the Mussulman's wife rejoices in
her sense of propriety which will not permit her to show her face
in the street, and the Brahmin widow immolates herself on the
funeral pyre of her husband.

What is the appropriate remedy?

Primarily and mainly, a more rational and healthful public
sentiment with regard to woman's work; a sentiment which shall
welcome her to every employment wherein she may be useful and
efficient without necessarily compromising her purity or
overtasking her strength. Let her be encouraged to open a store,
to work a garden, plant and tend an orchard, to learn any of the
lighter mechanical trades, to study for a profession, whenever
her circumstances and her tastes shall render any of these
desirable. Let woman, and the advocates of justice to women,
encourage and patronize her in whatever laudable pursuits she may
thus undertake; let them give a preference to dry-goods stores
wherein the clerks are mainly women; and so as to hotels where
they wait at table, mechanics' shops in which they are
extensively employed and fairly paid. Let the ablest of the sex
be called to the lecture-room, to the temperance rostrum, etc.;
and whenever a post-office falls vacant and a deserving woman is
competent to fill and willing to take it, let her be appointed,
as a very few have already been. There will always be some widow
of a poor clergyman, doctor, lawyer, or other citizens
prematurely cut off, who will be found qualified for and glad to
accept such a post if others will suggest her name and procure
her appointment. Thus abstracting more and more of the competent
and energetic from the restricted sphere wherein they now
struggle with their sister for a meager and precarious
subsistence, the greater mass of self-subsisting women will find
the demand for their labor gradually increasing and its
recompense proportionally enhancing. With a larger field and more
decided usefulness will come a truer and deeper respect; and
woman, no longer constrained to marry for a position, may always
wait to marry worthily and in obedience to the dictates of
sincere affection. Hence constancy, purity, mutual respect, a
just independence and a little of happiness, may be reasonably
anticipated.

HORACE GREELEY, MARY VAUGHAN, ABRAHAM PRYNE,