Even now they sit at the second table and eat the crusts and crumbs. Minerva occupies at last a higher niche than Hercules. Now a word is stronger than a blow. The men who declare that woman is the intellectual inferior of man, do not, and cannot, by offering themselves in evidence, substantiate their declaration. In this way, families are divided.
Parents grow apart, and unconsciously the pearl of greatest price is thrown away.
The wife ceases to be the intellectual companion of the husband. She reads The Christian Register, sermons in the Monday papers, and a little gossip about folks and fashions, while he studies the works of Darwin, Haeckel, and Humboldt. Their sympathies become estranged. They are no longer mental friends. The husband smiles at the follies of the wife, and she weeps for the supposed sins of the husband.