len therefrom a watch. The theft was proved, and
the culprit sent to the penitentiary for three years. _Query_: Which was
the greater crime, killing a woman or stealing a watch?

The law professes to punish seduction and rape; but when either or both
are proved, what are the sentences? In nine cases out of ten, scarcely
so severe as for damaging an animal belonging to a neighbor.
Occasionally, when the cases have been atrociously aggravating, a man
has been hung for poisoning his wife, or one has been sent to the
penitentiary for rape; but the instances are more frequent in which the
criminal escapes punishment. It is contended that, usually, the women
who are murdered, or otherwise maltreated, are ill-tempered, drunken
creatures, and therefore not worthy the protection of the law. Would
these same parties contend that because a man was ill-tempered,
drunken, or dissolute, therefore his wife was scarcely to be punished
for foully murdering him? Not at all. The universal testimony would be
that she was a shockingly wicked wretch.

Women, as well as men, have to contend with infirmities of temper; and
they quite as well succeed in controlling or keeping them in check.
There are both men and women, unfortunately, who let their evil passions
run riot till they are torments to all who have any thing to do with
them. Some women, naturally gentle and kind, have been so ill-treated,
so shamefully tyrannized over, that in process of time the "milk of
human kindness in their breasts has turned to gall;" and the gall is
then bitter enough. Would not men, in similar circumstances, be just as
bitter?

There is a certain class of women, however, who as a rule are likely to
become fretful and ill-tempered as they grow in years: girls who are
allowed to grow up with uninformed judgments, who are taught that the
chief end and aim of woman is to captivate and please the opposite sex,
who are taught to think a pretty face and delicate figure of more
importance than good sense or a thorough education. And yet it is a fact
worthy of notice, that those who most eloquently assert their great
superiority over the entire sex, are the very men most easily led--ay,
and duped--by dressy, frivolous, brainless women. It would be a
misfortune, scarcely to be endured, for such men to have wives who know
too much.

That there should be a head to every family, is self-evident. A man and
his wife, according to Scripture, should be one; and the corpor