ates
the possession of marked executive ability, and the exercise she
thus receives has doubtless had its share in keeping her young,
well-preserved, and good-natured.

When the Rev. Knox Little visited this country in 1880, thinking
the women of America specially needed his ministrations, he
preached a sermon that called out the general ridicule of our
literary women. In the Sunday _Republic_ of December 12, Anne E.
M'Dowell said:

The reverend gentlemen of St. Clement's Church, of this city,
with their frequent English visiting clergymen, are not only
trying their best to carry Christianity back into the dark ages,
by reinvesting it with all old-time traditions and mummeries, but
they are striving anew to forge chains for the minds,
consciences, and bodies of women whom the spirit of Christian
progress has, in a measure, made free in this country. The sermon
of the Rev. Knox Little, rector of St. Alban's Church,
Manchester, England, recently delivered at St. Clement's in this
city, and reported in the daily _Times_, is just such an one as
might be looked for from the class of thinkers whom he on that
occasion represented. These ritualistic brethren are bitterly
opposed to divorce, and hold the belief that so many Britons
adhere to on their native soil, viz., that "woman is an inferior
animal, created only for man's use and pleasure, and designed by
Providence to be in absolute submission to her lord and master."
The feeling engendered by this belief breeds contempt for and
indifference to the nobler aspirations of women amongst men of
the higher ranks, while it crops out in tyranny in the middle,
and brutality in the lower classes of society. Even the gentry
and nobility of Great Britain are not all exempt from brutal
manifestations of power toward their wives. We once sheltered in
our own house for weeks the wife of an English Earl who had been
forced to leave her home and family through the brutality of her
high-born husband--brutality from which the law could not or
would not protect her. She died at our house, and when she was
robed for her last rest much care had to be taken to arrange the
dress and hair so that the scars of wounds inflicted on the
throat, neck and cheek by her cruel husband might not be too
apparent.

The reports of English