nevertheless, shall be equipped with the
necessary knowledge of practical arithmetic; know how to keep the
balance between "must" and "can" in the household; and, for the rest,
float zephyr-fashion, like sweet spring-tide, about the master of the
house, the sovereign lion, in order to spy every wish from his eyes, and
with her little soft hand unwrinkle the forehead, that he, "the master
of the house," perchance himself crumpled, while brooding over his own
stupidity. In short, the professor pictures a woman and a marriage such
as, out of a hundred, hardly one is to be found, or, for that matter,
can exist. Of the many thousand unhappy marriages; of the large number
of women who never get so far as to wed; and also of the millions, who,
like beasts of burden beside their husbands, have to drudge and wear
themselves out from early morn till late to earn a bit of bread for the
current day,--of all of these the learned gentleman knows nothing. With
all these wretched beings, hard, raw reality wipes off the poetic
coloring more easily than does the hand the colored dust of the wings of
a butterfly. One look, cast by the professor at those unnumbered female
sufferers, would have seriously disturbed his poetically colored
picture, and spoiled his concept. The women, whom he sees, make up but a
trifling minority, and that these stand upon the plane of our times is
to be doubted.

An oft-quoted sentence runs: "The best gauge of the culture of a people
is the position which woman occupies." We grant that; but it will be
shown that our so much vaunted culture has little to brag about. In his
work, "The Subjection of Woman,"--the title is typical of the opinion
that the author holds regarding the modern position of woman--John
Stuart Mill says: "The lives of men have become more domestic, growing
civilization lays them under more obligations towards women." This is
only partly true. In so far as honorable conjugal relations may exist
between husband and wife, Mill's statement is true; but it is doubtful
whether the statement applies to even a strong minority. Every sensible
man will consider it an advantage to himself if woman step forward into
life out of the narrow circle of domestic activities, and become
familiar with the currents of the times. The "chains" he thereby lays
upon himself do not press him. On the other hand, the question arises
whether modern life does not introduce into married life factors, that,
to a higher d