[21] While these papers were preparing for the press, the record of another such sale, in August, 1859, disgraced the English nation. Opposite the brewery, at Dudley, in Staffordshire, not many miles from Kidderminster and Birmingham, a man named Pensotte sold his wife, with a halter round her neck, for sixpence. He had previously dragged her--a three weeks' bride--three quarters of a mile in this state. It is intimated in this case, that she was not faithful; but it is the first time I ever saw such a charge attached to such an account. Americans are anxious to understand this outrage. Is it possible that a government which forbids the sale of a negro cannot forbid the sale of a Saxon wife? What shadow of law sustains the custom? Is the woman supposed to be sold into wifehood or servitude? I have taken it for granted that the word "mare" shows that she is regarded as a beast of burden. It is impossible for the fairest and loftiest woman in England--nay, for Victoria herself--not to suffer, in some degree, from the public opinion which such transactions, ever so rarely occurring, tend to form. II. VERIFY YOUR CREDENTIALS. "This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid The worth of our work, perhaps." E.B. BROWNING. If low wages, by actually starving women and those dependent upon them, force many into vicious courses, so does the want of employment lower the whole moral tone, and destroy even the domestic efficiency of those whose minds seek variety and freedom. More than once have I been to insane asylums with young girls whom active and acceptable employment would have saved from mania; and scores of times have young women of fortune asked me, "What can you give me to do?" And to this question there is, in the present state of the public mind, no possible answer. No woman of rank can find work, if she do not happen to be philanthropic, literary, or artistic in her taste, without braving the influence of home, or, what is next dearest, the social circle, and earning for herself a position so conspicuous as to be painful to the most energetic. The woman who is prepared for all this will not ask anybody what she is to do: she will take her work into her own hands, and do it. That was a pleasant time in the history of the world, when every woman found, in spinning, weaving, and sewing, in the active labor of a small or the skilful management of a large household, full employment for time and thought, under the cheering shelter of a husband's or father's smile. That was a pleasant time also, when, in the middle English classes, women worked freely by a husband's side, with more regard to his interest than heed of the world's talk. But with the wide intellectual culture that America has been the first country in the world to offer to women, individual tastes and wishes must develop in single women; and all men who value the moral health of society must aid this development.