Note 420 — Chapter XLVI

During a visit with my school-friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Ford Proudfit, at Madison, in 1879, I heard a great deal said of the injustice of this law as illustrated in two notable cases of widows in the enjoyment of their husbands' entire estates, while the dead men's relatives, many of them, were living in poverty. This was most shocking! though widowers, from time immemorial, have possessed the life-earnings and inheritance of their wives, while the dead women's mothers and sisters were starving and freezing within sight of the luxurious homes that rightfully belonged to them! It makes a mighty odds whose ox is gored—the widower's or the widow's!—[S. B. A.