ing promises regarding that over which we have no control, the state of human affections in the distant future, nor of repeating forms which we deem offensive, inasmuch as they outrage the principles of human liberty and equality, by conferring rights and imposing duties unequally on the sexes. The ceremony consists of a simply written contract in which we agree to take each other as husband and wife according to the laws of the State of New York, our signatures being attested by those friends who are present.
Of the unjust rights which in virtue of this ceremony an iniquitous law tacitly gives me over the person and property of another, I can not legally, but I can morally divest myself. And I hereby distinctly and emphatically declare that I consider myself, and earnestly desire to be considered by others, as utterly divested, now and during the rest of my life, of any such rights, the barbarous relics of a feudal, despotic system, soon destined, in the onward course of improvement, to be wholly swept away; and the existence of which is a tacit insult to the good sense and good feeling of this comparatively civilized age.
| I concur in this sentiment, | Robert Dale Owen. |
| Mary Jane Robinson. |
After a wedding tour in Europe, the young couple returning to America, settled in New Harmony, Indiana, a small Western village, where their father, Robert Owen, had been making experiments in Community life.
It was a strange, new world into which these two young creatures were entering. The husband had passed his youth in a well-ordered, Wealthy English household; the wife had passed the greater part of her girlhood in Virginia, among slaves. They were now thrown upon the crudities of Western life, and encountered those daily wearing trials which strain the marriage tie to the utmost, even though it be based upon principles of justice. But there was a reserve of energy and endurance in this delicately reared pair; they felt themselves to be pioneers in every sense of the word, and the animus which sustains many a struggling soul seeking to turn a principle into a living reality, sustained these two.
We of a later civilization can scarcely realize the strain upon women in those earlier days. The housekeepers of New Harmony were obliged to buy their groceries in bulk, and have them shipped by slow stages from Cincinnati; meat was bought from the surrounding farmers, a quarter of a beef at a time, to be cut up and disposed of by the housewife; vegetables and most of the small fruits could not be bought at all; stoves were an unknown luxury, all cooking being done in huge fire-places or brick ovens.
For thirty years my father and mother labored with unabated en-
