“In regard to your question, whether there is not some relaxation of the law necessary, in vindication of the civilization of the age, against the legal barbarisms remaining upon the statute book, and in the common law in regard to our wives, I answer frankly that I do not know about that.  The law, as you read it in Blackstone, and as you expounded it to your wife, on your fishing excursion, has been somewhat modified.  Wives have been given a status by modern legislation; and a woman, by becoming a wife, does not now cease to be a legal entity.  The law permits her to retain and control her property irrespective of her husband, and she has, therefore, thus far, ceased to be ‘nobody.’  But my private opinion is, that, as a general thing, the women of this country get along very well, even under the pressure of the ‘barbarisms’ of which you speak.  They manage, one way and another, to get the upper hand of their legal lords, law or no law.  If their existence, in the light of authority, is ’less than a legal fiction,’ they come to be regarded, or make themselves felt in the world as practical facts.  They are quite as apt to be at the top, as at the bottom of the ladder, notwithstanding what ‘Blackstone says’ about their legal position.  There is, doubtless, a good deal of abuse of authority on the part of husbands, but the women get their share of the good that is going in the world, as a general thing.  If the law is against them, they manage to usurp full an even amount of privilege and authority, and keep along about in line with the other sex.  I never knew an out and out controversy between a man and his wife, in which the former did not get the worst of it in the end; and as to the impositions, which as a melancholy truth are too frequent, they are about as much on one side as the other.  It is not to legal enactments that we must look for the cure of unhappiness incident to the married state, but to a reform in temper and habits of life.  Besides, I do not believe the wives of this country would accept of a strict legal equality at all, if it were tendered them as a FINALITY.  I believe they would prefer remaining as they are; for by being so, they are left to the resources of their own genius, to win by their tact, what is not guaranteed by law.  I know that there are a good many crazy-headed people in pantaloons as well as petticoats, who go about laboring for the ‘emancipation of women,’ as if the heavens and earth were coming together.  But those of them who wear skirts, generally have delicate white hands, flowing curls, flashing black eyes, and the gift of oratory—­and a desire to exhibit them all; while those in pantaloons have their hair combed smoothly back, as if preparing to be swallowed by a boa-constrictor, wear white cravats, talk softly, and show a good deal of the whites of their eyes, from a chronic habit of looking up towards the moon and stars.  As a general thing, these latter are of no practical use in the world, and make as good a tail to the kite of the ‘strong-minded women’ as anything else.  But these people represent a very small portion of the American women, and until the masses demand ‘emancipation,’ I rather think that matters had better be permitted to remain as they are.  The women will take care of themselves—­no fear of that.”