itizens of this empire, with a grasp on
its manifold and far reaching complexities of interest, and unless the
Germans are to beat us, we must provide them with educated mothers. 'The
child is father of the man,' but the mother has, _me judice_, no less
influence on his subsequent career. And this is not to be done by putting
back the hands of the clock, or setting them to make pies and samplers,
but by raising them to mutually co-operate and further what has been aptly
termed 'The White Man's Burden.' Such, at any rate, though I may not live
to see it, is the conviction of:

"A MUS. DOC. OF FORTY YEARS' STANDING."

(3) SIR,--'High School' has done a public service. A popular novelist may
be licensed to draw on his imagination; but hitting below the belt is
another thing, whoever wears it. Mr Dexter's disdainful treatment of that
eminent educationalist Mr. Platt-Culpepper--who is in his grave and
therefore unable to reply (so like a man!)--can be called nothing less.
I hope it will receive the silent contempt it deserves.

Yours indignantly,
"MERE WOMAN."

CHAPTER V.

_Thursday's letters_.

(1) SIR,--Your correspondents, with whose indignation I am in sympathy,
have to me most unaccountably overlooked the real gravamen of Mr. Dexter's
offence. Unlike them, I have read several of that gentleman's brochures,
and can assure you that he once posed as the unbounded license for women
in Higher Education, if not in other directions. This _volte face_
(I happen to know) will come as a severe disappointment to many; for we
had quite counted him one of us.

"We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,"

Shall have, it seems, to 'record one lost soul more, one more devil's
triumph,' etc. I subscribe myself, sir, more in sorrow than in anger.

PERCY FLADD,
_President, H.W.E.L._
(_Hoxton Women's Emancipation League_).

(2) Sir,--Why all this beating about the bush? The matter in dispute
between Mr. Dexter and his critics was summed up long ago by Scotia's
premier poet (I refer to Robert Burns) in the lines--

"To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life,"