By half-past eight he was in the midst of a vehement plea for an enlargement of female education, in the course of which he uttered several things rather disturbing to the nerves of Mrs.Mumbray, and other ladies present .-- Woman, it was true, lived an imperfect life if she did not become wife and mother; but this truism had been insisted on to the exclusion of another verity quite as important: that wifehood and motherhood, among civilized people, implied qualifications beyond the physical.

The ordinary girl was sent forth into life with a mind scarcely more developed than that of a child.

Hence those monstrous errors she constantly committed when called upon to accept a husband.
Not one marriage in fifty thousand was an alliance on terms fair to the woman.

In the vast majority of cases, she wedded a sort of man in the moon.

Of him and of his world she knew nothing; whereas the bridegroom had almost always a very sufficient acquaintance with the circumstances, habits, antecedents, characteristics, of the girl he espoused.