Somewhat, too, our institutions of marriage are at fault, or at least the laws and customs which control them. With a nation of men, free, rational, and liberal, we have a nation of women enslaved, dishonest, and miserable, and it is among her noblest and most common phases of fate that she goes mutely to her grave, a victim of such weak social prejudices as have grown to be even a subject of satire among Europeans. Conscientiousness is a boasted virtue among Boston people of certain high cult, yet how many of her beautiful women go to the altar with a lie upon their maidenly lips? Why?—For the reason that there is some man whom she loves and dares not declare it. For the reason that society sets a seal upon her lips and turns her life into a drain-channel for misbegotten vows. For the reason that she cannot break the frost-bound usages of cowardly error with one stroke of her puny fist, and openly propose to join fortunes with the man after her own heart and her own high convictions. And so she rakes over the cold, unfruitful soil in her own soul, and plants the germ of a falsehood or a folly, and waits for the accident of some quickening power, in slavish and unheroic patience. Witness the result: Some masculine hand, more or less clumsy or more or less cunning, little matter if it bring a wedding ring, sheds ephemeral warmth upon the unsanctified ground, and the victim starts upon her lonely, loveless journey toward race building and sacrifice. As I indicated, dear Fanny, I have not drawn for my picture largely upon individual experiences, neither are my opinions stimulated by any observations taken from this side the water. Indeed, I even prefer, of kindred evils, the insipid method which leaves the marriage question in the hands of the parents. But let me leave this for subsequent discussion, for my letter is already too long, and I have not gossiped at all, and I remember, dear girl, how you do love innocent gossip. Write to me often and I will fill my letters with the sweetest of nothings if you will. Love and adieu and think of me as your devoted friend, ELLEN. _From the Baroness Von Eulaw to Mrs. Perces Thornton._ BERLIN, May 10, 1893. DEAREST MOTHER: “Let fate do her worst, there are moments of joy,” and such moments I owe to my fondness for music. What would have been all these dreary weeks and months of shallow acting, if the depths of my soul had not been stirred by the genius of that creative force which, mocking at our own crude disguises, rehabilitates pain with the fair seeming of pleasure, which relegates near sorrows to the realms of tradition, and illusionises common care?