He is entitled by law to
return to his wretched home with murder in his heart, and to vent upon a
woman from whom he fears no defense, the anger which
IT WOULD BE UNSAFE TO MANIFEST
toward the person who may have originally inspired the passion. The
point at which this cruelty becomes practically illegal is that limit
which the wife puts to her own endurance, which in turn, is generally
gauged not by her own powers, but by the personal safety of her
children. So long as her own life seems to be alone in jeopardy, she
waits to be killed--as in the notable case at Minneapolis, Minn.,--and
Society permits itself to be called in simply to attend the funeral of
the murdered woman, who, however, is often buried as a victim of some
hypothetical disease, invented to take the blame off the prevailing
order of things. Now while this is
ENTIRELY HORRIBLE IN THE ABSTRACT,
the abstract is notoriously a false way of getting the general drift of
things. The abstract philosopher, the moment he is charged with the
practical conduct of an affair, as a general rule, fails ignominiously,
even in his own opinion.
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