"Le mariage c'est la justice," say the French, who have had experience enough of "les unions libres"-- justice to the wife and mother, securing her the stability of her right to her husband's affections, the stability to her right of maintenance after she has given up her means of support, above all, the stability of her right to the care of her own children.

If we want to study the innate misery to women arising from the relaxation of the married tie, or transient unions, we had better read Professor Dowden's _Life of Shelley_--misery not the result of public stigma, for there was no such stigma in the circle in which Shelley moved, but misery brought about by the facts themselves, and producing state of things which Matthew Arnold could only characterize by the untranslatable French word "_sale_." But nearer home, one of your most brilliant writers, Mr.Henry James, has given us an equally profitable study in his novelette, _What Maisie Knew_, which I presume is intended as a satire on freedom of divorce, but which again can only be characterized by the French word "_sale_." I confess it does fill me with sardonic laughter to find this oldest and stalest of all experiments, this oldest and flattest of failures, paraded as a brand new and original panacea for all the woes of our family life,--woes which, if nobly borne, at least make "perfect through suffering." There is but one great rock-hewn dam successfully reared against the lawless passions of men and women, and that is Christian marriage.

It has at least given us the Christian home, and pure family life.

And sometimes it fills me with despair to see enlightened nations, like America and Australia, whittling away and slowly undermining this great bulwark against the devastating sea of human passion.

If only I could feel that any poor words of mine could in any faint measure rouse American women to set themselves against what must in the end affect the depth and steadfastness of those family affections on which the beauty and solidity of the national character mainly rest, I should feel indeed I had not lived in vain.
At least I can claim that one of your greatest women, Frances Willard, was heart and soul with me on this point.
And now to descend to lower levels.