in addressing the Royal Academy
of Moral and Political Sciences at Madrid, two years ago, admitted that
sewing was no longer an economy, but urged women to practise it still
for the purpose of quieting their nerves. But the modern American woman
who has had a healthy bringing up, who has divided her girlhood between
vigorous study and active out-door exercise, who can row and skate and
play ball and tennis with her brothers, has no unquiet nerves. She does
not ask for sedatives, but for some high stimulus to call into play her
strong and well-trained faculties. Money-making, the natural sphere of
man, has become a more and more absorbing pursuit, while the usual
feminine occupations have become more than ever trivial and unimportant
at the very moment when the feminine mind has taken a new start in its
development. The woman who is fresh from reading Gauss and Pindar, and
who has taken sides in the discussion between the adherents of Roscher
and of Mill, cannot easily content herself with the petty economies that
result from doing her own cutting and fitting and dusting and
table-setting. Still less, if she has not married, is she satisfied to
look forward to the position of nursery governess to her sister-in-law's
children. Her education has fitted her for something better than to save
the wages of an upper servant. Again the question is forced upon her,
where can she find a fitting field for the exercise of her powers?

To many people, who have all the means of existence they care for
without a struggle, it seems that the only thing that can give a
thorough interest and zest to life is to devote themselves to the
elevation of the degraded classes of society. They find such monotony in
their own comfortable ways of living, and the misery of the very poor
seems so appalling to them, that they cannot escape from the passionate
desire to spend themselves in their service. The problems connected with
the relief and the prevention of the wretchedness by which they are
surrounded have all the interest of a scientific experiment, and are
capable of calling out all the fervor of a religion. But for the few
people here and there who have now the passion of the reformer it is not
impossible that another generation may see many thousands. A second
christianization of the world may convert all the happy into the
consolers of the unhappy, instead of leading people to absorb themselves
in the question of their own salvation. No one c