f one. And in behalf of all true and
trusted wives I deny in totality the idea that they go to their
husbands with "painful shrinking" for the money necessary to carry on
the mutual home, or that there is in any beloved wife's heart the most
fleeting thought of "dependence." Mr. Messinger does a great and
shameful wrong to the majority of husbands and wives by such an
assertion.

Indeed, this gentleman's experience seems to have been an unusually
sad one, nine out of ten of his friends having died in early middle
age from the undue expenditure of nerve and vital force in their
efforts to provide for their families in what they doubtless
considered a suitable manner; and he evidently thinks that if their
wives had been dowered this result would probably have been averted.
It is extremely improbable. The wife's small income would far more
likely have led to a still more extravagant way of living; for the
genius of the American is to live for to-day and take care for the
morrow when the morrow comes.

In many respects it is the genius of the age. Old forms of thought
and action are in a state of transition. No one can tell what
to-morrow may bring forth. The social conditions which inspired the
fathers of the past to save for their posterity are passing away; and
I speak from knowledge when I assert that they were often conditions
of domestic misery and wrong, and that growing children suffered much
under them. Suppose a father has two daughters and three sons; must he
curtail the daughters in the education and pleasures of their youth,
must he limit the three boys at home and at college, in order to give
a sum of money to some unknown young man who will doubtless vow that
his daughter's heart and person are more than all the world to him? If
she be not more than all the world to him, he has no right to marry
her; and if she be, what can be added to a gift so precious?

The tendency of the time is to dishonor marriage in every way; but
the deepest wrong, the most degrading element that can be introduced,
is to make it dependent upon dowries or any other financial
consideration. We must remember also that in England, where dowry
has been a custom, it was one not particularly affecting those
classes whose daughters are likely to marry clerks upon small
salaries. It was the provision made by landed gentry for their
daughters, and they exacted in return an equally suitable settlement
from the expectant husband. If the fath