First in this strange procession came the unmarried women, or “old maids” as they had always been called, and although there were no upbraidings in their serious, modest eyes, the intolerable injustice and cruelty which had been meted out by man to these patient, helpless souls, was made as clear as the blackly vivid painting of a guilty conscience. “These are they,” a voice seemed to say, “whom man has for ages taunted with a derision as contemptible and unchivalrous as the striking of a cripple. These gentle sisters of men, who have been by their nature ever ready to perform the kindest and most sisterly acts for their recreant brothers, have been laughed to scorn if they manifested the slightest desire for marriage, and bitterly mocked if they failed. Spurred by contumely toward the only goal which man had allowed them, they had been heartlessly derided for missing it, and relegated to a life of coldness and contempt as cruel as the grave. Instead of reaching a strong, brotherly arm toward these sisters, man had added to her natural weakness the abuse of a coarse ridicule and the unutterably grievous burden of a cruel disrespect. To this had been added in innumerable instances, the single-handed struggle with dire poverty.” Before these unreproaching creatures, who had suffered such unnumerable cruelties at the hands of their natural protectors, I felt a self-abasement that was akin to remorse. I longed to throw myself in the dust before them, to kiss their hands and to crave their forgiveness. Surely the woes of the “old maids” called for the just vengeance of Heaven. And how many there were of them! Who would have dreamed, without seeing such a panorama as this, that so large a proportion of women were old maids, living in a state of contemptuous abasement or humiliating sufferance? As I gazed at them, strange and confusing questions, never before thought of, began to thrust themselves into my mind. Had not this great mass of women social and maternal instincts as deep and inexpugnable as any of their kind? What sort of social system was this, then, that remorselessly crushed and cruelly starved the strongest and most innocent desires of a great majority of its subjects? Could it be possible that sane men and women believed that a just Heaven looked with any complaisance upon such a system? A space divided the old maids from the part of the procession that came next, and I turned with curiosity to look at the faces of the men by whom I was surrounded. To my satisfaction, I saw plainly written there the poignant workings of a deeply troubled conscience; I saw there the unutterable shame of having done an unchivalrous act, and the still heavier reproach of having done a cruel one. There was no need of upbraiding words.