The teachings of history in regard to the condition of women under the
care of these self-constituted protectors, to which I can only briefly
allude, show the value of this argument as applied to past ages; and in
demonstration of its value as applied to more recent times, even at the
risk of being tedious, I will give some examples from my own
professional experience. I do this because nothing adds more to the
efficacy of truth than the translation of the abstract into the
concrete. Withholding names, I will state the facts with fullness and
accuracy.
An educated and refined woman, who had been many years before deserted
by her drunken husband, was living in a small village of Western New
York, securing, by great economy and intense labor in fine needle work,
the means of living, and of supporting her two daughters at an academy,
the object of her life being to give them such an education as would
enable them to become teachers, and thus secure to them some degree of
independence when she could no longer provide for them. The daughters
were good scholars, and favorites in the school, so long as the mother
was able to maintain them there. A young man, the nephew and clerk of a
wealthy but miserly merchant, became acquainted with the daughters, and
was specially attentive to the older one.
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