, but I prefer the subjects of
conversation which a new woman selects. There is more ozone in them.

The new woman whom I mean is silk-lined. She is nearly always pretty.
She is always clever. She is always a lady, and she is always good.
Perhaps, to the cynical, that combination sounds as if she might not
be interesting; but she is. Of course not always. One may have all
those gifts, and yet not know how to make use of them for other
people's benefit. The gift of being interesting is a distinct one by
itself. But the new woman, having fresh and outside interests, is
generally able to talk of them delightfully.

The new woman is new only in the sense that she has opened her eyes
and has begun to see the value of the simple, common, everyday truths
which lie nearest to her. The whole world becomes new to those who
suddenly awake to the beauties which they never had thought of before.

Once women taught their daughters housekeeping and sewing from stern
principle, and made it neither beautiful nor attractive.

Then house-keeping went out of fashion.

Feather-headed boys married trivial girls, and began to make a home
without the first gleam of knowledge as to how the thing should be
done. The foolish little wife knew not how to cook or sew. The foolish
little husband said he was glad of it. He didn't want his wife to wear
herself out in the kitchen. Servants could do such things. So they
hired servants more ignorant than themselves, "and the last state of
that man was worse than the first." Children came to them. That was
the most pitiful part of all. A house may be badly managed and
ignorantly cared for, and people do not die of it, or become warped or
crippled, but the soul of a child, to say nothing of the helpless
little body, can be ruined utterly through the irresponsibility of the
criminally ignorant people to whom the poor little thing is sent.
Their ignorance is so dense and deep-searching that they never know
that they are ignorant. But back of it all there is a reason. A
bigoted, senseless, false, and misnamed delicacy. Mothers reared their
daughters and sent them to fulfil their mission in life, of being
wives and mothers, versed in everything except the two things they
were destined to be. It was as if a physician were taught
architecture, music, and painting, and then sent out to practise his
unskill in medicine upon a helpless humanity.

Then the new woman opened her eyes. She read those sturdy words