“Simply,” replied my friend, “upon the ground that maternity is what George Sand called it, a ‘martyrdom.’ It puts the life of every woman who enters upon it in real jeopardy. It imperils an existence which is as sweet to woman under true conditions as man’s existence is to him. The terrible risks of maternity are woman’s and woman’s alone. They cannot be shared by man, and woman therefore contends that she alone should freely elect when she should incur those risks. Besides the real peril and physical anguish of maternity, there are the weary months of sleepless watching, of wearing care and wasting anxiety. For man to lightly or indifferently expose woman to such peril and suffering without her free and undoubted assent, is, she claims, worse than the worst form of African slavery, obsolete, barbaric and unchristian.” “Unchristian!” I feeble echoed, for the sudden opening of such an entirely new field to me for woman’s rights confused me so that I mechanically repeated his last word in a kind of stupor, “Unchristian!” “Yes, unchristian,” he resumed; “the women quote the saying of St. Paul, ‘Love worketh no ill to his neighbour,’ and say that man, under the sacred name of love, casts upon woman, who is his nearest and dearest neighbour, the most grievous ills that humanity is capable of bearing. He compels woman to continually run a gauntlet as cruel as the Indian’s tomahawk, and multitudes of them sink down before it is run. In the face of such terrible ills as man heaps upon woman, ‘the clods of the valley are sweet to her.’ See, here is a specimen of the exceeding bitter cry which began to be heard in the public magazines just before the Strike began.” And Mr. Lister picked up a magazine which lay on the table, and opening it, pointed to a letter which was contained in an article entitled “To marry or not to marry.” This letter was entitled WHY I CANNOT THANK GOD FOR MY CHILDREN. Poetically speaking, children are the rose-buds of life; practically, they are the torments of existence, I speak from a long and miserable experience. Married at twenty-five, I am now, at thirty-five, the mother of seven children, the eldest nine years, the youngest nine weeks. I am called their mother, but am really their slave. I was once a careless, happy, joyous girl, but my children have made me a fretful, nervous, care-worn woman. All the romance of my life has gone, the poetry of existence has changed to the dullest prose. I live in the midst of quarrelling children, instead of enjoying the society of congenial friends. From Monday morning till Saturday night I am working for my children, yet they show not the slightest gratitude, and make not the least return for all the devotion lavished upon them. Sick or well, I am compelled to live in a state of noise and confusion, distracting to my nerves and detestable to all my finer feelings.