By-the-bye, it is high time that I should repair, whilst I think of it, a grave error that I committed. I said, alas! I even put it down in black and white, that there was a Society in England for the protection of animals, and I was ill-inspired enough to add, "a Society for the protection of women does not yet exist." Well, it appears it does. You would never have thought it, would you? Nor I either. Nothing is more certain, however: this Society has existed for years, it appears. Consequently, the other day, on taking up my paper, I was not surprised to see that a London magistrate had not feared to fine a brute of a husband ten shillings, for having smashed his wife's head with the tongs.[4] My compliments to a Society that inspires such terror in a magistrate of the great city. After such an example as that, few husbands will be opening their wives' heads to see what there is inside. Let me hasten to make my most humble apologies to the Society. [4] See Appendix (b). All writers of books upon England mention the fact that, in the lower classes, a man gets rid of a lawful wife for the sum of a few shillings, and the critics never fail to cry "Exaggeration!" "Caricature!" Of course I did not escape the usual diatribes on the subject. I can understand being charged with having exaggerated, for I have remarked this year in the papers, two cases of wives having been sold for sixpence and a pint of beer respectively, whereas I had said that the price of the transaction varied from half-a-crown to ten shillings. The article is going down, it is evident. These cases must be much more frequent than they would appear to be from newspaper reports. Such transactions are naturally settled by private contract, and, as the English take very good care to keep at a respectable distance from these gentry, unique in the world, there is no means of knowing much about the matter. Now and then, some idiot, who has got rid of his wife in this unceremonious fashion, is simple enough to imagine that he can go and marry another directly. Then, accused of bigamy, he is sent to the Court of Assizes, the papers publish the case, and the affair thus comes to light. The other day, a man who had married again after having sold his first wife, said to his judge: "My former wife is very happy with her new owner, my Lord; set me free, let me go home to my new wife, and I promise your Lordship that I will feed her." (_Sic._) The appeal was a touching one. The judge condemned him to six months' imprisonment. Truly his Lordship had no bowels of compassion. X. Reflections of an Innocent upon Women in General and Englishwomen in Particular--Epistle to John Bull--Women's Rights--A Stormy Meeting--Viragos and other British Guys of the Sisterhood of St. Catharine. Woman is an _objet d'art_ to be handled with circumspection, and when one has a few little truths to say to this last great gift of the Creator to man, one must set about it carefully, I admit.