assure you most solemnly I am telling you the truth, how many thousands there must be in our country alone, how many millions in all Christendom, where monogamy is ostensibly the rule! The suffering heart is not apt to reveal so great a secret; it is only trusted to a friend who is known to possess a liberal and sympathetic mind; how many, then, of those who are moving among us may have this desire locked up securely in a swelling heart concealed from everybody; nay, if possible, hidden from themselves; and how many millions more rest beneath the sod, who in life entertained this same heaven-born passion, but died without the sympathy and gentle hands of children to soothe them in their expiring moments.

According to the American Museum of 1787, a woman by the name of Miss Polly Baker, was prosecuted before a court of judicature in the former staid old State of Connecticut for the fifth time for having illegitimate children, and it will be interesting in this connection to append her defence, as document of no inconsiderable merit, and may be regarded as an admirable vindication of her natural right to bear children.

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"May it please the honorable bench," remarked the heroic Miss Baker, to indulge me in a few words. I am a poor, unhappy woman, who have no money to fee lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a tolerable living. I shall not trouble your Honors with long speeches, nor have I the presumption to expect that you may by any means be prevailed on to deviate in your sentence from law, in my favor. All that I humbly hope is that your Honors will charitably move the Governor's goodness in my behalf, that my fine may be remitted. This is the fifth time, gentlemen, that I have been dragged before your court on the same account: twice I have paid heavy fines, and twice have been brought to public punishment for want of money to pay these fines. This may have been agreeable to the laws, and I don't dispute it; but since laws are sometimes unreasonable in themselves, and therefore repealed, and others bear too hard on the subjects in particular cases, therefore there is left a power somewhere to dispense with the execution of them. I take the liberty to say that I think this law, by which I am punished, is both unreasonable in itself and particularly severe with regard to me, who have always lived an unoffending life in the neighborhood where I was born, and I defy my enemies (if I have any) to say I ever wronged man, woman, or child.

"Abstracted from the law, I cannot conceive (may it please your Honors) what the nature of my offence is. I have brought five fine children into the world, at the risk of my life. I have maintained them well by my own industry, without burdening the township, and would have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy charges and fines I have paid. Can it be a crime (in the nature of things, I mean) to add to the number of the king's subjects, in a new country that really wants people? I own it, I should

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think it a praiseworthy, rather than a punishable action. I have debauched no other woman's husband, nor enticed any youth. These things I never was charged with; nor has any one the least cause of complaint against me; unless, perhaps, the Minister or Justice, because I have had children without being married, by which they have missed a wedding fee. But can this be a fault of mine?—I appeal to your Honors. You are pleased to allow I don't want sense; but I must be stupefied to the last degree, not to prefer the honorable state of wedlock, to the condition I have lived in. ↑ always was, and still am, willing to enter into it; and doubt not my behaving well in it, having all the industry, fertility, and skill in economy, appertaining to a good wife's character. I defy any person to say I ever refused an offer of that sort. On the contrary, I readily consented to the only proposal of marriage that ever was made to me, which was when I was a virgin; but too easily confiding in the person's sincerity that made it, I unhappily lost my own honor, by trusting to his; for he got me with child, and then forsook me. That very person you all know; he is now become a magistrate of this county; and I had hopes that he would have appeared this day on the bench, and endeavored to moderate the court in my favor. Then I should have scorned to mention it; but I must now complain of it as unjust and unequal, that my betrayer and undoer, the first cause of all my faults and miscarriages (if they must be deemed such), should be advanced to honor and power in that government which punishes my misfortunes with stripes and infamy!

"I shall be told, 'tis like, that were there no assembly in this case, the precepts of religion are violated by my transgressions. If mine is a religious offence, leave it to religious punishments. You have already excluded me from the comforts of your church communion; is not that sufficient? You believe I have offended Heaven, and must suffer eternal fire; will not that be sufficient? What need is there, then, of your additional fines and whipping? I own, I do not think as you do; for if I thought what you call a sin was really such, I would not presumptuously commit it. But how can it be believed that Heaven is angry at my having children, when to the little done by me toward it, God has been pleased to add his divine skill and admirable workmanship in the formation of their bodies, and crowned is by furnishing them with rational and immortal souls?

"Forgive me, gentlemen, if I talk a little extravagantly on these matters. I am no divine; but if you, gentlemen, must be making laws, do not turn natural and useful actions into crimes, by your prohibitions. But take into your wise consideration the great and growing number of bachelors in the Country: many of whom, from the mean fear of the expenses of a family, have never sincerely and honorably courted a woman in their lives; and by their manner of living, leave unproduced (which is little better than

murder) hundreds of their posterity to the thousandth generation. Is now this a greater offence against the public good than mine? Compel them, then, by law, either to marry or to pay double the fine of fornication every year. What shall poor young women do, whom custom hath forbid to solicit the men, and who cannot force themselves upon husbands, when the laws take no pains to provide them any—and yet severely punish them if they do their duty without them;-the duty of the first great command of Nature, and of Nature's God-increase and multiply!—a duty from the steady performance of which nothing has been able to deter me; but for its sake I have hazarded the loss of the public esteem, and have frequently endured public disgrace; and therefore ought, in my humble opinion instead of a whipping to have a statue erected to my memory."

It is said that this "judicious address influenced the court to dispens with her punishment, and induced one of the judges to marry her the next day;" and, adds the same account, "she ever afterward supported an irreproachable character and had fifteen children by her husband." A word or two more, and I will conclude what I have to say under the fourth criticism. It is, to say the least, terribly unjust to woman, that she may not resort to the only means God has provided for her to have children, for this praiseworthy purpose, when her heart is set upon offspring, while prostitution for men's amative gratification is actually licensed in many countries, tolerated with no effort to suppress it in nearly all large cities, and, too, when the masculine rake is not excluded from good society! To a woman who has no opportunity to marry wisely, a son would be of more value to her than to the woman who has a kind husband to be her companion, protector, and support, especially when custom forbids woman to go anywhere without a masculine attendant; and a daughter, if this must unfortunately for the latter be the sex of the child, would at least be a companion, which a married woman could more easily live without, than she whom the world contemptuously calls an old maid. This attraction might draw about her some society in her old age, which would make itself agreeable to her, if for no higher motive than the obtaining of her consent when the daughter's hand is sought in marriage.

5th. It often holds together for a life-time the parents of continually dying progeny! What? Yes; it keeps in the bonds of wedlock in a large number of instances persons of such similar physical temperaments, that their children die in the womb, in infancy, or in advanced childhood, and the mother is ever clad in weeds of mourning! Whenever you see parents, fruitful but childless, constantly bearing and as constantly losing children by death; when you see parents of whom it is said--they had a pretty family but they have lost them all-there is some natural reason why those husbands and wives should not remain together. Differently associated, they might become the

parents of viable children. Without the restraints of monogamic marriage, woman would not allow herself to become pregnant the second time by a man whose germ united with hers could produce only a short-lived child.

6th. It overlooks the daily demonstrated fact, that a married couple may grow apart. Marriage contracted under the most auspicious ciroumstances between an intelligent man and considerate woman, who do not act hastily or misjudge their adaptation to each other, may in one, five, ten, or at the outside twenty years, become a hateful yoke, which sours the temper, and perhaps ruins the character of one or both of them. Everybody admits there can be no true love where there is not respect. This being an admitted truth, look for a moment at how many ways this sense of respect may be justly forfeited. A girl possessing all the popular accomplishments, and, what are better, health and moral and intellectual grace, marries a young man of promise,-the favorite son of one of the "first families,"-himself a pattern of propriety, honesty, morality, may be religion-the pet of the neighborhood, and a prize for the lucky young woman who wins hira. As he has never encountered great temptations, no one can tell whether this young man's good character is made of pewter or steel. It may be the veriest putty. As time rolls on he may become a victim to rum; if drink offers no temptation, he may become more devoted to tobacco than to his family; if neither of these vices tempt him, he may become an indolent, improvident husband; or, a coarse, profane man. That sweet disposition, under business perplexity, may prove to have been the cream of an easy life, which the lightest cares may change to buttermilk; nay, it is not impossible, as marked illustrations in domestic life demonstrate, that he may become heartless and cruel. Now, why should this young woman be doomed to stem life's current with this sinking companion? Reverse the picture, so far as it may be made to apply, and why with every quality to enable him to appreciate happy domestic life, should he be forever tied to the body of this shrew? One of the punishments of the middle ages was to tie the prisoner to the carcass of a dead animal, and there allow him to remain until he perished by the corrupt emanations of the decomposing animal. Do we not occasionally find in married life a victim, similarly situated to the subject upon whom the punishment just described was formerly inflicted.

Albeit, there is another kind of growing apart, which the world does not so much observe, or if it does it would not consider of sufficient importance to propose relief. A husband may possess a mind not satisfied to run in one rut, or to make no progress. he has a taste for science and the attainment of knowledge; she has not, and has no higher aspiration than to personally see to the immediate necessities of the family. Or, reverse the illustration. The man is satisfied to know only the driveling matters

appertaining to trade; if a farmer, he is satisfied to talk only of crops, cattle, and hens; if a merchant, only the rise and fall of the market, the quality of his merchandise and the length of his tape. The wife meanwhile aspires to learn all she can, not of novels, but of nature, and of works calculated to enrich the mind, and, in brief, of every source within her reach. She thinks, perhaps writes, for the edification of others. Now is it at all unnatural that the progressive companion should little by little lose respect for the belittling qualities of the other? Then can love exist with what finally develops into contempt, though the latter may not be unmixed with heartfelt pity? Just look how these people chafe each other continually. Can any good come of this domestic friction which chips away as fine as iron filings the good temper and better qualities each possess?

Another class still must be named here, which the world thinks made a mistake at the beginning. I refer to those whose temperaments change in some instances by accountable and in others unaccountable causes. I mean in their physical temperaments. As will be seen in various places in this volume, the writer considers temperamental adaptation essential to happi. ness in marriage. Nor is he alone in this opinion, for it has been and is entertained by some of the ablest physiologists that ever lived. No couple in entering marriage, can with proper regard to the law of adaptation, be positively certain that their temperaments will always remain just what they are. The encephalic temperament may be developed by study, or by other brain labor; the lymphatic may be induced by an easy and luxurious life, or by what is entirely without the control of the individual-inherited predisposition. Suppose a man occupied in a counting-room or in the labors of a profession, marries a young woman whose weight will not exceed one hundred pounds. The man's pursuits will have a tendency to develop the encephalic temperament; may quite possibly do so. Then supposing the young woman as she advances acquires the lymphatic development, reaching perhaps a weight of one hundred and fifty or possibly many more pounds. These two persons have practically grown apart, for the union of the encephalic with a lymphatic temperament, is incompatible, and so offensive to nature that a curse is pronounced upon it; the children of the violators of this physiological law shall die in their infancy or childhood! In this fact will often be found the secret of some parents losing their latter crop of children, while the first-born exhibit considerable vital tenacity. The same curse which rests upon these unfortunate people in child-bearing extends to their domestic enjoyments. In some cases temperamentai growth apart, leads to personal aversion to each other.

A similar result is encountered when a person of lymphatic temperament marries a person of sanguine, or bilious temperament, if there be a hidden germ of one of the non-vital temperaments. At the outset the law