century, and it is folly to overthrow it
by, or compel it to give place to, the learning, the wisdom, the
philosophy of departed and ruder ages.

"In regard to your question, whether there is not some relaxation of
the law necessary, in vindication of the civilization of the age,
against the legal barbarisms remaining upon the statute book, and in
the common law in regard to our wives, I answer frankly that I do not
know about that. The law, as you read it in Blackstone, and as you
expounded it to your wife, on your fishing excursion, has been
somewhat modified. Wives have been given a _status_ by modern
legislation; and a woman, by becoming a wife, does not now cease to be
a legal entity. The law permits her to retain and control her property
irrespective of her husband, and she has, therefore, thus far, ceased
to be 'nobody.' But my private opinion is, that, as a general thing,
the women of this country get along very well, even under the pressure
of the 'barbarisms' of which you speak. They manage, one way and
another, to get the upper hand of their legal lords, law or no law. If
their existence, in the light of authority, is 'less than a legal
fiction,' they come to be regarded, or make themselves felt in the
world as practical facts. They are quite as apt to be at the top, as
at the bottom of the ladder, notwithstanding what 'Blackstone says'
about their legal position. There is, doubtless, a good deal of abuse
of authority on the part of husbands, but the women get their share of
the good that is going in the world, as a general thing. If the law is
against them, they manage to usurp full an even amount of privilege
and authority, and keep along about in line with the other sex. I
never knew an out and out controversy between a man and his wife, in
which the former did not get the worst of it in the end; and as to the
impositions, which as a melancholy truth are too frequent, they are
about as much on one side as the other. It is not to legal enactments
that we must look for the cure of unhappiness incident to the married
state, but to a reform in temper and habits of life. Besides, I do not
believe the wives of this country would accept of a strict legal
equality at all, if it were tendered them as a FINALITY. I believe
they would prefer remaining as they are; for by being so, they are
left to the resources of their own genius, to win by their tact, what
is not guaranteed by law. I know that there are a good man