LAW

A little girl sat in a corner of her father's law library watching, with
wide, serious eyes, a scene the like of which was common enough a
generation or two ago. The weeping old woman told a halting story of a
dissipated son, a shrewish daughter-in-law, and a state of servitude on
her own part,--a story pitifully sordid in its details. The farm had
come to her from her father's estate. For forty years she had toiled
side by side with her husband, getting a simple, but comfortable,
living from the soil. Then the husband died. Under the will the son
inherited the farm, and everything on it,--house, furniture, barns,
cattle, tools. Even the money in the bank was his. A clause in the will
provided that the son should give his mother a home during her lifetime.

So here she was, after a life of hard work and loving service, shorn of
everything; a pauper, an unpaid servant in the house of another
woman,--her son's wife. Was it true that the law took her home away from
her,--the farm that descended to her from her father, the house she had
lived in since childhood? Could nothing, _nothing_ be done?

The aged judge shook his head, sadly. "You see, Mrs. Grant," he
explained, "the farm has never really been yours since your marriage,
for then it became by law your husband's property, precisely as if he
had bought it. He had a right to leave it to whom he would. No doubt he
did what he thought was for your good. I wish I could help you, but I
cannot. The law is inexorable in these matters."

After the forlorn old woman had gone the lawyer's child went and stood
by her father's chair. "Why couldn't you help her?" she asked. "Why do
you let them take her home away from her?"

Judge Cady opened the sheep-bound book at his elbow and showed the
little girl a paragraph. Turning the pages, he pointed out others for
her to read. Spelling through the ponderous legal phraseology the little
girl learned that a married woman had no existence, in the eyes of the
law, apart from her husband. She could own no property; she could
neither buy nor sell; she could not receive a gift, even from her own
husband. She was, in fact, her husband's chattel. If he beat her she had
no means of punishing, or even restraining him, unless, indeed, she
could prove that her life was endangered. If she ran away from him the
law forced her to return.

Paragraph after paragraph the child read through, and, unseen by her
father, marked faintly with a pen