"I suppose, then," I said, "it has been the perception of this truth that has caused the sweetest and purest women in all time to ignore the baser sins of man, while calling their own sex to strict account. And yet I cannot think but that this degree of mercy is injurious to their own purity and derogatory to their dignity. I remember being excessively shocked several years ago by having this trait of _forgiveness_ in woman placed in its true light by an accidental publication in a New York paper, which was intended to have just the opposite effect. It was headed 'A Model Woman,' and appeared in the _Evening Post_--Bryant's paper. With a curious desire to know the poet's model for a woman--though the article may have never come under his eye--I commenced reading it. It ran to this effect: A certain man in New York had a good wife and two interesting little children. But he met and fell in love with a handsome, dashing, and rather coarse girl; and the affair had gone so far as to lead to serious expostulation on the part of the wife. The writer did not relate whether or not the girl knew the man to be married; but only that the two were infatuated with each other. "As the story ran, the wife expostulated, and the husband was firm in his determination to possess the girl at all hazards, concluding his declaration with this business-like statement: 'I shall take the girl, and go to California. If you keep quiet about it, I will leave a provision for you and the children; if you do not, I shall go just the same, but without leaving you anything.' _The wife acquiesced in the terms._ Her husband went to California with his paramour, and tired of her (it was in old steamer times), about as soon as he got there. Very soon he deserted her and returned to New York _a la prodigal_, and was received back to the arms of his forgiving wife. The girl followed her faithless lover to New York, and failing to win a kind word from him by the most piteous appeals, finally committed suicide at her hotel in that city. The wife continued to live with the author of this misery upon the most affectionate terms. "That was the whole story. Is it possible, I asked myself, that the writer of that article, whoever he may be, could have meant its title in anything but irony? Yet, there it stood on the front page of a most respectable journal, indorsed by an editor of the highest reputation. To my way of thinking, the wife was accessory to the crime; had no womanly self-respect, no delicacy, no Christian feeling for her husband's victim; was, in short, morally, as guilty as he was; and yet a newspaper of high standing made her out to be a model for wives. For what? Plainly for consenting to, or for forgiving three of the most heinous crimes in the decalogue, because committed _by her husband_. I confess that since that day I have been prone to examine into the claims of men to be forgiven, or the moral right of women to forgive them certain offenses."