The Wife's Share. 333 



Some farmers' wives have the money from the chickens or 

 the butter for theirs. Well, this is good, but it is not equal part- 

 nership. If the wife wants to help along by keeping chickens or 

 making butter, well and good, but let the money go into the 

 general fund. It is well for the children to earn money separately 

 from their parents, but that is another matter. It teaches them 

 business and the value of money. But do you want your wife, 

 your trusted partner, earning money in some little side-show, 

 separate and apart from you ? Well, I don't want mine. And 

 still this is far better than for the poor wife to have to ask for 

 every dollar or cent she gets. Have you any idea, my masculine 

 friends, how she must hate to do this, if she is a spirited woman ? 

 Change it over. Would you like to have to ask your wife for 

 every cent you got, even if she always gave it to you graciously? 

 Oh ! we never can know how many hearts have been made sad in 

 just this way. And it is simply habit and thoughtlessness, nearly 

 always. Men do not mean to be unkind to their wives. But any 

 woman of spirit must feel more or less bitter every time she has 

 to ask for some of the money she has earned as much as the man 

 who holds it and doles it out to her as he sees fit. There are, of 

 course, families where love reigns and noble Christian sentiments; 

 where the wife is loved as Paul says she should be ; where it would 

 not be much of a hardship for her to ask for money ; and still, if 

 you could read her heart you might find that even she would like 

 it otherwise. But how many wives there are who are less favor- 

 ably situated ! Said a good old lady to the writer once, after he 

 had been talking for an hour on this subject at an institute, and 

 as he was leaving the hall at the close of the meeting : ' * Mr. 

 Terry, I do not know as my husband ever positively refused me a 

 dollar in the world when I asked him for it, but as old as I am, if 

 there was any way under Heaven that I could earn the money, 

 unbeknown to him, J would do it before I would ask him for it." 

 This with the tears streaming down her aged face. She must 

 have been some seventy years old, and her husband is a very wealthy 

 farmer, who must soon drop into the grave, where he cannot take 

 either his money or his lord and master spirit, thank God. How 

 terrible this case seems ! and the worst of it is that it is not an 

 isolated one, by any means, although most women would bear 

 their burden in silence. 



But another point is suggested. What rights has this woman 

 after her husband dies, if he should pass away first ? Will she 

 have her " innings " then ? Well, let us suppose a case : A man 

 and his wife work and save for twenty years or more to pay for a 

 farm and get it fixed up as a home for their old age. At the end of 

 this time the husband dies without any will. There are children. 

 Now, according to our Ohio law she cannot control absolutely 

 one acre of that land that she has spent the best of her life in 

 helping to pay for. She can have the life use of one-third of it. 



