cook's little girl, nine years old, has lately
been married to a man who already has had two wives." In each of these
cases, as in each I have mentioned, marriage means marriage, not just
betrothal, as so many fondly imagine. Only to-day I heard of one who
died in what the nurse who attended her described as "simple agony." She
had been married a week before. She was barely twelve years old.

We do not say this is universal. There are many exceptions; but we do
say the workings of this custom should be exposed and not suppressed.
Question our facts; we can prove them. To-day as I write it, to-day as
you read it, hundreds and thousands of little wives are going through
what we have described. But "described" is not the word to
use--indicated, I should say, with the faintest wash of sepia where the
thing meant is pitch black.

Think of it, then--do not try to escape from the thought--English women
know too little, care too little--too little by far. Think of it. Stop
and think of it. If it is "trying" to think of it, and you would prefer
to turn the page over, and get to something nicer to read, _what must it
be to live through it_? What must it be to those little girls, so
little, so pitifully little, and unequal to it all? What must it be to
these childish things to live on through it day by day, with, in some
cases, nothing to hope for till kindly death comes and opens the door,
the one dread door of escape they know, and the tortured little body
dies? And someone says, "The girl is dead, take the corpse out to the
burning-ground." Then they take it up, gently perhaps. But oh, the
relief of remembering it! It does not matter now. Nothing matters any
more. Little dead wives cannot feel.

. . . . . . .

I wonder whether it touches you? I know I cannot tell it well. But oh,
one lives through it all with them!--I have stopped writing again and
again, and felt I could not go on.

Mother, happy mother! When you tuck up your little girl in her cot, and
feel her arms cling round your neck and her kisses on your cheek, will
you think of these other little girls? Will you try to conceive what you
would feel _if your little girl were here_?

Oh, you clasp her tight, so tight in your arms! The thought is a
scorpion's sting in your soul. You would kill her, smother her dead in
your arms, before you would give her to--_that_.

Turn the light down, and come away. Thank God she is safe in her