untry. It can't be.'

"'My good creature,' says he, 'you are a married woman. The law
doesn't allow a married woman to call any thing her own--unless she has
previously (with a lawyer's help) made a bargain to that effect with her
husband before marrying him. You have made no bargain. Your husband has
a right to sell your furniture if he likes. I am sorry for you; I can't
hinder him.'

"I was obstinate about it. 'Please to answer me this, Sir,' I says.
'I've been told by wiser heads than mine that we all pay our taxes to
keep the Queen and the Parliament going; and that the Queen and the
Parliament make laws to protect us in return. I have paid my taxes. Why,
if you please, is there no law to protect me in return?'

"'I can't enter into that,' says he. 'I must take the law as I find it;
and so must you. I see a mark there on the side of your face. Has your
husband been beating you? If he has, summon him here I can punish him
for _that._'

"'How can you punish him, Sir?' says I.

"'I can fine him,' says he. 'Or I can send him to prison.'

"'As to the fine,' says I, 'he can pay that out of the money he gets
by selling my furniture. As to the prison, while he's in it, what's to
become of me, with my money spent by him, and my possessions gone; and
when he's _out_ of it, what's to become of me again, with a husband
whom I have been the means of punishing, and who comes home to his wife
knowing it? It's bad enough as it is, Sir,' says I. 'There's more that's
bruised in me than what shows in my face. I wish you good-morning.'"

6.

"When I got back the furniture was gone, and my husband was gone. There
was nobody but the landlord in the empty house. He said all that could
be said--kindly enough toward me, so far as I was concerned. When he was
gone I locked my trunk, and got away in a cab after dark, and found a
lodging to lay my head in. If ever there was a lonely, broken-hearted
creature in the world, I was that creature that night.

"There was but one chance of earning my bread--to go to the employment
offered me (under a man cook, at a club). And there was but one
hope--the hope that I had lost sight of my husband forever.

"I went to my work--and prospered in it--and earned my first quarter's
wages. But it's not good for a woman to be situated as I was; friendless
and alone, with her things that she took a pride in sold away from her,
and with nothing to look forward to in her life to come. I was regular
in m