so that the saying has passed into a piece of tiresome
cant, intended to put a complimentary face upon an injury."
--John Stuart Mill.

You recognize it all, I see. You seem to have heard it somewhere before.
I recall one occasion when I heard it from a country clergyman, who knew
so much about heaven and hell that he hardly had time to know enough
about this world to enable him to keep out of the fire unless he was
tied to a chair. It was in the summer of 1876, and I remember the
conversation began by his asking a lady in the room about the Centennial
display, from which she had just returned. He asked her if she would
advise him to take his daughter. She said she thought it would be a very
nice thing for the girl, and she added, "It will be good for you. You
will see so much that is new and wonderful. It will be of use to you in
your work, I am sure." He said, "Well, I don't know about that. There
won't be anything much that is new to me. I've seen it all. _I was
in Philadelphia in 1840_." Then he gave us quite a talk on "woman's
sphere." He could tell you in five minutes just what it was; and the
amount of information that man possessed about the next world was simply
astonishing. He knew pretty nearly everything. I think he could tell
you, within a fraction or two, just how much material it took to make
wings for John the Baptist, and whether Paul sings bass or tenor. His
presbytery says he is a most remarkable theologian--and I don't doubt
it. According to the law of compensation, however, what he does not know
about this world would make a very comprehensive encyclopedia.

But seriously, did it ever occur to you to ask any of these divine
oracles why, if all these recent compliments are true about the superior
beauty and virtue and truth and power resting with women--why it is that
they always desire as heirs sons rather than daughters? You would think
their whole desire would be for girls, and that, like Oliver Twist,
their chief regret would be that they hadn't "more." But the Bible (and
the clergy, until quite recently) pronounces it twice as great a crime
to be the mother of a girl as to be the mother of a boy. A crime to be
the mother of a little child--a double crime if the child should be a
girl.*

* See Appendix K.

It is often urged that women are better off under the Christian than
under any other religion; that our Bible is more just to her than
other Bibles are. For the time we will