She went away protesting that she, at least, would not hold her tongue on the subject, and I hope she will not.  The actual text of the law to which she objected is as follows:—­

    “Every person authorized by law to make a will, except married
    women, shall have a right 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 mother; nor anything which could limit the power of the guardian by requiring deference to her wishes, although he could, in case of gross neglect or abuse, be removed by the court, and another guardian appointed.  There is not a line of positive law to protect the mother.  Now, in a case of absolute wrong, a single sentence of law is worth 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 widowed 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 temporary permission of the guardian appointed under her husband’s will.

“I beg you,” she says, “to take this will to the hilltop, and urge law-makers in our next legislature 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 will was 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 of my keen comprehension of this great wrong, notwithstanding my submission for myself, my whole soul is stirred,—­for my child, who is a little woman; for all women, that the laws may be changed which subject a true woman, a devoted wife, a faithful mother, to such mental agonies 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 remove her from my control.  To some extent my sufferings are allayed; and yet never, till she arrives at the age of twenty-one, shall I fully trust.”  I wish that mothers who dwell in sheltered and happy homes would try to bring to their minds the condition of a mother whose possession of her only child rests upon the “promise” of a comparative stranger.  We should get beyond the meaningless cry, “I have all the rights I want,” if mothers could only remember that among these rights, in most States of the Union, the right of a widowed 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 him to take the child from the mother.