of thought has arisen upon this subject, the upholders of lax divorces always assuming that the opponents mean to compel persons to live together in misery or incompatibility, which, of course, is far from the case.  A legal separation has always been permitted, except, indeed, where that doctrine is interfered with by modern statute; any wife can be freed of a vicious or cruel husband and even compel him to support her while living away from him, but “platform women” are apt to forget this fact.  In the same year one Southern State has the chivalry to provide that no women should be worked as convicts on the road; one is not aware but for this that it ever happened.  We see more humane legislation about this time for the protection and proper treatment of women in jails or houses of detention, for the services of matrons and the careful separation of the sexes, and by now seats for women in stores or factories are almost universally required.  The sale of liquor to women is in one State specially forbidden, Louisiana follows the Texas law giving women tax-payers a vote on appropriations for permanent improvements.

In 1899 comes the law of Michigan, already referred to, forbidding persons with contagious diseases to marry, and compelling physicians to testify.  The Massachusetts Medical Association has gone on record as urging that there should be a privilege to physicians in all cases, as there is to lawyers.  Many people believe that to be the common law; such is not the case, even as to priests.

One more State this year awards divorce for insanity, and one more for intoxication.  Several States permit women to get damages from liquor-sellers selling intoxicating drink to their husbands; I know of no corresponding statute permitting the husband to get damages for drinks sold the wife.  A wife may testify against the husband in certain cases, as actions for alienating of affection, or criminal conversation; not so the husband.  Texas and other Southwestern States adopt the statute that an action for seduction shall be suspended on the defendant’s marriage with the plaintiff, otherwise it is a felony, and it is again a felony should he after such marriage desert her—­the Fourteenth Amendment to the contrary notwithstanding (which reminds one of the colonial Massachusetts statute, that the punishment for that offence may either be imprisonment in the state-prison, or marriage!).

The laws aimed at mere sin increase in number.  One State makes improper relations, even by mutual consent, punishable with four years in the state-prison, if the girl be under eighteen.  North Dakota introduces a bill to require medical examination in all cases as a prerequisite to marriage; it failed in North Dakota that year, but was promptly introduced in other States.  In Oregon all widows and fathers may vote, without regard to property qualification, in school district elections; and this State joins the number of those which forbid the marriage of first cousins.