it possible to discuss all the laws of a
relation, and not touch the relation itself?

"Yours respectfully,

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton."

The discussion on the question of marriage and divorce occupied one
entire session of the convention, and called down on us severe
criticisms from the metropolitan and State press. So alarming were the
comments on what had been said that I began to feel that I had
inadvertently taken out the underpinning from the social system. Enemies
were unsparing in their denunciations, and friends ridiculed the whole
proceeding. I was constantly called on for a definition of marriage and
asked to describe home life as it would be when men changed their wives
every Christmas. Letters and newspapers poured in upon me, asking all
manner of absurd questions, until I often wept with vexation. So many
things, that I had neither thought nor said, were attributed to me that,
at times, I really doubted my own identity.

However, in the progress of events the excitement died away, the earth
seemed to turn on its axis as usual, women were given in marriage,
children were born, fires burned as brightly as ever at the domestic
altars, and family life, to all appearances, was as stable as usual.

Public attention was again roused to this subject by the
McFarland-Richardson trial, in which the former shot the latter, being
jealous of his attentions to his wife. McFarland was a brutal,
improvident husband, who had completely alienated his wife's
affections, while Mr. Richardson, who had long been a cherished
acquaintance of the family, befriended the wife in the darkest days of
her misery. She was a very refined, attractive woman, and a large circle
of warm friends stood by her through the fierce ordeal of her husband's
trial.

Though McFarland did not deny that he killed Richardson, yet he was
acquitted on the plea of insanity, and was, at the same time, made the
legal guardian of his child, a boy, then, twelve years of age, and
walked out of the court with him, hand in hand. What a travesty on
justice and common sense that, while a man is declared too insane to be
held responsible for taking the life of another, he might still be
capable of directing the life and education of a child! And what an
insult to that intelligent mother, who had devoted twelve years of her
life to his care, while his worthless father had not provided for them
the necessaries of life!

She married Mr. Richardson