to the maternal back. Another becomes
the sworn friend and ally of her brothers, whom she assists in their
scrapes with a sympathy which is balm to the scraped soul, and with
a wisdom in counsel, which can only spring from a deep regret at not
having been herself born a boy, and capable of scrapes.

[Illustration]

But there is often in families another and an Undomestic Daughter, who
aspires to be in all things unlike the usual run of common or domestic
daughters. From an early age she will have been noted in the family
circle for romantic tendencies, which are a mockery to her Philistine
brothers, and a reproach to her commonplace sisters. She will have
elevated her father to a lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate
excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of
domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with her mother, and an
irresistible desire for after-dinner somnolence, will have gradually
displaced him. One after another her brothers will have been to her
Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed by her enthusiasm for
impossible conflicts, of which they themselves, absorbed as they
are in the examination and pocket-money struggles of boyhood, have
no conception whatever. The effort to plant the tree of romance in
an ordinary middle-class household was predestined to failure. Her
disappointments are constant and crushing. Desires and capacities
which, with careful nurture, might have come to a fair fruit, are
chilled and nipped by the frost of neglect and ridicule. Her mind
becomes warped. The work that is ready to her hand, the ordinary round
of family tasks and serviceableness, repels her. She turns from it
with distaste, and thus widens still more the gulf between herself and
her relatives. Hence she is thrown back upon herself for companionship
and comfort. She dissects, for her own bitter enjoyment, her inmost
heart. She becomes the subtle analyst of her own imaginary motives.
She calls up accusing phantoms to charge her before the bar of her
conscience, in order that she may have the qualified satisfaction of
acquitting herself, whilst returning against her relatives a verdict
of guilty on every count of the indictment. In short, she becomes
a thoroughly morbid and hysterical young woman, suspicious, and
resentful even of the sympathy which is rarely offered to her. In the
meantime, two of her younger sisters are wooed and won in the orthodox
manner by steady-going