarks meanwhile to her daughter.

"One could not imagine your mamma a victim of poverty and hunger, much less of dirt, Miss Gertrude," he began slowly; "but even that sumptuous velvet gown of hers would grow to look more or less—let us say—rusty, in time, I fear, if it were the only costume she possessed, and she were obliged to eat, cook, wash, iron, sew, and market in it."

The two ladies laughed merrily at the droll suggestion, and Miss Gertrude pursed up her lips and developed a decided squint in her eyes as she turned them upon the folds of her mother's robe. Then she took up Mr. Martin's description where the laugh had broken in upon it.

"Too true, too true," she drawled; "and if she dusted the furniture a week or so with that fan, I'm afraid it would lose more or less of its—gloss. Mamma quite prides herself upon the delicate peach-fuzz-bloom, so to speak, of those feathers. Just look at them!" The girl reached over and took the fan from her mother's lap. She spread the fine plumes to their fullest capacity, and held them under the rays of the brass lamp that stood near their guest. Then she made a flourish with it in the direction of the music stand, as if she were intent upon whisking the last speck of dust from the sheets of Tannhauser that lay on its top A little cry of alarm and protest escaped Mrs. Foster's lips and she stretched oat her hand to rescue the beloved fan.

"Gertrude! how can you?" She settled back comfortably against the cushions of the low divan with her rescued treasure once more waving in gentle gracefulness before her.

"Oh, no," she