hat, after all, we are more grateful to Homer
and Hesiod for the children of their brain than if they had left human
offspring.

THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO MOTHERS

From the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals we have now
advanced to a similar society for the benefit of children. When shall we
have a movement for the prevention of cruelty to mothers?

A Rhode Island lady, who had never taken any interest in the woman-suffrage
movement, came to me in great indignation the other day, asking if it was
true that under Rhode Island laws a husband might, by his last will,
bequeath his child away from its mother, so that she might, if the guardian
chose, never see it again. I said that it was undoubtedly true, and that
such were still the laws in many States of the Union.

"But," she said, "it is an outrage. The husband may have been one of the
weakest or worst men in the world; he may have persecuted his wife and
children; he may have made the will in a moment of anger, and have
neglected to alter it. At any rate, he is dead, and the mother is living.
The guardian whom he appoints may turn out a very malicious man, and may
take pleasure in torturing the mother; or he may bring up the children in a
way their mother thinks ruinous for them. Why do not all the mothers cry
out against such a law?"

"I wish they would," I said. "I have been trying a good many years to make
them understand what the law is; but they do not. People who do not vote
pay no attention to the laws until they suffer from them."

She went away protesting that she, at least, would not hold her tongue on
the subject, and I hope she will not. The actual text of the law to which
she objected is as follows:--

"Every person authorized by law to make a will, except married
women, shall have a right to appoint by his will a guardian or
guardians for his children during their minority."[1]

There is not associated with this, in the statute, the slightest clause in
favor of the mother; nor anything which could limit the power of the
guardian by requiring deference to her wishes, although he could, in case
of gross neglect or abuse, be removed by the court, and another guardian
appointed. There is not a line of positive law to protect the mother. Now,
in a case of absolute wrong, a single sentence of law is worth all the
chivalrous courtesy this side of the Middle Ages.

It is idle to say that such laws are not executed. Th