he only
unity.

I shall not attempt to crowd a large volume into a small Preface. I
shall only add one word, which at once expresses and completes my
thought.

Man ought to nourish woman. He ought to feed spiritually (and
materially if he can) her who nourishes him with her love, her milk,
and her very life. Our adversaries give women bad food; but we give
them none at all.

To the women of the richer class, those brilliant ones whom people
suppose so happy, to these we give no spiritual food.

And to the women of the poorer class, solitary, industrious, and
destitute, who try hard to gain their bread, we do not even give our
assistance to help them to find their material food.

These women, who are or will be mothers, are left by us to fast (either
in soul or in body), and we are punished especially by the generation
that issues from them, for our neglecting to give them the staff of
life.

I like to believe that good-will, generally, is not wanting--only time
and attention. People live in a hurry, and can hardly be said to live:
they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty object, and
neglect what is important.

You man of business or study, who are so energetic and indefatigable,
you have no time, say you, to associate your wife with your daily
progress; you leave her to her _ennui_, idle conversations, empty
sermons, and silly books; so that, falling below herself, less than
woman, even less than a child, she will have neither moral action,
influence, or maternal authority over her own offspring. Well! you
will have the time, as old age advances, to try in vain to do all over
again what is not done twice, to follow in the steps of a son, who,
from college to the schools, and from thence into the world, hardly
knows his family; and who, if he travels a little, and meets you on his
return, will ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a
son; but to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be,
strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas, and nourished her with
your life.

If I look beyond the family and domestic affections, I find our
negligence towards women resembles hard-heartedness; the cruel effects
which result from it recoil upon ourselves.

You think yourself good and kind-hearted; you are not insensible to the
fate of poor women; an old one reminds you of your mother, a young one
of your daughter. But you have not the time either to see or know