Part 9 (1/2)

”I wish they would,” I said ”I have been trying a good many years to make them understand what the law is; but they do not People who do not vote pay no attention to the laws until they suffer fro that she, at least, would not hold her tongue on the subject, and I hope she will not The actual text of the lahich she objected is as follows:--

”Every person authorized by law to ht to appoint by his will a guardian or guardians for his children during their minority”[1]

There is not associated with this, in the statute, the slightest clause in favor of the uardian by requiring deference to her wishes, although he could, in case of gross neglect or abuse, be reuardian appointed There is not a line of positive law to protect the le sentence of laorth all the chivalrous courtesy this side of the Middle Ages

It is idle to say that such laws are not executed They are executed I have had letters, too agonizing to print, expressing the sufferings of mothers under laws like these There lies before me a letter,--not from Rhode Island,--written by a ed mother who suffers daily tortures, even while in possession of her child, at the knowledge that it is not legally hers, but held only by the teuardian appointed under her husband's will

”I beg you,” she says, ”to take this will to the hilltop, and urge law-islature to free the State record from the shameful story that no mother can control her child unless it is born out of wedlock”

”From the moment,” she says, ”when the as read to me, I have made no effort to set it aside I wait till God reveals his plans, so far as my own condition is concerned But out ofmy submission for myself, my whole soul is stirred,--for my child, who is a little woed which subject a true woonies as I have endured, and shall endure till I die”

In a later letter she says, ”I now have his [the guardian's] solemn promise that he will not res are allayed; and yet never, till she arrives at the age of twenty-one, shall I fully trust” I wish that mothers ell in sheltered and happy ho to their minds the condition of a mother whose possession of her only child rests upon the ”proet beyond the hts I want,” if hts, in ht of a ed mother to her child is not included

By strenuous effort, the law on this point has in Massachusetts been gradually amended, till it now stands thus: The father is authorized to appoint a guardian by will; but the powers of this guardian do not entitle hiuardian of a minorshall have the custody and tuition of his ward; and the care and ement of all his estate, except that the father of the , and in case of his death therespectively competent to transact their own business, shall be entitled to the custody of the person of the minor and the care of his education”[2]

Down to 1870 the cruel words ”while she remains unmarried” followed the word ”mother” in the above law Until that time, the mother if remarried had no claiuardian wished otherwise; and a very painful scene once took place in a Boston court-room, where children were forced away from their mother by the officers, under this statute, in spite of her tears and theirs; and this when no sort of personal charge had been ainst her This could not now happen in Massachusetts, but it ht still happen in some other States It is true that men are almost always better than their laws; but while a bad law reives to any unscrupulous man the power to be as bad as the law

[Footnote 1: Gen Statutes RI, chap 154, sect 1]

[Footnote 2: Public Statutes, chap 139, sect 4]

V

SOCIETY

”Place the sexes in right relations of ives that essential charm to woman which educates all that is delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and learning, conversation and wit, in her rough ht a sufficient ood women”--EMERSON, Society and Solitude, p 21

FOAM AND CURRENT

Soayly dressed ladies in their phaetons, and then at the foa in creaht, as fresh, as delicate, as changing; and no doubt the graceful foam, if it thinks at all, fancies that it is the chief consummate product of the ocean, and that the hty deep is to yield a few glittering bubbles like those At least, this seems to me what many of the fair ladies think, as to themselves

Here is a nation in which the most momentous social and political experi worked out, day by day There is soreat currents of life, race, religion, te with each other, safe froh which all reat currents heave, there are tossed up in every watering-place and every city in America, as on an ocean beach, certain pretty bubbles of foahter than those of its neighbors, and christens thehtful person, at any such resort, to see the unconscious way in which fashi+onable society accepts the foanores the currents You hear people talk of ”a position in society,” ”the influential circles in society,” as if the position they mean were not liable to be shi+fted in a day; as if the essential influences in Aht outside the world of fashi+on In other countries it is very different The circle of social caste, whose centre you touch in London, radiates to the farthest shores of the British empire; the upper class controls, not overnenius and wealth are but its tributaries

Wherever it is not so, it is because England is so far Ae of the cities is nothing in the country; it is a matter of the pavement, of a three-land: there are still the ”county families,” and you e in northern New Ha by the landlady, who said that several of their ”most fashi+onable ladies” had happened in, and she would like to show thenore each other: the rulers of select circles in New York ton, while a Washi+ngton social passport counts for as little in New York Boston and Philadelphia affect to ignore both; and St Louis and San Francisco have their own standards