ducation."[2]
Down to 1870 the cruel words "while she remains unmarried" followed the
word "mother" in the above law. Until that time, the mother if remarried
had no claim to the custody of her child, in case the guardian wished
otherwise; and a very painful scene once took place in a Boston court-room,
where children were forced away from their mother by the officers, under
this statute, in spite of her tears and theirs; and this when no sort of
personal charge had been made against her. This could not now happen in
Massachusetts, but it might still happen in some other States. It is true
that men are almost always better than their laws; but while a bad law
remains on the statute-book it gives to any unscrupulous man the power to
be as bad as the law.
[Footnote 1: Gen. Statutes R.I., chap. 154, sect. 1]
[Footnote 2: Public Statutes, chap. 139, sect. 4.]
V
SOCIETY
"Place the sexes in right relations of mutual respect, and a severe
morality gives that essential charm to woman which educates all that
is delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and
learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate; so that I have
thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of
good women."--EMERSON, Society and Solitude, p. 21.
FOAM AND CURRENT
Sometimes, on the beach at Newport, I look at the gayly dressed ladies in
their phaetons, and then at the foam which trembles on the breaking wave,
or lies palpitating in creamy masses on the beach. It is as pretty as they,
as light, as fresh, as delicate, as changing; and no doubt the graceful
foam, if it thinks at all, fancies that it is the chief consummate product
of the ocean, and that the main end of the vast currents of the mighty deep
is to yield a few glittering bubbles like those. At least, this seems to me
what many of the fair ladies think, as to themselves.
Here is a nation in which the most momentous social and political
experiment ever tried by man is being worked out, day by day. There is
something ocean-like in the way in which the great currents of life, race,
religion, temperament are here chafing with each other, safe from the
storms through which all monarchical countries may yet have to pass. As
these great currents heave, there are tossed up in every watering-place and
every city in America, as on an ocean beach, certain pretty bubbles of
foam; and each spot, we may suppose, counts its own bu
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