he is peculiarly adapted.

"Under the first head, our energetic sisters have already, by the help
of their gallant male adjutants, reformed the laws of several of our
States, so that a married woman is no longer left the unprotected
legal slave of any unprincipled, drunken spendthrift who may be her
husband,--but, in case of the imbecility or improvidence of the
natural head of the family, the wife, if she have the ability, can
conduct business, make contracts, earn and retain money for the good
of the household; and I am sure no one can say that immense injustice
and cruelty are not thereby prevented.

"It is quite easy for women who have the good fortune to have just and
magnanimous husbands to say that they feel no interest in such
reforms, and that they would willingly trust their property to the man
to whom they give themselves; but they should remember that laws are
not made for the restraint of the generous and just, but of the
dishonest and base. The law which enables a married woman to hold her
own property does not forbid her to give it to the man of her heart,
if she so pleases; and it does protect many women who otherwise would
be reduced to the extremest misery. I once knew an energetic milliner
who had her shop attached four times, and a flourishing business
broken up in four different cities, because she was tracked from city
to city by a worthless spendthrift, who only waited till she had
amassed a little property in a new place to swoop down upon and carry
it off. It is to be hoped that the time is not distant when every
State will give to woman a fair chance to the ownership and use of her
own earnings and her own property.

"Under the head of the right of every woman to do any work for which
by natural organization and talent she is especially adapted, there is
a word or two to be said.

"The talents and tastes of the majority of women are naturally
domestic. The family is evidently their sphere, because in all ways
their organization fits them for that more than for anything else.

"But there are occasionally women who are exceptions to the common
law, gifted with peculiar genius and adaptations. With regard to such
women, there has never seemed to be any doubt in the verdict of
mankind that they ought to follow their nature, and that their
particular sphere was the one to which they are called. Did anybody
ever think that Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Kemble and Ristori had better
have applied themsel