ted _any_ equality between
the sexes have almost all been unmarried, for while the father disposes
of the children whom he maintains, and which thus endows him with the
power of supreme torture, what mother's heart is proof against the
tightening of that screw? At any rate, what number of women is ever
likely to be found so organized or so principled as to resist the
pressure of this tremendous power? My sister, in speaking to me the
other day of what she would or would not give up to her husband of
conscientious conviction of right, wound up by saying, "But sooner than
lose my children, there is _nothing_ that I would not do;" and in so
speaking she undoubtedly uttered the feeling of the great majority of
women....

We suppose my father has gone to Germany, with some intention of giving
readings there. He has been on the Continent now upwards of three
months, but we never hear anything definite or precise about his
engagements from himself; and in his letters he never mentions place,
person, or purpose, where he is going, or where likely to be; so that I
can form no idea how long I may be deprived of my letters, which are
directed to London, to his care.

My dearest Hal, I have kept no journal since I have been abroad but such
as could be published verbatim. I have kept no record of my own life; I
have long felt that to chronicle it would not assist me in enduring
it.... Indeed, since I came to Italy, I should have kept no diary at
all, but that my doing so was suggested to me as a possible means of
earning something towards my present support, and with that view I have
noted what I have seen, much to my own disgust and dissatisfaction; for
I feel very strongly my own inability to give any fresh interest to a
mere superficial description of things and places seen and known by
everybody, and written about by all the world and his wife, for the last
hundred years. Nevertheless, I have done it; because I could not
possibly neglect any means whatever that were pointed out to me of
helping myself, and relieving others from helping me.... I have given up
my walk and my dip in the fountain before breakfast. We ride for three
or four hours every afternoon, and a walk of two hours in the morning
besides seemed to me, upon reflection, a disproportionate allowance of
mere physical exercise for a creature endowed with brains as well as
arms and legs.... Upon the whole, we have reason to be grateful for the
health we have all of