of my life, of any such
rights, the barbarous relics of a feudal, despotic system, soon
destined, in the onward course of improvement, to be wholly swept
away; and the existence of which is a tacit insult to the good
sense and good feeling of this comparatively civilized age.

I concur in this sentiment, ROBERT DALE OWEN.

MARY JANE ROBINSON.

After a wedding tour in Europe, the young couple returning to America,
settled in New Harmony, Indiana, a small Western village, where their
father, Robert Owen, had been making experiments in Community life.

It was a strange, new world into which these two young creatures were
entering. The husband had passed his youth in a well-ordered, wealthy
English household; the wife had passed the greater part of her
girlhood in Virginia, among slaves. They were now thrown upon the
crudities of Western life, and encountered those daily wearing trials
which strain the marriage tie to the utmost, even though it be based
upon principles of justice. But there was a reserve of energy and
endurance in this delicately reared pair; they felt themselves to be
pioneers in every sense of the word, and the animus which sustains
many a struggling soul seeking to turn a principle into a living
reality, sustained these two.

We of a later civilization can scarcely realize the strain upon women
in those earlier days. The housekeepers of New Harmony were obliged to
buy their groceries in bulk, and have them shipped by slow stages from
Cincinnati; meat was bought from the surrounding farmers, a quarter of
a beef at a time, to be cut up and disposed of by the housewife;
vegetables and most of the small fruits could not be bought at all;
stoves were an unknown luxury, all cooking being done in huge
fire-places or brick ovens.

For thirty years my father and mother labored with unabated energy;
his work leading him into the highways of public affairs, while her
way lay through the by-paths of home and village life.

Through these thirty years my father used such influence as he had on
the side of the weak and oppressed. In the matter of procuring a more
respectful consideration of the property rights of women, he was a
pioneer. To attempt a detailed statement of the amelioration of those
legal hardships under which women labored, is beyond the scope or
purpose of this article. I will only mention, in brief, the more
important provisions he was instru