the charmed circle of conjugal love. Can she sympathize with you either in joy or sorrow, when with a mother's gushing tenderness you clasp in your arms the idolized child, which in a few short months is hidden from your gaze forever? Certainly not. She may portray your feelings more vividly than you could yourself, but the realization is not there. You in your innocent simplicity may look upon her occasionally, perhaps with sympathy if realizing your anticipations of wedded bliss, because she cannot share your joys, or it may be that burdened with care and wearied with watching you almost envy her her freedom from the responsibilities resting upon you. Farther than this you seldom go, having neither the time nor the inclination to enter her secret sanctuary and participate in her joys and sorrows; and perhaps if you did you would not be admitted. She has more time for reflection than you, and knows how insignificant they will seem to you. You readily understand that marriage is the natural relation of every man and woman without which neither can be fully developed, but did it ever occur to you what an anomalous life that must be, in a state of society which carries this principle so far as to consider it the only sphere for woman's development, when all those faculties and affections that naturally centre in a family must be diverted into some other channel. If established in business that gives sufficient range to all her powers, or fortunately so constituted as to find the greatest happiness in ministering unto others, she may prove an exception, yet even then her life is distinct from yours.
