I suspect the truth to be, that, besides the visible influence of race and religion, there has been an insensible and almost unconscious improvement in each sex, with respect to these matters, as time has passed on; and that the mutual desire to please has enabled each sex to help the other,—­the sex which is naturally the more refined taking the lead.  But I should lay more stress on this mutual influence, and less on mere feminine superiority, than would be laid by many.  It is often claimed by teachers that co-education helps not only boys, but also girls, to develop greater propriety of manners.  When the sexes are wholly separate, or associate on terms of entire inequality, no such good influence occurs:  the more equal the association, the better for both parties.  After all, the Divine model is to be found in the family; and the best ingenuity cannot improve much upon it.

IV

THE HOME

“In respect to the powers and rights of married women, the law is by no means abreast of the spirit of the age.  Here are seen the old fossil footprints of feudalism.  The law relating to woman tends to make every family a barony or a monarchy or a despotism, of which the husband is the baron, king, or despot, and the wife the dependent, serf, or slave.  That this is not always the fact, is not due to the law, but to the enlarged humanity which spurns the narrow limits of its rules.  The progress of civilization has changed the family from a barony to a republic; but the law has not kept pace with the advance of ideas, manners, and customs.”—­W.W.  STORY’S Treatise on Contracts not under Seal, sec. 84, third edition, p. 89.

WANTED—­HOMES

We see advertisements, occasionally, of “Homes for Aged Women,” and more rarely “Homes for Aged Men.”  The question sometimes suggests itself, whether it would not be better to begin the provision earlier, and see that homes are also provided, in some form, for the middle-aged and even the young.  The trouble is, I suppose, that as it takes two to make a bargain, so it takes at least two to make a home; and unluckily it takes only one to spoil it.

Madame Roland once defined marriage as an institution where one person undertakes to provide happiness for two; and many failures are accounted for, no doubt, by this false basis.  Sometimes it is the man, more often the woman, of whom this extravagant demand is made.  There are marriages which have proved a wreck almost wholly through the fault of the wife.  Nor is this confined to wedded homes alone.  I have known a son who lived alone, patiently and uncomplainingly, with that saddest of all conceivable companions, a drunken mother.  I have known another young man who supported in his own home a mother and sister, both habitual drunkards.  All these were American-born, and all of respectable social position.  A house shadowed by such misery is not a home, though it might have proved such but for the sins of women.  Such instances are, however, rare and occasional compared with the cases where the same offence in the husband makes ruin of the home.