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Rh our distaste for the latter. Some one says: 'Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes the laws.' The poetry that Byron wrote, together with his well-known contempt for a virtuous life, is said to have had a very pernicious influence on the young men of his time, and probably, too, blinded the eyes of the young women. I recall being quite startled by reading the essay of Whittier on Byron, which showed him as he was, and not with the halo of his great genius thrown around his vices. It seemed to me that our national government dethroned virtue when it sent a homicide, if not a murderer, to represent us at a foreign court; and again when it sent as minister to another court on the continent a man whose private character was well known to be thoroughly immoral. Even to trifle with virtue, or to be a coward in the cause of principle, is a fearful thing; but when, a person comes before the public, saying by his life that he prefers the pleasures of sin to the paths of virtue, it seems to me that the way is plain—to withhold our patronage as a matter of public policy."

On the Fourth of July, 1874, Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake was invited to make the usual address in East Orange, which she did before a large audience in the public hall. Says the Journal: "Mrs. Blake's speech was characterized by simplicity of style and appropriateness of sentiment." She made mention of Molly Pitcher, Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Hall of New Jersey, and of noted women of other States, who did good service in Revolutionary times, when the country needed the help of her daughters as well as her sons. In the summer of 1876 a noteworthy meeting was held in Orange in the interest of women. A number of ladies and gentlemen met in my parlor to listen to statements in relation to what is called the "social evil," to be made by the Rev. J. P. Gledstone and Mr. Henry J. Wilson, delegates from the "British, Continental and General Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution." It is due to the English gentlemen to say that they gave some very strong reasons for bringing the disagreeable subject before the meeting, and that they handled it with becoming delicacy, though with great plainness. "Ann A. Horton, who died in June, 1875, at the Old Ladies' Home, Newark, bequeathed $2,000 to Princeton College, to found a scholarship to be called by her name." Would not the endowment of a "free bed" in Mrs. Horton's true alma-mater, the Old Ladies' Home, have been a far wiser bequest than the foundation of a scholarship in Princeton—a college which, while fattening on enormous dole received from women, offers them nothing in return?

In relation to the law giving the mothers of New Jersey some legal claim to their children, Mrs. Hussey writes:

I have often heard it said that Kansas is the only State where the married mother has any legal ownership in her children; but the women of New Jersey have enjoyed this privilege since 1871, when it was gained for them by the efforts of Mrs. Ann H. Connelly of Rahway. She was an American woman, the mother of one daughter, and unhappily married. She desired to be divorced from her husband, but she knew that in such case he might legally take her child from her. Such a risk could not be thought of for a moment; so she applied to the legislature for a change of the law. She was assisted by many influential citizens, both men and women; petitions largely signed were presented, and the result was the amendment of the law making the mother and father equal in the ownership of their children. When a copy of the new law appeared in our papers I wrote to Mrs. Connelly, inclosing a resolution of thanks from the Essex County Woman Suffrage Society, of which I was then secretary. In her reply she said: "This unexpected and distinguishing recognition of my imperfect, but earnest, efforts for justice is inexpressibly gratifying." Several years after, I went with my daughter to Rahway to see Mrs. Connelly. She seemed to be well known and much respected. She was teaching in one of the public schools, but seemed quite feeble in health. In 1881 I saw the notice of her death. She was a woman of much intelligence, and strongly interested in suffrage, and should certainly be held in grateful remembrance by the mothers of New Jersey, to whom she restored