University of Virginia Library

AFTER THE PRIESTS CAME THE CHIEFS

who held lands by feudal tenure—as they do in England today—from the King, and did him service. But both the chiefs and priests were little better than slaves to the King.

After them came the plebians, the common men, who were slaves to priests, and chiefs and king, a class who were cruelly treated and often killed upon any little, trifling provocation.

After all this, at the bottom of the hideous pyramid of brutality, and superstition, and slavery— came the women, the abject slaves of the whole combination. They did all the work; they were disgraded to the level of the brutes, and were considered to be no better. They were cruelly and brutally maltreated, and they had absolutely no rights and privileges. It was death for a woman to sit at table with her own husband, and even to eat from a dish from which he had eaten, and