Mr. R. I suppose it is rather hard; but that is the way of the law, in Louisiana, at least, and I think all over the United States. When our fathers framed the constitution, they thought it was better that woman should be confined to the domestic sphere. The home, the home is their place,—not the decks of vessels. They wanted to protect women in their proper sphere.
Mary. Protect them! Hinder them, I should think!
Mr. R. (approaching Mary). If Captain Miller, now, were not living, you might find some likely river-man to marry you, and be captain of the boat, in name; and then you could keep on acting as master,—your mate, perhaps,—then you’d be all right.
Mary. Marry! The mate! Patsy! Oh, Mr. Romberg! Oh, sir! what do you mean?
Mr. R. (aside). Gad! the women are all alike. How they stick to one man! (To her) I don’t see what else you can do.
Mary. There was Captain Tucker’s wife; after he died she took the boat.
Mr. R. Yes, but she did not run it long; all of us owners objected to a petticoat captain, and we discharged her.
Mary (severely). Then what has become of her and all her six children?
Mr. R. Oh, she tends in a lager-beer saloon in Natchez.
Mary (indignantly). Yes, and I suppose her children are given away or put out to service—all because she is a woman! She has to do this degrading work to get an honest living, and all because you wouldn’t allow her to do the only work she always had done and was best fitted to do. She run the boat three years before her husband died.