e rather than direct. How far
direct teaching on matters of sex should be given to our girls has been
a far greater perplexity to me than in the case of boys. In the present
state of our schools and our streets our boys must get to know evil.
Hitherto it was possible to say that our girls _might_ get to know evil,
and between that "must" and "might" lay a great and perplexing chasm. We
do not want our garden lilies to smell of anything but pure dews and
rains and sun-warmed fragrance. But is this ideal possible any longer,
except in a few secluded country homes, where, hidden like Keats's
nightingale "among the leaves," they may remain innocent and ignorant of
the world's evil?

But with the ordinary conditions of the present day, with the greater
freedom accorded to women, the wider range of education, involving a
wider range of reading, with modern newspapers left about, I ask, How is
it possible for a mother to keep her girls in ignorance and unconscious
innocence? A volume of short stories comes into the house from the
circulating library; they are clever and apparently absolutely harmless.
Yet embedded in the heart of one such volume, which shall be nameless, I
came upon a story almost as vile as anything in a French novel, and
conveying the most corrupt knowledge. How, I ask, can a busy mother read
through every book of short stories before letting it fall into the
hands of her girls; or how, if they are to read Latin and Greek, or even
carefully to study our own old literature, is she to guard them from a
knowledge of evil conveyed in classical allusions, or in the coarse
plainness of speech of an earlier age? I know as a fact, whether we
recognize it or not, that behind our mature backs our girls are
discussing these moral problems with quite an alarming amount of
freedom, and some at least, guided by no teaching, and with no practical
knowledge of the great laws of human life, are coming to quite startling
conclusions, which would make their mothers' hair stand on end. And one
most undesirable, and I may add unnatural, result noticeable among the
more advanced section is a certain distaste for marriage, a tendency to
look upon it as something low and animal, which strikes me as simply a
fatal attitude for women to take up.

Have we not, therefore, got clearly to recognize that the old order has
changed, giving place to new, and requiring, therefore, new methods. We
may or we may not like the new order, but it