s, just where our great men are, in the
very prime of life! When her young children have gone out of her
home, then let her enter in earnest upon the great work of life
outside of home and its relations. (Applause).

It is a shame for our women to have no steady purpose or pursuit,
and to make the mere fact of womanhood a valid plea for
indolence; it is a greater shame that they should be instructed
thus to throw all the responsibility of working for the general
good upon the other sex. God has not intended it. But as long as
you make women helpless, inefficient beings, who never expect to
earn a farthing in their lives, who never expect to do anything
outside of the family, but to be cared for and protected by
others throughout life, you can not have true marriages; and if
you try to break up the old ones, you will do it against the
woman and in favor of the man. Last week I went back to a town
where I used to live, and was told that a woman, whose husband
was notoriously the most miserable man in the town, had in
despair taken her own life. I asked what had become of the
husband, and the answer was, "Married again." And yet everybody
there knows that he is the vilest and most contemptible man in
the whole neighborhood. Any man, no matter how wretched he maybe,
will find plenty of women to accept him, while they are rendered
so helpless and weak by their whole education that they must be
supported or starve. The advantage, if this theory of marriage is
adopted, will not be on the side of woman, but altogether on the
side of man. The cure for the evils that now exist is not in
dissolving marriage, but it is in giving to the married woman her
own natural independence and self-sovereignty, by which she can
maintain herself.

Yes, our women and our men are both degenerate; they are weak
and ignoble. "Dear me!" said a pretty, indolent young lady, "I
had a great deal rather my husband would take care of me, than to
be obliged to do it for myself." "Of course you would," said a
blunt old lady who was present; "and your brother would a great
deal rather marry an heiress, and lie upon a sofa eating
lollypops, bought with her money, than to do anything manly or
noble. The only difference is, that as heiresses are not very
plenty, he may probably