“These sacred rights of the father were, it will be observed, in the eyes of the law so _exclusive_ and paramount as to justify and demand the refusal to a young girl, at the most critical period of early womanhood, of the solace of a few weeks’ intercourse with a blameless and beloved mother; and this although the gratification of the daughter’s wish would have involved no denial to the father of the solace of his daughter’s company, since she was not actually, but only _legally_, in his custody, not having seen him for more than a year. “It will be seen from this that the father alone has the absolute legal right to deal with his child or children, to the extent of separating them, at his own sole pleasure, from their mother, and of giving them into the care and custody of any person whom he may think fit. The mother has, as such, no legal status, no choice, voice, lot, or part in the matter.”—Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy (“The Infants’ Act, 1886,” p. 2). It is consolatory to learn that a palliation of some part of the above unjust conditions has been achieved; yet how often has our presumedly happy land witnessed scenes of child misery and helpless mother-love, to which was denied even the poor consolation, so pathetically depicted by Mrs. Browning, in a scene which, as Moir truly says, “weighs on the heart like a nightmare”;— “Do you hear the children weeping, oh! my brothers! Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And _that_ cannot stop their tears.” XVI. 4.—“... _single basis_ ...” First written “disproportioned basis,” but altered, with good reason, in the face of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s arrogant male thesis:—“Only that mental energy is normally feminine which can co-exist with the production and nursing of the due (!) number of healthy children.”—(“Study of Sociology,” Chap. XV., note 5.) But Professor Huxley speaks, more humanly, of “... such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding ever upward, heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home; but yet, without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children will undoubtedly be much the better for them, but surely it would be short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine—a mere provider of physical comforts.”—(“On Improving Natural Knowledge.”) Yet, if it be—as truly it is—a senseless and disgraceful depreciation of woman to look upon her as “a mere machine for the making of stockings,” is it not equally unworthy and unwise to consider her as—primarily and essentially—a mere machine for the making of a “due” number of stocking-wearers? 5.—“... _quicker fire_.”