not external, but internal. It lies in
the same disconcerting apprehension of the larger realities, the same
impatience with the paltry and meretricious, the same disqualification
for mechanical routine and empty technic which one finds in the
higher varieties of men. Even in the pursuits which, by the custom of
Christendom, are especially their own, women seldom show any of that
elaborately conventionalized and half automatic proficiency which is the
pride and boast of most men. It is a commonplace of observation, indeed,
that a housewife who actually knows how to cook, or who can make her
own clothes with enough skill to conceal the fact from the most casual
glance, or who is competent to instruct her children in the elements
of morals, learning and hygiene--it is a platitude that such a woman is
very rare indeed, and that when she is encountered she is not usually
esteemed for her general intelligence. This is particularly true in the
United States, where the position of women is higher than in any other
civilized or semi-civilized country, and the old assumption of their
intellectual inferiority has been most successfully challenged. The
American dinner-table, in truth, becomes a monument to the defective
technic of the American housewife. The guest who respects his
oesophagus, invited to feed upon its discordant and ill-prepared
victuals, evades the experience as long and as often as he can, and
resigns himself toit as he might resign himself to being shaved by a
paralytic. Nowhere else in the world have women more leisure and freedom
to improve their minds, and nowhere else do they show a higher level
of intelligence, or take part more effectively in affairs of the first
importance. But nowhere else is there worse cooking in the home, or
a more inept handling of the whole domestic economy, or a larger
dependence upon the aid of external substitutes, by men provided, for
the skill that wanting where it theoretically exists. It is surely no
mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is
also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals
in cans, and of everything else ready-made. And nowhere else is there
more striking tendency to throw the whole business of training the
minds of children upon professional teachers, and the whole business of
instructing them in morals and religion upon so-called Sunday-schools,
and the whole business of developing and caring for their bodi