Part 7 (2/2)

Each chose so her best When it ca her ability to eclipse those rivals on her own ground, she si ”Kathleen Mavourneen” with such thrilling sweetness that the young Irish girl as setting the supper-table in the next rooot all her plates and teaspoons, threw herself into a chair, put her apron over her face, and sobbed as if her heart would break All the training of Adelaide Phillipps--her e experience, her skill in effects, her power of expression--went into the perforreater included the less And thus all the intellectual and practical training that any woman can have, all her public action and her active career, will make her, if she be a true woreater includes the less for her also

Of course this is a state wo men, an endless variety of individual temperaments There will always be plenty whose career will illustrate the infir can convince that two and two eneral fact is sure As no sensible man would seriously prefer for a wife a Hindoo or Tahitian woland or Ae of education or opportunity will only improve, not impair, the true womanly type

Lucy Stone once said, ”Wohty, and there is no danger of her unsexing herself while his eye watches her” Margaret Fuller said, ”One hour of love will teach a wo” These were the testimony of women who had studied Greek, and were only the more womanly for the study They are worth the opinions of a es, as described as being ”as beautiful as an angel and as silly as a goose” The greater includes the less Your view from the mountain-side her commands your view and her own also It was no dreamy recluse, but the accomplished and experienced Stendhal, rote, ”The joys of the gay world do not count for hly educated man is incapable and unpractical, we do not say that he is educated too well, but not well enough He ought to knohat he knows, and other things also Never yet did I see a woman too well educated to be a wife and a mother; but I know multitudes who deplore, or have reason to deplore, every day of their lives, the untrained and unfurnished minds that are so ill-prepared for these sacred duties Every step towards equalizing the opportunities of men and women meets with resistance, of course; but every step, as it is accomplished, leaves men still men, and women still women And as ho heard Adelaide Phillipps felt that she had never had a better tribute to her irl's tears, so the true wo for instance, if she has it, may have been well invested, even for the sake of the baby on her knee And it is to be re lives to unfold his or her oers, and do his or her own duties first, and that neither woht to accept a merely secondary and subordinate life A noble wo; and the most sacred special duties, as of wife or reater includes the less

[Footnote 1: _De l'Arand monde n'en sont pas pour les femmes heureuses,” p 189]

A COPARTNERshi+P

Marriage, considered arded as a permanent copartnershi+p

Now, in an ordinary copartnershi+p there is very often a co the partners If they ines, for instance, one partner perhaps superintends the works, another attends to mechanical inventions and improvements, another travels for orders, another conducts the correspondence, another receives and pays out the money The latter is not necessarily the head of the firm Perhaps his place could be more easily filled than some of the other posts Nevertheless, h those of all the others put together

Now, should he, at the year's end, call together the inventor and the superintendent and the traveller and the correspondent, and say to theenerously give you some of it,”--he would be considered simply impertinent, and would hardly have a chance to repeat the offence the year after

Yet precisely ould be called folly in this business partnershi+p is constantly done by e, and is there called ”common sense” and ”social science” and ”political economy”

For instance, a farmer works himself half to death in the hayfield, and his wifeherself wholly to death in the dairy The neighbors co the few ly, ”He was always a generous ood provider!” But where was the rooenerosity, any enerous, when he keeps the books, receipts the bills, and divides thebusiness, the share of the wife is so direct and un is earned by the far But it is not necessary that she should do even that, to make her, by all the rules of justice, an equal partner, entitled to her full share of the financial proceeds

Let us suppose an ordinary case Two young people are ether Let us suppose them equally poor, equally capable, equally conscientious, equally healthy They have children Those childrenof money abroad, by attendance and care at home

If it requires patience and labor to do the outside work, no less is required inside The duties of the household are as hard as the duties of the shop or office If the wife took her husband's work for a day, she would probably be glad to return to her own So would the husband if he undertook hers Their duties are ordinarily as distinct and as equal as those of two partners in any other copartnershi+p It so happens that the outdoor partner has the handling of the ht to clais? No more than in any other business operation

He earned the money for the children and the household She disbursed it for the children and the household The very laws of nature, by giving her the children to bear and rear, absolve her fro as he is alive as left free by nature for that purpose Her task on the average is as hard as his: nay, a portion of it is so especially hard that it is distinguished from all others by the name ”labor” If it does not earn money, it is because it is not to be measured in money, while it exists,--nor to be replaced by money, if lost If a business man loses his partner, he can obtain another: and a man, no doubt, may take a second wife; but he cannot procure for his children a second mother Indeed, it is a palpable insult to the whole relation of husband and hen one coht, to that of business partners It is only because a constant effort is rade the practical position of woman below even this standard of comparison, that it becomes her duty to claim for herself at least as much as this

There was a tradition in a tohere I once lived, that a certain Quaker, who had married a fortune, was once heard to repel his wife, who had asked him for money in a public place, with the response, ”Rachel, where is that ninepence I gave thee yesterday?” When I read in ”Scribner's Monthly” an article deriding the right to representation of the Massachusetts women who pay two millions of tax on one hundred and thirty-twothat they produced nothing of it; that it was only ”men who produced this wealth, and bestowed it upon these women;” that it was ”all drawn froess testifies alike of their love and their munificence,”--I must say that I am reminded of Rachel's ninepence

ONE RESPONSIBLE HEAD

When we look through any business directory, there seele dealers; and three quarters of these copartnershi+ps appear to consist of precisely two persons, no more, no less These partners are, in the eye of the law, equal It is not found necessary, under the law, to eneral provision that in each case one partner should be supreme and the other subordinate In many cases, by the terms of the copartnershi+p there are lies on the other,--eneral law of copartnershi+p is based on the presumption of equality It would be considered infinitely absurd to require that, as the general rule, one party or the other should be in a state of _coverture_, during which the very being and existence of the one should be suspended, or entirely ed and incorporated into that of the other

And yet this requirement, which would be an admitted absurdity in the case of two business partners, is precisely that which the English common law still lays down in case of husband and wife The words which I e sentence, are the very phrases in which Blackstone describes the legal position of wolish coreatly modified and superseded by statute law; yet, when it coe, it is constantly this same tradition to which le head to the domestic partnershi+p, and the necessity that the husband should be that head This is especially true of English men and women; but it is true of Americans as well

nobody has stated it more tersely than Fitzjames Stephen, in his ”Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” (p 216), when arguing against Mr Mill's view of the equality of the sexes

”Marriage is a contract, one of the principal objects in which is the governovernment must be vested, either by law or by contract, in the hands of one of the two married persons”

[Then follow so on the present question]