hing
such grounds years before; and now when she came back she was met by
the same stony front. Let us not be misunderstood; we are not
justifying or even palliating the mother's conduct. We pass that point
by without consideration. But the point remains that for an error,
which, however great, was in the course of nature, the mother became an
outcast, and that for indiscretion, also in the course of nature, on
the daughter's part, both afterward were turned away from the Shaker
community; and then they found the world so hard, and life in it so
bitter, that, although one was still in the prime of life and the other
in its early morning, they chose rather death together. They might have
been base and unnatural, hard-hearted, malicious, slanderous,
revengeful, covetous, grasping, utterly regardless of the happiness
and, within the law, of the rights of others, the mother might not have
loved her child, the child might not have loved her mother, and yet the
world would not have driven them to the Shakers and the Shakers would
not have driven them out again into the world to die. It is an old
story, we do not hesitate to say an old wrong, of which every man and
woman with an unperverted heart admits the cruelty in the abstract, but
of which the collective world is always ready to be guilty. A woman who
"gets a husband," no matter by what base arts or design, is "received";
a woman who gives the world a child otherwise than according to law is
cast out, often by those who are not worthy to touch the hem of her
garment. It is not necessary to justify women who err in this way
before condemning the pharisaic righteousness which stones them into
despair. "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more."

--Compare the wrong done in such a case with the conduct of a
"respectable" young woman whose sudden disappearance from her home near
Waterford, New York, caused much excitement. She reappeared after a
week's absence, and accused three young men of the place of abducting
her. They were rather wild fellows, and they were arrested. But upon
investigation the story was found to be a pure fabrication. The girl
had gone suddenly off to visit some of her relatives; and to gratify
some feeling, whatever it might have been, she trumped up this
accusation. It is impossible to conceive a fouler, baser act. And yet
she will not be an outcast; she is "respectable"; no one will venture
to call her a "bad girl." But suppose that He who sai