AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE COMMON LAW A little girl sat in a corner of her father's law library watching, with wide, serious eyes, a scene the like of which was common enough a generation or two ago.

The weeping old woman told a halting story of a dissipated son, a shrewish daughter-in-law, and a state of servitude on her own part,--a story pitifully sordid in its details.

The farm had come to her from her father's estate.

For forty years she had toiled side by side with her husband, getting a simple, but comfortable, living from the soil.

Then the husband died.