feared to find herself gradually isolated, and of less and less use. She, who had been important to several, was now reduced to petting her grandchildren, seeing that all her husband's tastes were indulged, reviving the semi-ornamental handicrafts of her youth, gossiping over the tea-table with other capable, restless middle-aged ladies as busily idle as herself-striving to pass from wifehood to old age. Coerced by the tradition current among women that she must be physically miserable at the time of the climacteric, and morbidly afraid that her husband would not continue to love her, she wore out the last years of her potential motherhood in teaching herself to be semi-idle, and accustoming herself to be "laid on the shelf." With so little worth while to do, and twenty or thirty years yet to do it in, she descended prematurely upon the tiresome road to her grave.

If she lived out the allotted span of years, they were passed swathed in mourning for those who had gone before; as a widow, perhaps living round in the houses of one child or another, whose more modern habits left her behind; losing through inertia the last ray of the brightness of her maidenhood, and cherishing pitifully the motherhood which had given her life its only profound meaning. To the end the glory of motherhood remained her pride and comfort. Whether her later years proved busy with grandmotherly

cares, or merely wasted away in the futile busyness of old-womanhood, she had, at any rate, fulfilled the appointed destiny of her sex in achieving marriage and children. Even if the man had been a bad husband, and though some of the children turned out poor human specimens, she had, nevertheless, justified her own existence.

For practical purposes in life the Universe is no larger than the limits of perception. The fly sees no farther than the infinitesimal radius of his vision, and is at the mercy of the huge thing beyond it; the dog exists to follow his nose; and the doves that cross the Mediterranean beat themselves to death against the snares of men. So it has been with womankind, whose nature in the course of evolution has been restricted to the narrow demands of an inner domestic circle whose periphery has been constantly expanded by man.

The zoologists are well aware that in spite of every care the higher animals will rarely breed in captivity-yet womankind is expected to do so successfully. Not a little of the growing discontent of women with their lot in the past century arose from the unformulated but justifiable resentments of those elected to be mothers. In proportion as they were intelligent they knew themselves the victims of a sort of social pretense; the solemn talk about the " glory of motherhood" and the "only worthy sphere"

was by no means always borne out by the facts. Motherhood was, indeed, glorious when joyously and intelligently undertaken; and, as a career, worthy of the best ambition and much sacrifice when the parents were equally yoked to bear the load, and the mother fit for her share of it. But in many instances the mothers had been led to marry by the deceiving glamor of love, while little more than children themselves in physique and mind, and while wholly ignorant of the serious import of that to which they committed themselves; and in so doing they had been placed absolutely at the mercy of the man who only nominally guaranteed them support.

The mother, even in her best estate, knew herself a sort of charitable dependent; and it is to the credit of men that they were so often more generous than law and social custom. Yet the logical result of a social arrangement which, in the guise of protection, afforded an opportunity for outrage or neglect, could only be resentment and ultimately protest, on the part of married The startling proposals of the present day, the transition from unalterable wedlock to more and more divorce, the resistance of many women to involuntary motherhood; the entrance of protected women into wage-earning occupations; these and many other symptoms are phases of evolution engendered in part by the

women.

hiatus between the high rank which women believed motherhood should hold, and the realities of married women's lives in the past generation.

If it be thought that too dark a picture has been drawn, let it be compared with the educated and relatively competent motherhood of the present day. Among younger women there are not a few-though still too few-who, after a thorough education, became engaged to men whom they had known in college or in industry. Taking their future task as mothers and wives intelligently and seriously, they informed themselves on sexhygiene and the care of children. For the marriage ceremony they chose a period of highest health, declining to make a public display. During the months of gestation they developed their muscles in anticipation of childbirth, putting themselves in training as for a race, under the direc tion of a physician. Often overcoming their own hereditary weakness, they have brought lusty, much-desired children into the world, whose physical and mental development they are capable of directing. Such motherhood may well be called a worthy career, and the joys and glory of it only bring into darker contrast the childish, unprepared, enfeebled motherhood of the times whose legacy of miserable children and unhappy homes has not yet passed away.

CHAPTER IV

DOMESTICITY AS A VOCATION

"Woman's work is a round of endless detail. Little, insignificant, provoking items, that she gets no credit for doing, but fatal discredit for leaving undone. Nobody notices that things are as they should be; but if things are not as they should be, it were better for her that a mill-stone were hanged about her neck. . . . A woman who is satisfied with the small economies, the small interests, the constant contemplation of the small things which a household demands, is a very small sort of woman. . . . A noble discontent, not a peevish complaining, but a universal and spontaneous protest, is a woman's safeguard against the deterioration which such a life threatens; her proof of capacity and her note of preparation for a higher."-GAIL HAMILTON.

"That's what makes women a curse-all life is stunted to their littleness."-From Felix Holt, GEORGE ELIOT.

Any industry, task, or occupation that deforms the hand and hollows the chest, mars the features and destroys the beauty, the health and self-respect of the workers-that makes them indifferent and careless to their personal appearance and cleanliness-is unprofitable, both for the worker and for the community. . . . Any form of woman's work, whether in the home or out of it, that produces similar results will soon come under the ban... whether that work be the slavery of the factory or the shop, the drudgery of the household, excessive childbearing, or the slavish care of more children than can be properly supported and given a civilized chance with the means at her disposal."-WOODS HUTCHINSON.

IN the making of a human being there are three variables-what he was when he came into the