cent control and protection to guide her in the way she should go, and ends by conceding what woman never claimed and St. Paul never asserted, that she is an angel, and must not be permitted to sully her spotless purity, and lesson her divine influence by coming in contact with that demoralizing element which, under the semblance of manhood, defiles every department of public life. And yet it never occurs to our wise legislators that she will be any the less a delicate and refined woman for living in the most intimate relation of life with the most degraded specimen of humanity. All their gallant sympathy and protection explodes, when the angel they worship so far condescends to come down to the plane of mortals as to become a wife.
Admitting that it does not come within the scope of the law to regulate the marriage institution, which is the province of a higher tribunal, the conscience and the affections, it is the true province of legislation to recognize the equal rights of both sexes in entering into the relation, thus removing a great source of selfish motives in the thirst for gain and love of power.
When Mrs. Carleton became aware of her incarceration, having been lured from home under the pretence of a journey for her health, her excitement brought on another attack of fever when it seemed a certainty that her earthly troubles would soon be at an end. But again she rallied, and as soon as consciousness was in any degree restored, thoughts of her children came to nerve her once more to combat with the inroads of disease.
