people, whose works are their
children. In comparison with the state of affairs fifty years ago, the
child-infested household is already conspicuously rare in these classes.

These are two highly probably _menages_ among the central mass of the
people of the coming time. But there will be many others. The _menage a
deux_, one may remark, though it may be without the presence of
children, is not necessarily childless. Parentage is certainly part of
the pride of many men--though, curiously enough, it does not appear to
be felt among modern European married women as any part of their
honour. Many men will probably achieve parentage, therefore, who will
not succeed in inducing, or who may possibly even be very loth to
permit, their wives to undertake more than the first beginnings of
motherhood. From the moment of its birth, unless it is kept as a pet,
the child of such marriages will be nourished, taught, and trained
almost as though it were an orphan, it will have a succession of bottles
and foster-mothers for body and mind from the very beginning. Side by
side with this increasing number of childless homes, therefore, there
may develop a system of Kindergarten boarding schools. Indeed, to a
certain extent such schools already exist, and it is one of the
unperceived contrasts of this and any former time how common such a
separation of parents and children becomes. Except in the case of the
illegitimate and orphans, and the children of impossible (many
public-house children, _e.g._), or wretched homes, boarding schools
until quite recently were used only for quite big boys and girls. But
now, at every seaside town, for example, one sees a multitude of
preparatory schools, which are really not simply educational
institutions, but supplementary homes. In many cases these are conducted
and very largely staffed by unmarried girls and women who are indeed, in
effect, assistant mothers. This class of capable schoolmistresses is one
of the most interesting social developments of this period. For the most
part they are women who from emotional fastidiousness, intellectual
egotism, or an honest lack of passion, have refused the common lot of
marriage, women often of exceptional character and restraint, and it is
well that, at any rate, their intelligence and character should not pass
fruitlessly out of being. Assuredly for this type the future has much in
store.

There are, however, still other possibilities to be considered in t