d as it looks now. There may be arrangements made when the
creditors come together. My impression is that, whenever people find a
man really determined to arrange a matter of this kind honorably,
they are all disposed to help him; so don't be cast down about the
business. As for Lillie's discontent, treat it as you would the crying
of your little daughter for its sugar-plums, and do not expect any
thing more of her just now than there is."

* * * * *

We have brought our story up to this point. We informed our readers in
the beginning that it was not a novel, but a story with a moral; and,
as people pick all sorts of strange morals out of stories, we intend
to put conspicuously into our story exactly what the moral of it is.

Well, then, it has been very surprising to us to see in these our
times that some people, who really at heart have the interest of women
upon their minds, have been so short-sighted and reckless as to clamor
for an easy dissolution of the marriage-contract, as a means of
righting their wrongs. Is it possible that they do not see that this
is a liberty which, once granted, would always tell against the weaker
sex? If the woman who finds that she has made a mistake, and married a
man unkind or uncongenial, may, on the discovery of it, leave him and
seek her fortune with another, so also may a man. And what will become
of women like Lillie, when the first gilding begins to wear off, if
the man who has taken one of them shall be at liberty to cast her off
and seek another? Have we not enough now of miserable, broken-winged
butterflies, that sink down, down, down into the mud of the street?
But are women-reformers going to clamor for having every woman turned
out helpless, when the man who has married her, and made her a mother,
discovers that she has not the power to interest him, and to help his
higher spiritual development? It was because woman is helpless and
weak, and because Christ was her great Protector, that he made the law
of marriage irrevocable. "Whosoever putteth away his wife causeth her
to commit adultery." If the sacredness of the marriage-contract did
not hold, if the Church and all good men and all good women did not
uphold it with their might and main, it is easy to see where the
career of many women like Lillie would end. Men have the power to
reflect before the choice is made; and that is the only proper time
for reflection. But, when once marriage i