nion would be for life--it could not be otherwise. And the man holding
his mate by the excellence that was in him, instead of by the aid of the
law, would be placed, loverlike, on his good behavior, and be a stronger
and manlier being. Such a union, freed from the petty, spying and
tyrannical restraints of present usage, must come ere the race could far
advance.

Mary Wollstonecraft's book created a sensation. It was widely read and
hotly denounced. A few upheld it: among these was William Godwin. But the
air was so full of taunt and threat that Miss Wollstonecraft thought best
to leave England for a time. She journeyed to Paris, and there wrote and
translated for certain English publishers. In Paris she met Gilbert Imlay,
an American, seemingly of very much the same temperament as herself. She
was thirty-six, he was somewhat younger. They began housekeeping on the
ideal basis. In a year a daughter was born to them. When this baby was
three months old, Imlay disappeared, leaving Mary penniless and
friendless.

It was a terrible blow to this trusting and gentle woman. But after a good
cry or two, philosophy came to her rescue and she decided that to be
deserted by a man who did not love her was really not so bad as to be tied
to him for life. She earned a little money and in a short time started
back for England with her babe and scanty luggage--sorrowful, yet brave
and unsubdued. She might have left her babe behind, but she scorned the
thought. She would be honest and conceal nothing. Right must win.

Now, I am told that an unmarried woman with a babe at her breast is not
received in England into the best society. The tale of Mary's misfortune
had preceded her, and literary London laughed a hoarse, guttural guffaw,
and society tittered to think how this woman who had written so smartly
had tried some of her own medicine and found it bitter. Publishers no
longer wanted her work, old friends failed to recognize her, and one man
to whom she applied for work brought a rebuke upon his head, that lasted
him for years.

Godwin, philosopher, idealist, enthusiast and reformer, who made it his
rule to seek out those in trouble, found her and told a needless lie by
declaring he had been commissioned by a certain nameless publisher to get
her to write certain articles about this and that. Then he emptied his
pockets of all the small change he had, as an advance payment, and he
hadn't very much, and started out to find the publis