Time was when I repelled the least suggestion That woman's mind to man's in awe should bow, My genius I believed in without question, Before the Muses’ altar made my vow. No dull, clay man my spirit could interpret,— But no dumb plodder of the earth art thou!

‘Twas long before I learned, and dared to view me, In Truth's relentless mirror clear and hard; A thrill of apprehensive doubt ran through me, At seeing I was not the Woman Bard! Alas, the growing-pains of evolution, Vain fool, my very progress did retard!

I struggled long ‘twist many a vain endeavor, My egotism and my love for thee; A soul-sad task ambition's ties to sever, A no-one but thy loving wife to be, A worshipped, noble, constant inspiration, The rich soil that makes possible the tree.

But now, I have transferred each aspiration, ‘Tis now what laurels I, but thou shalt win. (Who livest only on my approbation)— I bury not my talents,—that were sin; But I have seen thy poet-soul, while breathing,— The Paradise of life, I enter in.

Think not, I am inferior, as woman, Nor thou, my love, art genius, being man, Nay, jealously I say (for I am human) Such is not God's unreasonable plan; But freely, fondly bow I to my poet, I reverence the heavenly flames I fan!

What Goethe meant by his immortal phrase, Die Ewigweibliche, is not certain, but the eternal womanliness (literally, wifeliness) is a sufficiently plastic term to be made to fit many even contradictory ideals. The eternal, unchanging, unchangeable, universal spirit of womanhood; how different is the from the many petty characteristics called feminine! How at variance is the spirit of Goethe's ideal, the essence which he tried to embody in formal phrase, with the trivial feminine traits eulogized by many men as the embodiment of womanliness.

The woman has been worshipped in almost every stage of civilization, while women have been degraded. The Madonna has been adored, while the human mother often has been despised or neglected. Certainly no sect in Christendom more completely obscures and suppresses women in its councils than does that which glorifies woman in her one phase of maternity, Madonnahood!

After all has been said on the subject of purity, chastity, self-sacrifice, and sublimity in woman, does it not remain true that each of these qualities 0104should be striven for a the ideal also of men ? While public opinion—than which no legal or physical force is more powerful—has encouraged women to develop along these peculiar lines, it has not required these beautiful traits in men; and while the world has united in fostering bravery, honesty, courage, loyalty, perseverance, and the power of initiative in men, it has almost wholly condemned these qualities in women. Thus the sexes have become differentiated by different ideals being followed (as well as varied employments) and small philosophers have prated of “different qualities of mind in men and women.” As far as can be learned of their methods, they have weighed the brain of a Webster, and of some common pauper woman, and finding the former more heavy, have deduced the fact of man's superiority! They have written countless books of mysticism, in which mind is termed masculine; heart, feminine; intellect, masculine; emotion, feminine; as if the functions, physical, mental, moral, spiritual, evolved through the race's tedious climb Godward were not (at least latent) in every human being!

The newest and highest thought has come to do away with the mawkish sentimentality that first separates man and women on either side of a broad road, and then forbids them to cross the artificial barrier, but bids them each keep to his own domain, and smirk and smile at a distance. Perhaps there is no topic in the world which has called forth so much wholly unfounded sentimentality as has the subject of woman. Man has placed her, in imagination, on dizzy heights 0115whither he scarcely dared or cared to ascend, yet strenuously fought to prevent other men from reaching. He has secluded her in cloister or harem; he has shut her in gloomy castle white he went forth to the glories and excitements of battle. The only thing he has not done is voluntarily and frankly to say, “Thou art thine own, not another's; go or come as thou listest. Be my companion or my enemy's; or, if it please thee, choose the single pathway. Be brave and strong and noble, and if thou choosest me, I will try to be chaste and true and gentle; let us fare forth together, working not selfishly for ourselves, but for the world!” That would have been the true chivalry of the stronger to the weaker, of him in power to her overpowered.

This, man never has said. He has been too busy with the world's business, its battles, his own scramble for food; and his leisure hours have been beguiled by idle dalliance, petting, praising, spoiling; or neglecting and oppressing women, according to his temper.

But woman, what has she been doing?

Too often, she has been a willing slave to public opinion, to love of ease, of luxury, to the comfort of being unthinking! Or, a hopeless slave to proverty, dependence and drudgery. She has love to hear sung her praises for docility; vanity caressed has afforded pleasure. She has grown to believe, in truth, that she is a being too find and soft and delicate to have aught but a flower's existence. Or, she has been a daughter of the soil, weary and heavy-laden, commanded by men and priests to labor and keep silent.

But even in the darkness of ignorance and apathy, the eternal feminine was groping for individual expression. Whether it were in the soul-developing spirit of mother-love that always says, “Not my life but thine is of consequence”; or the dynamic ambition which transmitted itself into, and shaped the mind of an infant Napoleon; the creative force of the universal feminine has been laboring until it has brought woman into the sunlight, it has wrested from man his pre-empted prerogatives, and taken away from him his possession that it may return it to him as a free gift. Is the present of her love less precious, O twentieth century husband, because it is the spontaneous offering of a self-owned woman? Ah, no; rather is life the richer for broker fetters, which establish democracy, and allow woman and man to progress along the blessed road of a higher civilization.

If the keynote of the present uprising of womanhood were to be sounded, it would be “No sex in brain, in mind or morals!” Most of the glaring differences between the habits and thoughts of men and women are easily traceable to the pressure of the mental and physical environment shaping each. There always will remain, however, certain distinctions of sex, certain characteristics which are inherent and natural, and which constitute the peculiar charm of one for the other. Alarm lest the sexes merge into one another, with the growth of freedom and opportunity for woman, seems as unscientific and unnecessary as the supposition that the rose and lily, if given the same opportunity for air and sunlight, will become monotonously similar, or 0137identical. No one would from this foolish fear dwarf and starve the fair lily!

The eternal feminine will never be the less womanly for becoming more broadly and intelligently human! Woman asks no more gratified ambition, no more opportunity for expansion than is the possibility of man; she cries for an earthly immortality, as man aspiring ever has cried.

“Would she have heart to endure, for the life of the worm or the fly, She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, Give her the pleasure of going on, And not to die!”

The pessimist is he who is a natural tyrant. Great souls do not seek to rise upon the shoulders of their fellowmen, much less of their “sister women.” He who has within his heart the eternal masculine, not qualities of the brute, the warrior or the despot, but the high and brave and humanitarian ones, will recognize in the future woman all of the old Ewingweibliche, with a new strength and depth and tenderness which carries maternity into humanity, and loves not the world less for loving her own dear ones more!

“Love thee? She will love thee as only freedom knoweth. Love thee? She will love thee while love itself doth live. Fear not the heart of woman! no bitterness it showeth, The ages of her sorrow have but taught her to forgive!”

The subject of this sketch is an object of curiosity to the whole civilized world. She is the product essentially of the nineteenth century. She is regarded by some as the embodiment of American feminine independence, of coy chastity, of vast talents, and withal, the desire of all men, the possession of none; by others as the abnormal result of overwrought sensibilities and insatiable ambition, a menace to and competitor of men, and an awful example to women. Yet she is a simple and honest creature, who is the product of her environment, and of modern social conditions, just as the “hopelessly domestic” matron was the result of her age's rigid requirements. The strongest possible pressure always has been brought to bear upon women to compel them to marry, and until recent years it has been a social disgrace to remain unwed. Spinster and old maid were terms of reproach (although very unjustly so, because woman was obliged to wait to be chosen), and in France, the calamity was considered so sad, that after a certain age even spinsters were called by courtesy, Madame.

The great step from the despised spinster to the Bachelor Maid seems to have been taken 0159simply, yet we may be sure individuals endured much opposition and ostracism. The girl with a talent for art or music could not always have a mother to chaperone her for years in New York or Paris; yet she would fain heed the scriptural injunction, “Hide not try light under a bushel,” and so, daringly she ventured alone into the studios, and later, becoming self-supporting, established her own studio, which had just a charm and touch of femininity that the men's ateliéres lacked; and so she became associated with cozy corners, cushions, flowers, a bright-blazing fire, and a cup of tea at twilight, until now, she is a synonym for all that is most entrancing in a moral Bohemia.

In reality, however, the Bachelor Maid often is “so” because she is obliged to be the prosaic bread-winner for herself and others, or simply because she never has found the “right man” to marry! It is an anomalous term, Bachelor Maid, used so romantically for authors and artists—which may include weary teachers, “dainty lady typewriters,” women in stores, Government departments, and all of the numerous, professions, few so redolent with sentiment as the pursuits of the studio. The term should also include the conspicuous minority, the heiresses—often charming and highly cultured women—who have not found among the idle and dissipated men in the “smart set,” or the suspected fortune-hunters of a lower social stratum, or the licentious scions of decayed European nobility, that ideal man who is their dreamed-of life partner.

Certainly, these women are to pitied. Denied 01610the healthy joys of the wage-earner, who sees a material value set upon her labor, and feels that there are joyful recompenses for her work; and failing to find the inestimable delight of a sympathetic sharer in her joys of luxury and travel, bound in the very nature of things, to be suspicious of those attentions which most women accept happily as their just due, she is the envied of the poor, yet is of all women perhaps, the most lonely. Unless she be content with the life of a dilettante, she turns to philanthropy and reform, seeking something vital, and in these finds activity and unselfish happiness, as did her prototypes, in former ages, in the convents.

The world's great strides along the lines of progress have not been taken by “domestic women.” Certain strenuous movements have demanded the undivided attention of the bachelor women of history. Those who did not furnish sons for Napoleon's cannon to demolish, often followed the army to the field of battle, and nursed the wounded remnants of war's brutality. Women, whose whole life was spent in the individual kitchen and nursery, could not solve the problems of the fallen, or influence legislation in behalf of the oppressed. Thus, the unwed woman (besides her inalienable right to live her own life, and develop her talents) has something in her favor, and society owes her a debt. The Joan of Arcs, the Florence Nightingales, the Grace Darlings, the Susan B. Anthonys, the Frances Willards, the Clara Bartons, the Helen Goulds, and the Jane Addamses have been unmarried women. With the inconsistency of conservatives who cannot adjust themselves to new 01711conditions, many men have criticized women reformers, the unwed, because they did not marry; and when the married women reformers were pointed to triumphantly, have criticized these because they took an interest in the world's morals, when they were married!

The Bachelor Maid is not only an unconscious reflection upon the old-time marriage system, which kept a woman in narrow and restricted labor and seclusion (and thus has much to repel modern educated women), but she is a direct accusation against Man as she has found him. There are few women who cannot be won by a man of refinement and average attractions. There is no doubt that affection and romance play a larger part in women's lives than in men's. If Byron's couplet, “Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, “Tis woman's whole existence,” is no longer true, owing to the multifarious interests of femininity to-day, it still contains a germ of truth. Women, as a rule, because of centuries of cultivation of their domestic instincts, and sentimental nature, enjoy marriage more subtly, and suffer its disillusions more keenly, than do their husbands, and it is a strong commentary upon the lack of modern men to fulfill ideals, that so many women suppress their affection, and remain single. A higher type of manhood, and a greater range of occupation and activity within marriage for women, would speedily lessen the number of bachelor maids. Elizabeth Barrett 01812waited forty years for her Robert Browning, and then gave the world some of the greatest love-poems ever written. Many a Bachelor Maiden has waited a lifetime for the “hundredth man,” and died unmarried, because she would have nothing lower than her cherished ideal.

Modern marriage does not require utter self-abnegation. Modern husbands frequently rejoice and are “exceeding proud” of a talented wife. Often, one hears men speak with disgust or bitterness of a wife's having abandoned music, for instance, seemingly desiring nothing but idleness in marriage. The “New Man’ is as sublime a product of modern society as the new woman, and perhaps he deserves more credit, for it is rare for a dominant class voluntarily to reform its opinions or actions in favor of the subjects over which it has dominion.

The Bachelor Maiden, on the face of things, has failed to realize her ideal. Romantic she may be, but not accomplishing the highest union, she prefers constancy to a soul-conception rather than a servile dependence upon some man for bread, where love is not. There are many other human instincts, besides those of sex, which have been neglected by sentimentalists, that demand satisfaction. The whole class of mental and æthetic and spiritual ones are vital and insistent, and do not depend upon the attraction of the sexes. They have commonly been starved in women. A wholly-developed, versatile individual desires many experiences in life besides protracted and all-absorbing domesticity form the age eighteen until death. There is a growing need for intellectual 01913experiences, for travel, for divers means of development, the gratification of which is more satisfying even to the intensely feminine nature than men might believe. Blessed is she who finds these pleasures, and the elements of all joy, in life with a congenial and soul-satisfying husband; but still happy can one be, who, among the many requirements of her complex nature, finds all except the happiness of marriage!

The universal marrying of the past was due not only to natural affection, but to woman's financial dependence. Men were correct who insisted that grant women opportunity for wage-earning, and many would not marry—but did those men really desire to cut off the power of selection, and thus make marriage a matter of compulsion! “Give a man a right over my subsistence, said Alexander Hamilton, “and he has a right over my whole moral being.” This certainly may apply to the relations of any man and any woman.

The mistake of the past has been to glorify marriage, as marriage, irrespective of fitness of dignity, of congeniality, almost of decency. Some natures eminently fitted for the responsibilities of marriage never exercise these functions, but many people do marry who are totally unfit, or who would have been far happier, single; yet the old-fashioned person felicitates the world upon every marriage (and birth) as in itself a distinct acquisition to virtue! It was a long step in civilization from promiscuity to monogamy, but marriage must be reformed within itself, before it will allure many individual self-respecting men and women.

The Bachelor Maid, then, has her raison d'être (her reason for being, and her right to be) as well as her especial joys and duties. She should be accepted as a fact; not as a vicious phenomenon, but as a commentary upon modern moral and social conditions. Because, being self-supporting, she is not forced to marry for a “home” (as was every virtuous female of the past), when she does wed, she will be the most—the only—satisfactory wife, a willing one. The saddest stories in literature are those depicting the conflict between love and legitimate ambition. They all end the same way—in the sacrifice of genius, aspiration, everything in the woman's life, to love. If she were a rarely emotional nature, perhaps she found that love was worth the sacrifice (although one questions the appreciation of the man for whom “the world was counted well lost”); but the modern woman wishes both love and ambition, neither stultified at the expense of the other—and she expects, even in marriage, opportunity for symmetrical development.

In general, the choice of wives has not illustrated the survival of the fittest, but the selection of the meekest. The conventional women, who followed the line of least resistance, married. For the future one can but prophesy that as men grow nobler, and matrimony broader, there will be a purer domesticity and fewer Bachelor Maids.

There is this fundamental difference between the development of man, and that of woman: he has developed through encouragement; she in spite of discouragement. All the forces of nature and society have tended to hurry him along the road of progress—all the powers have been invoked to keep her back! No one in the world ever attempted to define for man his place in the economy of the universe; the stronger half of humanity always has assigned a sphere to woman, and held he, by force of law, public opinion and social control, in this place. Scientifically, man has seen that unless he struggled and prove his right to live, he would be weeded out as “least fit” in the survival of the fittest. Woman, on the other hand, has had obliged to remain passive until chosen as a wife. Those who objected to the ruling order were not selected, and, therefore, left no descendants; thus, the premium being put upon passivity, and only those being wedded who evinced docility, the race perpetuated itself in negative, docile women.

This being the case, how did any woman ever create a new ideal, and dare to maintain the right to live the life of an individual, to be educated, to be economically independent, and to remain, if 02216she desired, unwed? There was, fortunately, this saving grace: an opportunity to inherit from the father as well as from the mother, and thus, bold, untrammeled spirits and brilliant minds sometimes found themselves in the bodies of girl; and so the new women have bee evolved, and have left their imprint upon history.

Girls ever have been commanded to be; boys to do. To the boy we say, “What are you going to do, my little man; what great thing will you accomplish!” To the maid, “Be quiet, be good, be docile! Some one has said that woman has been expected to keep pace with man, with her children clinging to her garments! This is one of those partial truths which allure us by their poesy. She has not been expected or permitted to keep pace with man, although in some instances she has inspired to. In the days when she did the spinning and weaving, the cooking, the washing and ironing; when she bore and reared fifteen and eighteen children, she could not and did not keep pace with man, in civil and intellectual pursuits. But throughout the ages individual women have aspired to be something besides wives and mothers, as men universally are something besides husbands and fathers. These Beacon Lights of woman's history have faintly illumined the sea of darkness and defied the harem, unjust laws and every form of domestic tyranny.

The term “new woman” is luminous with meaning; yet it is a paradox; for the advanced woman, the woman who does things, who strives not only to be, but to act, is not new, but more numerous 02317than ever before. She has appeared at intervals throughout all time, in the guise of an inspired warrior, a brilliant orator, or organizer, a Greek poetess, a scholar, or a queen.

The new woman is only the old woman with new opportunities! Women of the past were so limited by physical burdens and suppressed by public opinion that the wonder is there are so many beacon lights.

Some men have with delightful inconsistency, at one and the same time, assigned woman to her sphere of domestic drudgery and pointed in derision to the sad scarcity of women in the ranks of genius. “Where are your world-poets, artist, architects, musicians?” they demand. To a man who once asked the Rev. Anna Shaw what work of value women ever had produced, she retorted: “Women have spent all their time for ages in making men; you may judge of the value of the production!”

Opportunity has much to do with the producing of geniuses. The few noted women recorded by history are not prodigies, or accidents, but those peculiarly situated so that they could act. We are not to suppose Joan of Arc the only maiden in whose breast the fire of patriotism slumbered. Charlotte Corday probably was one of many peasants who longed to free France by killing the insolent tyrant. We feel sure that many an incipient poet, too obedient and docile, or too overwhelmed with work to let her light shine, was a mute, inglorious Milton in petticoats, and went to her grave unwept, unhonored and unsung. Time was when the most fitting epitaph for the average 02418wife was that of the bereaved farmer: “She was such a good woman to work!” Chance songster, modest and timid, who sometimes had their verses collected by some old gentleman after their death, were but types of many housewives who saw Italian glory in the sunsets from their kitchen window, and felt a thrill at the yellow primrose by the river's brim, as they rinsed the clothes of the family washing; but whose songs perished on their lips.

The very docility of woman has been a vital factor in retarding her development. It is the unusual woman, the path-breaker, the fighter, if you please, who has met the eternal opposition of man (and the weak echo of many women) and martyred herself to overcome it. But there was this difference in the struggle: whereas man's persistence sprang from the motive of selfish appropriation of life's best, woman's was born of the legitimate desire for growth.

One other fact explains the fewness of women geniuses. Not only were they suppressed and forbidden expression, but their actual fruits were appropriated by their male relatives! The most shocking example of this, known, is that of the Mendelssohns. Some of Felix Mendelssohn's finest compositions were the work of his sister Fanny. By contemporaries she was regarded as as fine a piano performer as he, yet her music and fame have been absorbed in his. He was educated under celebrated masters, was fêted throughout Germany, patronized by the emperor, adored in England, while poor Fanny, with exactly the same God-given talents, had her compositions appropriated 02519wholesale, and is not even mentioned in the cyclopedia!

Gradually, step by step, grudgingly, man has yielded what was never morally his to yield, but was originally won by brute force, and then held by laws of his own making. Woman never has struggled to supersede man, merely to occupy a place by his side in the world's work.

What are the gains that once were timid, half suppressed longings of feminine pioneers, which were fought step by step, but now are accepted joyfully?

Each of these has a long, pathetic history, as harrowing in detail as any of the world's battles. Every gain has been mad at the sacrifice for the path-breakers of much that woman holds dear. Nothing is so precious to woman as reputation—the opinion of society; it almost precedes self-esteem. She shrinks in terror from ridicule and disapprobation. Yet, these have been the portion of the new women who have sought to abolish the most flagrant abuses, even the existence of which the present century marvels at!

However, the past is not all bad. Women ruled upon the throne of Egypt and had every political right before the Christian era. There were mighty prophetesses in Judea; but in general, women were prized solely as a solace for men, and valued according to the number of sons they gave to their lord and their race. A few Jewish women fired 02620the hearts of warriors, and went before them into battle. Deborah was soldier, poet, prophet, judge. Vashti defined the canons of obedience to husband and monarch and risked death when she refused to parade her physical charms before the drunken court revellers, and was publicly disgraced for her courage and chastity.

If any have forgotten history, we may quote a few of the great of antiquity, to show the light in which the “old woman” was regarded:

The Hebrews (borrowing from the Babylonians) gave us the infamous Adam and Eve myth, which had done so much to degrade women, even in their own eyes!

Turning to the three mighty Greek tragedians, we find them, saying:

Æschylus: “Ne'er be it mine, in ill estate or good, To dwell together with the race of women.”

Sophocles: “There is not anything, nor will be ever, Than woman worse, let what will, fall on man.”

Euripides: “Dire is the violence of the ocean waves, And dire the blast of rivers and hot fires, But nothing is so dire and dread as woman; No painting could express her dreadfulness, No words describe it.”

Even the great-hearted Victor Hugo put himself on record thus: “Dolls are the playthings of children, children of men, men of women, and women are the playthings of the devil!” Rousseau, who posed as the apostle of human equality, constantly insisted that as women were created solely to please men, they should be educated entirely with a view to delighting men.

The most potent menace to those women in the past who endeavored to use their talents was the utter ruin of their reputations. Sappho, “violet-crowned, pure, sweet-smiling,” has been subject for thousands of years to vindictive slurs, yet scholars now claim that in her own age, she was celebrated for chastity as well as for brilliance. She was sufficiently honored by her state to have her face stamped upon its coins. On the sunny Isle of Lesbos, Sappho founded the first woman's club, and wrote immortal lyrics, 600 years before Christ! Nine volumes of her poetry perished in the fanatical flames of the Alexandrian Library. Æolian women were highly honored in literature and art. Sappho is said to have given passion a soul, while men-geniuses coarsened it.

In those days of aristocracy and slavery, neither men nor women cared for economic problems; their sole passion was for scholarship and culture. Erinna, a noble maiden of Sappho's circle, died at nineteen, having written an epic of three hundred verses, said to equal Homer's. The theme was of a maiden whose mother compelled her to do domestic tasks, when she wished to follow the muses!

Of the four immortal poets of Lesbos, three 02822were women. Mrytis and Corinna were teachers of the renowned Pindar, and Corinna defeated him five times in public debate. Telesilla, a poetess, armed the women in war against Sparta, and led them forth to victory. Her fame was celebrated for centuries, by an annual festival in which the men dressed as women, in delicate compliment to her achievements! In the small country of Greece, in the Golden Age, there were seventy-six women poets. In Italy, in the Renaissance, there were sixty. Most of their works of art were destroyed by fanatics and churchmen of the Dark Ages.

Athens, although a republic, humiliated women to a tragic extent. They were not allowed outside their houses, or to eat at the table with husband and male children, and had not the slightest acquaintance with other men. As a great concession, after they were sixty years old, they might attend funerals! This subjection of woman has been assigned by students, as a prime reason for the dissolution of Greece and Rome. Certain it is, that it led to many terrible and unnatural vices. Greek men sought each other in friendship, intellectual companionship, and even formed romantic passions for each other. Another corrupt condition was the presence of heterai, or “stranger women.” Absolutely the only way for women to be educated, enjoy freedom, and be regarded highly by men in Athens, in the “Golden Age,” was to become what we term the demi-monde. We must not judge them too harshly. Sometimes, the name heterai, was merely nominal: that is, women not born in Athens, even if they married Athenians, 02923never were called legally wed, or their children legitimate.

Aspasia, brilliant “with beauty, love, and roses,” came as a girl from Miletus, where women enjoyed great freedom. She calmly mingled with all the great of Athens, illustrious statesmen, sculptors, poets. She game Socrates points in logic, and Phidias in art. The mighty Pericles divorced his narrow, domestic wife to wed Aspasia, and together they found Athens brick and left it marble. So unheard-of a state of a woman walking on the street with her husband, and conversing with other men threw Athenian society into rebellion. Aspasia, although the wife of the greatest man in Greece, was accused of bringing about the Peloponnesian and Samian wars, and was tried for impiety, (that easy accusation against people who do not believe as we do!) and only saved from death by Pericles’ eloquence. He who undaunted had faced savage warriors, shed a tear at the infamy heaped upon his wife: mighty Pericles wept, and Aspasia was saved! Aspasia was undoubtedly the “new women” of Golden Greece. She founded a girl's school, encouraged the arts, and stood firm for domestic liberty, although reviled by the women she sought to free. Dying, the immortal Pericles said with joy: “Athens intrusted her greatness, and Aspasia her happiness to me!”

Of the power of women in various countries Cæsar speaks, and says, “Semiramus ruled Assyria, and the Amazons conquered Asia.”

In Rome, women were degraded, yet developed an amazing executive ability, until the term “Roman 03024matron” stands for ability and dignity. One triumvirate, undoubtedly exaggerating, said of women, “They govern our houses, our tribunals, our armies.” Yet they were uneducated, and suffered many inequalities before the law. Beacon lights shone in Rome as elsewhere. The daughters of Roman senators must often be renowned. One senator's wife, Afrania, spoke often in the courts, and the plea of Hortensia for her sex in the Senate, is celebrated. The privilege of speaking in the Forum was withdrawn from women, because one woman abused it? Women built temples, established porticoes, and founded schools. Statues were erected to many women. In the golden age of Augustus, Ovid approved of teaching girls the Classics, and Cicero studied law with Laelia. But poor Juvenal, the satirist, wailed: “I hate a women who never violates the rules of grammar, and quotes verses I never knew!” His amiable conclusion is: “A good wife is rarer than a white crow!” However, another satirist, Martial, congratulates a man who is to marry a girl with the “eloquence of Plato, austerity of the philosophers, and verses worthy of chaste Sappho.” Emperor Marcus Aurelius erected a gold statue to his wife Faustina, and Augustus gave his sister Octavia a national funeral. Livia, who was Augustus’ wife fifty-two years, was decreed “Mother of Her Country,” and one of the gods! She was termed “a Ulysses in petticoats.”

The prevalence of divorces was due not to any freedom of women, but to bad laws and greed for gold. Under Roman law, men could appropriate 03125each wife's fortune, and turn her adrift. Naturally, they were anxious to marry as often as possible, and morals became very lax. Emperors separated families and broke up homes. Plotina, Trajan's empress, struggled to bring about purer conditions. The first woman to take her place in the senate and sign legislative decrees was Socinias. She also presided over a “Little Senate,” a sort of woman's club. Zenobia, a captive from the Sabine hills, was empress, warrior, statesman and seer. Rome experienced the same fate as Greece in its influx of accomplished and brilliant “strangers,” and fathers were obliged, if they would have their daughters marry, to educate them, which speaks well for Roman masculine taste, after all!

At one time Roman matrons revolted as a class against injustice!

After classic times down through the Dark Ages, many women re-acted in horror from the sensuousness of corrupted paganism, and embraced Christianity. Numerous beautiful, wealthy, popular Roman women threw themselves into the rigors of asceticism, and showed a strength and self-control foreign to most of the men. Marcella withdrew to her palace and founded the first convent, called the Church of the Household. Fabiola, Asella, and Paula forsook the orgies of wealthy men and devoted themselves to scholarship and charity. Many of these women spoke Greek and Hebrew. St. Jerome says of Marcella, “She discussed questions so thoroughly that often I ceased to be master and became pupil.” Pope Anastasius used to consult this noble lady. Paula and Eustochium assisted St. Jerome in translating 03226the Bible which is now called the Latin Vulgate, and revised with him the psalter used today in Catholic churches; yet who ever heard one work of the credit of authorship given to these women! St. Jerome offers this tribute to “new women”—“Huldah prophesied when men were silent; Deborah overcame enemies when Borak trembled; Judith and Esther saved the people of God. Who does not know that Plato listened to Aspasia, Sappho held the lyre beside Pindar, and do WE not consider Cornelia and Portia among the glories of Rome?” At the fall of Rome, Marcella was beaten and tortured to death by an infuriated mob, as was in Alexandria, Hypatia, the philosopher and teacher, the last “feminine representative genius of the classic world.”

Coming down to the Renaissance, we find women filling chairs of philosophy and law in Italian universities and discoursing in Latin with cardinals. At the University of Bologna, Novella d'Andra lectured on Jurisprudence, her face screened by a curtain! Elena Cornaro, versed in mathematics, astronomy, and six languages, was crowned doctor of philosophy at Padua. Olympia Morata, at sixteen, became a professor lecturing without notes on Cicero, and speaking in Latin. This paragon was offered the chair of Greek at Heidelberg (in conservative Germany), but died early.

Caterina Sforsa made a triumphal entry into Rome a bride of fifteen, and ruled like a queen. She rode at the head of troops and defended her rocky fortress of Forli. Another prodigy in affairs of state was the Duchess of Urbino, who died 03327at twenty-six, leaving seven children! Guiliano de Medici, a great Italian prince, considered women “capable of governing cities and commanding armies; any inferiority being accidental, not essential.” Yet in Italy, men had legal right to beat and abuse wives, and murder and poisoning were overlooked. From the sixteenth century there is a book entitled “Superiorities of Women over, Men,” and Boccaccio wrote “Illustrious Women.” Another man wrote, “Immortal Triumphs of Eight Hundred and Forty-five Women.” In a Temple of Fame, two hundred women were included. We must not forget in this hurried sketch, Vittoria Colonna, the finest poetess of Italy, the friend of Michael Angelo, and the type of perfection in womanhood. The best and most advance women of the Renaissance followed Savonarola in a passionate protest against corruption.

In Russia, even recently, women who desired education were obliged to flee to Germany, under the escort of, and a nominal marriage with some accommodating boy relative or friends, with whom they had the most platonic relations. One or two great women mathematicians are the result of this artificial method.

France gave many scintillating women who established the Salon, and made an art of conversation. These women had the genius of mental hospitality. But Frenchwomen never doubted but that they must work through men. Mmes. de Stael, Recamier, du Maintenon, du Barry, each made the fatal mistake of influencing nations by working upon the passions of one man!

Woman has ever been a sovereign or a slave. The new woman seeks only to be a free individual. John Knox, Calvin, and Milton contributed their flings at women. “One thing that is not French,” said Napoleon, “is that woman can do as she pleases.” He also said that that woman was most admirable who bore the most children. ...... We would speak of Elizabeth, of Victoria, able queens of England, of Mary Wollstonecraft who alone championed the rights of Women, amid storms of derision from all save her husband, the economist Godwin, and her son-in-law, the poet Shelley. We have not touched upon the famous actresses, singers, painters, sculptors, but we have given enough examples to trace a certain (all-unorganized) effort toward development and freedom, and to show that the new woman is perennial.

In the past, she must have been unusual to claim the barest notice in men's records of their own achievements. To-day, there are “more of her” than ever before. While the mountain peaks do not loom up so conspicuously, it is because the whole level has heightened. This is democracy! The few do not rise at the expense of the many, but all rise or fall together. Women number no Sapphos and Aspasias to-day, but no longer are despised and degraded, nor suffer under laws which permit wife-beating and wink at wife-poisoning. To be educated and active, we don not have to defy conventionality and lose our reputations; therefore should our achievements be the greater and our womanhood the nobler!

In America, the pioneers have not been poetic. 03529They have attacked antique laws that permitted men to abuse wives, forbade women to own their own property,clothes,or even the children they had borne, and denied them divorce from drunken brutes. Largely through our new women have these laws been abolished, but these pioneers are still subject to social suspicion and ridicule, the weapons of ignorance. There are intelligent men and women to-day who do not know what the race owes to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony! They derive their scant information from comic newspapers! Most women can talk exhaustively upon Lincoln, Patrick Henry, Webster but never have informed themselves concerning the Grimke sisters, Abby Kelley, Ernestine L. Rose and Paulina Wright Davis.

How many realize anything about the marvelous sanitary reforms effected by the cultured and wealthy Florence Nightingale in the Crimean war, or appreciate the world-encircling Red Cross movement established by our own Clara Barton?

There are other subtler reforms needed, however, in the social world. New women to-day look with amazement upon the thousands of Americans who use the word “obey” in the marriage ceremony, often making a coarse jest of it, and cause the father, or some male relative to “give the bride away” to the groom,thus perpetuating the idea that a woman is a piece of property transferred from one man to another! Until man and woman, free, “from out the innumerable multitudes of earth, look into each other's eyes, love,” and marry voluntarily, without parental 03630authority, or necessity for the girl to “be supported,” what hope is there for the future generations?

The progress of women throughout the centuries has been a struggle, too often an ineffectual one. Many have died after an impotent beating of their heads against the stone wall of prejudice and tyranny. Yet, all unorganized as they have been, the constant effort has crumbled away much of the wall. We cannot forget that in 1803, a man sold his wife as a cow in the Sheffield Market (Eng.), and in 1808, one sold his wife for six-pence and a quid of tobacco, and the local papers commented that these occurrences were getting too frequent!

Too much stress cannot be laid upon the universal and democratic educating of women. The very elements of our ideal republic are involved in the raising of the level. The successful women are those that have learned co-operation while men are still in the throes of competition! Our new women are the result of new conditions, which they in turn are creating. Through the efforts of the pioneers, within a century, girls have passed from no educational privileges to highest collegiate opportunities. In 1809, seven industries were open to women, (sewing, cooking, etc.); now three hundred and seventy-one offer employment. At that time, thirty-five women in the United States were working in factories; now, nearly four million are earning money. This shows the vast increase in industrial life, in the evolution of the new woman; and who shall say that the bright, self-supporting girl, who is not forced to marry to be supported, thus degrading 03731marriage almost to prostitution, or the widow who supports her family, is not as fine a product of humanity as the helpless domestic woman of the past.

Who does not know the inestimable value of the woman physician? It is amazing that delicacy has been so deadened by years of custom as to admit of women patronizing men physicians when there is any opportunity of securing a woman doctor.

Why the desperate fight against the feminine minister, when woman (whether justly or not) has been extolled for ages as the moral and spiritual superior of man.

Time was when woman, although considered fit for nothing but the rearing of children, was not thought fitted for teaching them. Now, four-fifths of the teachers of the country are women.

The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!

Although individual women from pre-historic 03832times have accomplished much, as a class they have been set aside to minister to men's comfort. But when once the higher has been tried, civilization repudiates the lower. Men have come to see that no advance can be made with one half-humanity set apart merely for the functions of sex; that children are quite liable to inherit from the mother, and should have opportunities to inherit the accumulated ability and culture and character that is produced only by intellectual and civil activity. The world has tried to move with men for dynamos, and “clinging” women impeding every step of progress,—in arts, science, industry, professions, they have been a thousand years behind men because forced into seclusion. They have been over-sexed. They have naturally not been impressed with their duties to society, in its myriad needs, or with their own value as individuals.

The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay—if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her—and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works.

One would suppose that so simple, and natural a system as the co-association of boys and girls during the years devoted mainly to schooling, as well as those of childhood and maturity, would need no defender; that, on the contrary, any artificial separation of girls and boys for certain stated periods, thus accentuating sex, would be called to account, and made to prove its right to be.

Yet this is not the case. For so many centuries, men monopolized the broadening benefits of education that when finally, women were declared fit to be educated, the conservative past tendencies the methods, so that girls were given only rudiments education, superficial studies, and thus, any attempt to place them in colleges already established for boys (already well-grounded in higher branches appealed to the popular mind as a dragging down of a university to the level of a convent.

Only the young West, with its new, liberal institutions, designed from their inception to accommodate girls and boys, grasped the primal 04135idea that there is no sex in education, and that standard of study must be high, and fixed, thus placing a premium upon scholarship, rather than upon the incident of birth which made a child a boy, not a girl.

It is said in one of the oldest books of education, “By their fruits shall ye know them,” and co-educational colleges invite this test of their merits.

Since the statistics of the United States Bureau of Education show that (excepting Catholic ones) eighty per cent of the colleges of America are co-educational, and that such institutions enroll 13,000 more woman than do women's colleges, and 10,000 more than do men's colleges, one would think that America had decided this question in the affirmative,—but since a reactionary flurry (started by Chicago University, because of an insidious half-million dollars promised as a reward of segregation) has disturbed and unsettled some people, a discussion seems pardonable.

Rufus Choate said in England that education is the chief industry of the American people! The first effort of the Pilgrims was to educate their offspring, and as “westward the star of empire held its way,” the first thought of settlers and miners was to provide a log schoolhouse, and send East for a teacher. New civilizations adopt unquestionably the natural method (they do not buildup two schoolhouses side by side, hire two teachers, and placing the boys and girls in this relation furnish incentive for clandestine interviewers)—only an effete civilization corrupt in 04236its conceptions, like that of France or Spain, secludes maidens in convents, fostering abnormal fancies of life; or an, overwhelming warlike country, like England or Germany, accentuates military schools and gymnasia.

That fact that old world considered woman not a human individual, but sex incarnate, accounts for the long centuries of mystery and seclusion. (Even so modern a poet as Pope, referred to women as “the sex.”)

The new country with its new spirit of camaraderie, arising from companionship in building up a new civilization,—the hewing of the forests and building of homes by men, and carrying on of primitive industries by women within doors—made it possible to found educational systems upon a saner, freer basis;and just in proportion as modern life grows away from healthy conditions, and tends toward aristocracy and idleness, it demands seclusion and separate education for its fashionable offspring.

Even with the advantage possessed by this country, priority of schooling for the boys causes a lurking sense of their superiority, and while they always have been considered to deserved an education, girls have been required to prove their right to it! In all colleges, originally occupied by boys, to which girls have been admitted, this drama of masculine condescension has been enacted. *

After the early New England days, when girls were permitted education upon boys’ holidays, then, upon all school days, and at last, collegiate opportunities with their brothers, there remained but one conservatism for the alarmist to which to cling,—that of separate education.

Co-education is not a woman's problem, but a world one. It concerns woman only in that men were the first to be educated, and therefore, often object to co-education, because they feel that somehow they are sharing their prerogatives with girls.

Mr. William T. Harris, avowedly a co-educationalist, in spite of his official position as United States Commissioner of Education, points out that “since the public schools (ninety-eight per cent. of which are co-educational) are the only ones three-fourths of the people ever attend, the association of the two sexes as there maintained, must have a very great influence upon their social and business relations in after years. It explains * * * the freedom that women enjoy in this country with respect to the pursuit of careers, and especially the large share which they take in the educational work. Where boys and girls are accustomed from early years to compete in intellectual exercises, they entertain a due respect for each others’ powers, and false notions * * * are dissipated.”

In two states, Colorado and Idaho, women are serving in the highest capacity,—that of State Superintendent of Public Instruction. All this, in the writer's mind, is the best argument in favor of co-education.

The objections to co-education (or to higher education for girls) invariably are based upon what man wants woman to be. But rational pedagogists study the process of development which will effect the finest results with individuals, and the race,—and in the broad study of humanity, sex is but one branch.

The stereotyped objections are: It will unsex girls, and femininize institutions. How can girls become masculine, yet femininize a whole university! It is to say that the studying of boys and girls in the same classrooms will cause girls to become unsexed, masculine, yet, in some mysterious manner, the presence of girls will influence and make effeminate a whole university! Until it is admitted that a clear, well-trained mind, highly developed capacity for appreciation, and ability for skilled labor, are masculine, we cannot admit that education unsexes or masculinizes women. If a college becomes effeminate, it must be singularly lacking in the quality of its male students! *

Another and an analogous complaint is that the morals of a college suffer, if the sexes are educated together, that there is an insidious risk in permitting young women and men to recite in the same classes. When one considers the feverish anxiety displayed by parents to throw young people together in social circles, this is somewhat amusing, but to answer it seriously, we quote Richter: † “To insure modesty, I would advise † Richter's “Levana,” cited by Dr. Clarke, in “Sex in Education.” 04539educating the sexes together. Two boys will preserve twelve girls, or two girls, twelve boys, innocent, merely by the instinctive sense * * * of modesty. But I will guarantee nothing in a school where girls are alone together, and still less, where boys are.” Wm. T. Harris, quoting the above, says: “I have noticed that the atmosphere of mixed schools is desexualized, where that of separate schools seems to have a tendency to develop sexual tension.” Of all strange inconsistencies, that of objecting to co-education upon the ground of danger from association, is the oddest, as the whole tendency of society is to bring about sex attraction and matrimony, and, prevailing art and literature do their best to foster high sex feeling, while the world in general is jocular on the subject, and forces the thought of sex even upon the unwilling. Suffice it to say that the records of scandal in co-educational colleges are a blank, whereas the result of convents and seminaries, with the inevitable military school around the corner, is incessant intrigue, frivolity, and often positive license.

Also, one set of objectors insists that co-education, by its daily association, prevents matrimony, while another set declares that elopements and marriages are its constant concomitants. One can scarcely refute two opposite accusations with the same argument! To the first we would say that he must be a very Schopenhauer of pessimism, to declare that association of young men and women destroys their faith and pleasure in each other—(it heightens it!): To the second, we need only say that marriage is the goal of all mankind, 04640and the youth in colleges find more congenial life-partners than ninety-nine per cent, of those who meet in the artificial glare of social functions. Professor Slosson of Wyoming University says beautifully: “The future of civilization depends more upon the proper mating of the rising generation than on any discovery they make in the arts and sciences.” President Jordan, of Leland Stanford University, has stated, in the classroom, that in all his experience, he has never known an unhappy marriage among those who met and mated in college. As against co-education, sensational stories have been told even by a president, * about “a certain college” at which the day after Commencement was set apart as the time for weddings! This is the most manifestly absurd statement the writer ever has seen in print. It is notorious that college engagements are long ones,—the girl often teaching four or five years, while the man goes through a university for technical training; or both doing graduate work in Europe. It is the fashionable miss, the blasé product of the new rich, who graduates from some superficial finishing school one day, and has a magnificent wedding the next, and is duly exploited by the sensational press, not the co-educational girl. It is the aristocratic, not the democratic, ideal which prompts such absurdities.

All of the stock arguments against co-educational,—the too great prevalence of athletics for girls, the use of slang, lack of specialized feminine training 04741(domestic science, etc.) apply at least equally to women's colleges.

One of the weakest, most amazing but ingenious excuses ever made by mortal man for the undeniable fact that girls are to-day excelling boys in scholastic work is made by that relic of mediævalism, Henry Finck: * “We can easily gather one of the reasons why young men almost always are opposed to the intrusion of young women into their schools (!). They know instinctively that they are the stronger sex, intellectually as well as physically and destined to achieve more than girls, yet the rank-list and prizes indicate the contrary (!!). This discouraging state of affairs is a real injustice to the boys, which can only be overcome by abolishing co-education!”

Not only does co-education not bring any evils in its train, but it does confer many decided benefits upon humanity.

1. The intellectual stimulus of sex upon sex is undeniable. The healthy competition which leads each to wish to develop his own powers, yet not necessarily to excel the other, is a delight to witness. For instance, a boy may be talented in oratory, and win an inter-collegiate debate. A girl friend is elated (and more appreciative of him than any one in the world not a college girl could be) yet cherishes a desire to show him what she, too, can accomplish. Soon, she wins the prize for a story or poem, and the 04842boy is honestly delighted. (Incidentally, are they any less mutually proud and appreciative if they eventually, should chance to marry?)

2. There are many evils in modern life which college association goes far toward correcting. Plutocracy is rife in our cities, and in fashionable classes, women are becoming idle and non-productive, and at the same time, greater consumers and more extravagant than formerly. Girls’ schools, of course, lay much stress upon dress, and the ideals fostered in many of them are ruinous to parents of moderate means. Co-educational institutions always are democratic, many of the brightest students actually earning their living while studying as much as others, and the snob or the supercilious soon finds his or her level, be he never so attractive and complacent.

On the other hand, girls naturally “tone up” a college socially. It is a standing joke that when boys are excessively verdant or boorish, it takes but a few experiences at a girls’ reception to effect a self-wrought miracle in manners and toilet.

3. Men usually are more thorough than girls, because for generations, they have battled with necessity, and also have regarded their profession as a life-work. Girls at once see the contrast between this steady, purposeful application to one thing and their own towering and emotional ambition to do a little of everything,—and are benefited.

As has been hinted at, the morals of a co-educational institution are above reproach. In Eastern men's colleges of renown, drunkenness and 04943immorality are prevalent, * —if not open then insidious; in co-educational colleges, misdemeanors are rare.

The advocates of co-education are not theorists, who conduct columns in the “Home Journal” for the perusal of rural communities, but the great educators of America. After five years’ wonderful pioneer work, Horace Mann wrote: “We have really the most loyal, sober diligent, and exemplary institution in the country.”—(Antioch.)

In 1856, the president of Lombard declared: “The influence of the sexes in colleges is good and in all respects an aid toward sustaining good government.”

Far back in 1968, a writer in the “Westminster Review,” London, said: “I am convinced that in none of the male institutions, can there be found anything comparable to the moral elevation, refinement, and intellectual enthusiasm which characterizes the students at Antioch.”

President Fairchild, of Oberlin, in 1874, said: “During my twenty-seven years’ experience, I have never observed any differences in the sexes as to recitation.”

President Angell, of Michigan University: “Women have done work admirably and apparently with no peril to health.”

Andrew D. White, of Cornell: “The best scholar among 1,300 pupils was a woman. Also the best mathematician.”

Among other university president who have spoken publicly in favor of co-education are David Starr Jordan (Leland Stanford), Wheeler (California), Draper (Illinois), and nearly every president of a state university in the country. Dr. Schaeffer, State Superintendent of Public Instruction (Pennsylvania) asserts that, “All educators who have tried it, favor it.”

Our United States Commissioner of Education insists that “the demand of women for equal advantages in education with men is not a mere temporary demand of sentimentalism, but an ideal of the social movement that underlines our civilization,” and he goes so far as to say that in the highest epoch of industrial evolution yet attained, “woman's sphere comes to be common with that of man, and she needs an education in the sciences, arts, and accomplishment necessary to the man.”

The majority report of the committee of investigation appointed recently by the Boston school board, abounding in statistics and testimonials, was enthusiastically favorable to co-education.

The pamphlet just issued by the United States Bureau of Education for the census of 1900 also is most encouraging. Although an official government document, it might be used as as co-educational propaganda, were a serious war waging.

The recent ripple caused by the segregation plans of chicago University, is alarming only in that it is one of the many evidences of plutocracy in a republic. Perhaps no university founded by a living millionaire, can be wholly independent in instruction or policy. Certain it is that careful 05145investigation in Chicago has brought to light shady dealings in the right to exercise the franchise among the professors * voting contrary to the will of the president, and scant heed has been paid the petitions of women students and professors.

There seems to be a tendency toward retrogression in many directions in America the past decade; undue prominence of “ancestry”; a groping toward feudal customs; aristocracy; excessive extravagance and display; a revival of sensuousness and superstition in religion; even resuscitation of such archaic studies as astrology. The slight re-action in certain quarters against co-education is but one of these disastrous signs of demoralization, in a land struggling for pure democratic ideals.

Only th strong, normal common sense of our ancestors (not those of the decayed European nobility, whose crest we are unearthing for our stationery, but those sturdy souls who broke with existing conditions in an effect civilization and came to America for freedom and simplicity) can avert a temporary arrestment of progress, and for common sense and high, democratic ideals we may look largely to the products of co-education, (the natural and democratic system of cultivation,) who are useful citizens, and together have founded happy homes!

In early civilization, so entirely was the very existence of society dependent upon the rearing of many children that the “home” meant solely the structure built by the man, wherein his mate might be sheltered during those years given up exclusively to child-bearing, and the necessary domestic drudgery involved.

As infant impressions have a peculiar tenacity, and as human beings tend to view the past through memory's rosy mist, obliterating unpleasant experiences, sorrows, and bitterness; causing to glow forth happy moments, and crises of delight,—so we come to shroud home —the home of our childhood—with an unearthly bliss. “I remember, I remember, the house where I was born, The little window where the sun come peeping in at morn,” sings the poet; yet should he return to that primitive cabin, after having sojourned in the 06862world, he undoubtedly would experience a decided pang, made up of varied psychological experiences, and certainly he never would be content to settle again in the village of the old-time habitation: this not necessarily to this discredit. Virtue does not always consist in preferring primitive conditions, and it is not always a worthy motive which imputes to one's own home, attractions possessed by not other dwelling, as does Burns: “I hae been east, I hae been west, But my ain hame is best!”

It is not the actual house or system of housekeeping, but the associations that endear the home, which gives rise to the fierce defence of it. Our sentiments and personal experiences crystallize into an actual deification of the house in which they took place. Now, if it can be proved that these associations (like the household gods of ancient peoples) may be carried about with us, without detriment to the individual or to society, we may safely loosen our vise-like grip upon some of the conservative forces that go to make up the home.

One of the most vital of popular savings is the truism, “Home is where the heart is.” How much more subtle and analytic is this than the couplet of Burns referred to. The Scotch poet suggests creature comforts: a blazing fireplace, an arm-chair, a pipe, a mug of ale, perhaps; but the other phrase gives glimpses of that all-perfect love which laughs at distance, is indifferent to physical luxury, and follows the adored one even to 06963the gallows. Tess of the D'Urbervilles had lived in many places; with her family, with the wealthy and vicious Alec; but her only HOME was the forest, in which she wandered the last fatal week before she was executed, with her husband, Angel Clare, both realizing too late the perfection of an exalted love. Home should be indeed an ethical and spiritual condition as well as practical place. Alas, it is merely a house to most of us! Yet many a palace has been occupied by those who were homeless; and hovels also often contain no conception of homeness.

The individual house, owned by one man for the occupation of his immediate family, has up to the present time been considered the ideal of domestic existence. In this, woman has occupied the position of cook, washerwoman, cleaner, seamstress, gardener and nurse, with no salary except board and lodging, and such clothes and pin-money as the wage-earner saw fit to furnish. In the wealthy household, the woman has relegated all duties except that of supervision to hired servants, and devoted herself to society interests, supposed to redound to the husband's credit. With both poor and rich, woman has been a parasite, being non-productive, yet a consumer. She is dependent upon a man financially,—thus, forced to cater to him, and attract him through his passions, in order to exist at all. This condition has bred many evils, and been conducive to much “legal prostitution,” surely not too harsh a name for many marriages. Women, uneducated for self-support, observing the perils of poverty, the struggling of a woman and numerous children 07064to live upon the small salary of the average man,—naturally bethought themselves that if their lot were to be supported, their shrewdness should choose for them a man who could support them well! This crude cynicism is expressed unconsciously by hundreds of “society girls,” and in the popular phrase that “a married woman is sure to be disillusioned; therefore, it is better to see one's ideals fade, when in a coach and four, than in an omnibus.” The premium thus has been put upon the richest man; as in savage tribes, it is put upon the strongest man; whereas, clearly, it should be upon the best man! If women would so choose, each generation of children would be better born, and rise higher than the preceding one. Without discussing the economic dependence of women, treated in another essay, * and so marvelously expounded by a noted author, † we may quote a few facts.

As woman becomes independent financially, she becomes relieved of the necessity of marrying; and thus unites with man voluntarily, cheerfully, with eyes open, from pure love. The evils of her past dependent position were somewhat mitigated by her unconsciousness of them, or by her acceptance of them, as necessary, and as “God-appointed duty.” Thus, while many conditions of marriage were galling to some women, they were accepted by many, as duties, or calamities from which there was no redress.

It remained for this age (incomplete, and semi-civilized 07165as it still is) to postulate the startling decree, that woman owns her own person. In all the centuries since the dawn of legal marriage, public opinion shouted disapprobation upon the man that assaulted a young girl's virtue; but the husband, once he captured a maiden, by force, threats, or persuasion, was regarded as her owner, and she his property to command at will, irrespective of her health or inclination. Modern America has developed a type of man that cries shame to this theory, and even among those most conservative regarding women's right to education and independence, there is an inkling of that finer feeling which permits a wife the control of her body, and some voice as to the size of her family.

Thus, imperceptibly, there have crept into the ideals of modern people, a few elements of the new domesticity. Surely, even taking the lowest form of the average marriage, there is more satisfaction to the modern man in being the recipient of affection than in being a tyrant, as in the past. In financial matters, the “allowance” once opposed so bitterly, is now usually conceded. Thus, women learn a measure of business management, and do not have the servile duty of accounting for every cent. In many enlightened households, the wife manages all of the money, the husband being busy making it! It would seem that this should be regulated by individual ability to “make a dollar last,” rather than by any arbitrary decision.

The old idea that the actual house constitutes the happy home, retains a tenacious grasp upon our conservative minds. Yet among thousands 07266there is a groping after a more satisfactory and expeditious mode of living than the ordinary manner of housekeeping. The home is our little “ark of the covenant,”which we sentimentally carry always with us. Even if we enjoy hotel life, are passionately fond of travel, somehow that imaginary housekeeping comes up for extolling. As a matter of fact, the well-ordered home is the exception, and in many even of the seemingly satisfactory homes, the woman sighs that her “worries overbalance her comfort and enjoyment.” The servant problem is well-nigh insoluble, and must be remedied if ever, in a democracy, by elevating the work to the rank of a well-thought of and highly paid profession. The condition of private houses in general, is that of factories at their inception; chaotic, unorganized. Our homes are unsystemized because of the diversity of work, required in each petty domain, and the lack of skilled labor, and of capital. Each home requires as much expense for heating and lighting for two as for ten. Yet if ten were co-operating in sharping the expenses, the saving would be a considerable item. A maid is sought who can combine the art of cooking with the strength for heavy cleaning; the taste for attractive personal services, and the moral qualities absolutely essential. This combination of abilities and virtues is sought in the ignorant girl who is willing to give all of her time and labor for two or three dollars a week, and be called servant . In reality, artificial selection has weeded out the clever, the tasteful, the able, for “higher professions,” leaving those who can do nothing else, for the occupation most 07367poorly paid, and having unlimited hours’ work. The extreme expense of maintaining housekeeping along lines at all comfortable, combined with the desire to be in the center of cities, and growing distaste of women for the position of unclassified, underpaid general toiler, has induced thousands of couples to compromise on boarding or light housekeeping, both of which are beset with evils, but lighten expense and labor, and enable women to assist their husbands in many ways, and to do their share in the philanthropic and civic work, which requires so many devoted toilers.

Public opinion still frowns upon those who board, as essentially indolent, selfish, and prone to shirk. Yet, the immense amount of leisure gained, might be and often is, utilized to the lasting benefit of society. Sociologists are beginning to discuss “the selfishness of the home,” in that it appeals to the weary man in the evening, offering creature comforts, and tempts him to neglect civic and political duties; also, in that the home calls for so much thought and expenditure, that none is given to the needs of society,— the greater is absorbed in the lesser.

Some who love license always creep into the paths opened up by freedom. Thus, a few women, who gladly abandoned domestic drudgery, but have not the wit and ambition to assume public obligations, bring down condemnation upon all who board. The “boarding-house gossip” certainly exists, but probably is no more obnoxious than the back fence gossip, who views the world from her limited domain; but the former is more in evidence.

The housekeeper and the home-maker are two distinctive functionaries, who may or may not be synonymous. The woman who has a suite of tasteful rooms, with bath, and every luxury except the dining-room and kitchen, may present an atmosphere of neatness, and charm, of books and flowers, and fragrant hospitality to husband and guests more truly “home-like” than can the overworked housekeeper, warm and tired from actual preparation of meals.

Not that boarding is the final solution of the problem. It merely is a step toward socializing the domesticity, by furnishing one buyer of provisions at wholesale rates, for twenty or more consumers; one skilled cook (at high salary) to save the expense of twenty worthless ones; several neat chambermaids, for twenty slipshod maids-of-all-work; one plumber, electrician, etc., for twenty called in at great individual expense. That boarding places are crude, if cheap, or expensive if elegant, merely shows that they are in an elementary stage, and not yet perfected.

Co-operative housekeeping offers a rational solution which should be given a fair trial. Either pretty, individual, modern homes, or apartments, with a dining-room in common; or individual dining-rooms, where meals are brought by the common competent cook, thus abolishing numerous kitchens, poor cooks, and individual management, might be systemized as are vast business enterprises, and made to “pay” (in the sense of reducing expenses for individual families) and to be at least as satisfying to individuals as the present 07569loosely organized housekeeping. All these are practical problems of the new domesticity. *

One conspicuous feature of modern marriage is the frequency of the phenomenon of women wage-earners. In New York City, 20,000 women support husbands and families. Teachers, stenographers, and numerous workers, although sometimes bending under the burden of the present economic system, as do men, usually find that art is woman's joy in her work (to paraphrase William Morris), and that no emotional or social pleasure is greater than the satisfaction of classified labor, and the stimulation of financial independence. We may deprecate, we may utter tirades against the new régime, but if we study tendencies, and simply observe, we will see a deep-rooted happiness between husband and wife (under normal conditions) who labor side by side (as at an editor's desk) or each at his own vacation, and have the precious evenings of recreation, and Sundays of rest, enjoying the healthy stimulus of equality.

The “new man” is not ashamed of nor apologetic for his wife, nor does he glory in her ignorant helplessness, as did David in Dora's. He takes a genuine pride in the talents and business ability of the woman who showed her good judgment in selecting him! She is more than a “help-mate”; she was not created solely to assist him, 07670but together, they exemplify reciprocity and co-operation.

Men have found their strenuous life vastly beneficial to themselves, as well as necessary to the development of the world. Women have been regarded as indirect agents. They have even been denied communication with Deity! Milton coolly remarks that man looks to God, and woman finds her God in man! The most agreeable masculine atom of humanity would scarcely satisfy the spiritual cravings of an intelligent woman, much less the specimens of husbands extant in the time of Milton!

Men and women meet in social and business relationship, but it is in the life partnerships (beginning now to be real partnerships for the first time) that each realizes the full glory of being and doing, sure of sympathy and appreciation. Congeniality of tastes can exist only when both people have tastes! To be two in unity, is better than to be one! Women in the past who were clothed and fed, but forbidden education, could not develop discrimination and taste. The modern man does not regard woman merely as the possible mother of his sons, nor does the woman look upon man as the provider of an “establishment.”

The new domesticity in its completeness will be a safeguard to the home. With its relation of mutual independence and voluntary affection it does not breed jealousy, which is the product of inordinate exclusiveness, distrust and desire for possession. The man who kept a harem, bought for his gratification, or a wife, procured 07771by wealth for the same reason, was maddened at the thought of any one's beholding his property, for he could conceive of no sensation in man, save the desire for possession. The modern man appreciates his wife no less because he trusts her, and he also trusts other men, assuming that there is variety in taste, and also believing in virtue.

Marriage is said to be the artistic adjustment of two personalities. Each new union is a complicated problem. No fixed rules can govern the household economics, the financial dependence of one upon another, the size of the family, the spirituality of the relation, or the strength of the bond.

Home is indeed where the heart is. The vitality of the relation of members of a family, and its value to society, is determined by no stereotyped kitchen- or laundry-domesticity, but by the adjustment of the personalities to each other, and to the whole race. Love is not, as novel writers would lead one to suppose, confined exclusively to the attraction of the sexes, but should include all humanity. While experiencing, as we do, that deepest, closest home-feeling, which nature gives to birds and mankind, we cannot but feel that the home does not suffer from a broad affection for humanity, but rather profits by it.

The new domesticity then includes marriage, not for convenience, not the sexuo-economics kind, but an independent choosing of soul by soul, involving complicated relationships; the union of two who may have come from afar, looked into each other's eyes and loved. Such a union is not to be entered into hastily or unadvisedly, yet 07872is capable of possibilities so beautiful that they can be but faintly imagined by the unwed, and never could be comprehended by participants of the old-time union based on tyranny of man, and subjugation of woman, harmful, alike to both, and disastrous to the offspring.

“I cannot dispute the proposition that in the great process of evolution, divorce is an indication of growing independence and self-respect in women—a proclamation that marriage must be the union of self-respecting and mutually respected equals, and that in the ideal home life of the future, that hideous thing, the subjugation of woman, is to be unknown.” — Rev. Frederick Hinckley.

Before bewailing the remarkable increase in the number of divorces in America, following the “laxity” of divorce laws, † it behooves the † Originally, it was almost impossible for the most mistreated person to obtain legal separation. Now, South Carolina is the only state which refuses divorce. New York is the only one which makes adultery the sole excuse. The list of causes in various states is as follows:

Habitual drunkenness—all except eight states.