ADA M.

ADA M. - You must submit to your fate, and draw the attention of your husband to the following remarks. Some of the greatest men who were married were unhappy in that state. Of the ancients, Aristotle, Socrates, Pittacus, Periander, Euripides, and Aristophanes, all complain of their wives. But what of that! Had they contributed anything out of their large stock of intelligence to elevate womanhood? Not a particle; and the glimpses we have of the domestic life of Greece prove that women were in worst possible state – in fact, no better than slaves; and Socrates and Aristotle, in marrying, evinced less wisdom than Pythagoras and Diogenes, for the latter avoided a connection they had no disposition either to chasten or adorn. The wrongs of woman in those days, as well as the present, recoiled on the heads of those who had the power but not the will to make her a more feminine being. And the same may be said of such memorable personages as Dante, Boccaccio, Milton, Byron, Steele, Addison, Dryden, Moliere, Racine, Sterne, Garrick, and Lord Bacon. All of them had formed a low estimate of woman; and she, in fulfilment of her destiny to bruise the serpent’s head throughout all time, punished these great men, as warnings and examples to all future generations. And so she will punish, and is punishing daily, until it shall be generally allowed that her lot should be cast in a purer and larger mould.