f women is a good deal more than all this
'motherhood'!"

We were as patient as possible with Terry. He had lived about nine
months among the "Colonels" when he made that outburst; and with
no chance at any more strenuous excitement than our gymnastics gave
us--save for our escape fiasco. I don't suppose Terry had ever lived so
long with neither Love, Combat, nor Danger to employ his superabundant
energies, and he was irritable. Neither Jeff nor I found it so wearing.
I was so much interested intellectually that our confinement did not
wear on me; and as for Jeff, bless his heart!--he enjoyed the society of
that tutor of his almost as much as if she had been a girl--I don't know
but more.

As to Terry's criticism, it was true. These women, whose essential
distinction of motherhood was the dominant note of their whole culture,
were strikingly deficient in what we call "femininity." This led me very
promptly to the conviction that those "feminine charms" we are so fond
of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity--developed to
please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to
the real fulfillment of their great process. But Terry came to no such
conclusion.

"Just you wait till I get out!" he muttered.

Then we both cautioned him. "Look here, Terry, my boy! You be careful!
They've been mighty good to us--but do you remember the anesthesia? If
you do any mischief in this virgin land, beware of the vengeance of the
Maiden Aunts! Come, be a man! It won't be forever."

To return to the history:

They began at once to plan and built for their children, all the
strength and intelligence of the whole of them devoted to that one
thing. Each girl, of course, was reared in full knowledge of her
Crowning Office, and they had, even then, very high ideas of the molding
powers of the mother, as well as those of education.

Such high ideals as they had! Beauty, Health, Strength, Intellect,
Goodness--for those they prayed and worked.

They had no enemies; they themselves were all sisters and friends. The
land was fair before them, and a great future began to form itself in
their minds.

The religion they had to begin with was much like that of old Greece--a
number of gods and goddesses; but they lost all interest in deities
of war and plunder, and gradually centered on their Mother Goddess
altogether. Then, as they grew more intelligent, this had turned into a
sort of Maternal Pantheism.

Her