t the stock must
have been toughened somewhat. Left alone in that terrific orphanhood,
they had clung together, supporting one another and their little
sisters, and developing unknown powers in the stress of new necessity.
To this pain-hardened and work-strengthened group, who had lost not only
the love and care of parents, but the hope of ever having children of
their own, there now dawned the new hope.

Here at last was Motherhood, and though it was not for all of them
personally, it might--if the power was inherited--found here a new race.

It may be imagined how those five Daughters of Maaia, Children of the
Temple, Mothers of the Future--they had all the titles that love and
hope and reverence could give--were reared. The whole little nation
of women surrounded them with loving service, and waited, between a
boundless hope and an equally boundless despair, to see if they, too,
would be mothers.

And they were! As fast as they reached the age of twenty-five they began
bearing. Each of them, like her mother, bore five daughters. Presently
there were twenty-five New Women, Mothers in their own right, and the
whole spirit of the country changed from mourning and mere courageous
resignation to proud joy. The older women, those who remembered men,
died off; the youngest of all the first lot of course died too, after
a while, and by that time there were left one hundred and fifty-five
parthenogenetic women, founding a new race.

They inherited all that the devoted care of that declining band of
original ones could leave them. Their little country was quite safe.
Their farms and gardens were all in full production. Such industries
as they had were in careful order. The records of their past were all
preserved, and for years the older women had spent their time in the
best teaching they were capable of, that they might leave to the little
group of sisters and mothers all they possessed of skill and knowledge.

There you have the start of Herland! One family, all descended from one
mother! She lived to a hundred years old; lived to see her hundred and
twenty-five great-granddaughters born; lived as Queen-Priestess-Mother
of them all; and died with a nobler pride and a fuller joy than perhaps
any human soul has ever known--she alone had founded a new race!

The first five daughters had grown up in an atmosphere of holy calm,
of awed watchful waiting, of breathless prayer. To them the longed-for
motherhood was not only a