eam, or insist upon a great amount of
sentiment. "It ought to be enough," said this girl of the period, "for
a woman to be able to decently respect a man who has the means of
placing her in such conditions as she thinks will suit her. And men do
very well without sentiment. They have their professions, their
business, their friends, their clubs. It is quite enough for them if
their wives are fairly good housekeepers and mothers, presentable at
head of their tables, pleasant hostesses in their drawing-rooms. It
sounds very mean, but what is a girl to do? We may be most of us clever
enough and tolerably well educated, but there are not among us many
brilliant geniuses who can find all comfort and happiness in a life
devoted, wholly to art or literature. What is one of the mediocre mass
to do? It's not genteel to do this, it's unfeminine to do that; one
can't stir in any direction that would have in it some spirit, some
earnest, something worth while.

"You can always do good, they tell us. I dare say; so can men; but how
many among them would like to be recommended, as life occupation, to go
making impertinent raids into poor people's houses to tell them they're
untidy, when a family has but one room to live in, and there's but one
water tap in the court, and two or three flights of stairs over which
to carry every drop; or that they're ill-smelling, and will have fever,
when an open drain and the dust bin are lodged just under the window,
and somebody's great high wall cuts off every ray of sunshine; or that
they don't know how to manage because they fare ill, when a half dozen
people must keep life in them and some covering on them on fifteen
shillings a week? Oh, I'm sick of it all! Look at mamma! She _lives_ in
jails, up alleys, in soup kitchens and dispensaries, and we girls cut
out and make up flannels, and knew about relief tickets before we could
speak, and it's all just pouring water into a sieve! Mamma's always
in agonies about some _protegee_ she's placed somewhere, who has
absconded with the family plate and wardrobe. Her people are always
getting drunk, fighting, or cheating her in some monstrous way. Her
nicest girls run off with a strolling theatre company, or to dance in
the ballet. There's no end to her miseries, and the people she spends
her whole time, strength, and all the money she can spare and beg upon
are not really much better off in the end. But even if they were? Mamma
is mamma, and I am myself,