es at the very root of the matter, and begins a course of action
which, if carried out, will do what all the men in creation can never
cure. She will prevent.

The new woman is young. The new woman is oftener a pretty girl than
otherwise. They are not poor girls either, who are doing these things.
They are not obliged to earn their daily bread. They are the daughters
of the rich. They are the travelled, cultured, delicately reared
girls. They are such girls as, two generations ago, would have
disdained anything but accomplishments, who were only charitable with
their money, and who never dreamed of giving their own time to such
work. They were girls who considered their education finished when
they left school.

I glory in the new woman in that so often she _is_ rich and beautiful.
It is easy enough to be good if you are plain. In fact, there is
nothing else left for a plain woman "_to do_." But take these lovely
girls who are tempted by society to idle away their days and waste
their lives listening to a flattery which may be but a thing of the
moment, and let them have sense to see through its hollowness, and
want to be something and do something, and it becomes heroic.

Perhaps it is only a fad. Then Heaven send more fads. If it is the
fashion to have a vocation and to educate one's self along these lines
which never were heard of a few years ago, then for once fashion has
accidentally become noble.

It strikes me rather that the reign of common-sense has begun--that
the age of utility has come. When nine out of every ten of the girls
you meet in smart society have a distinct vocation of their own; when
a girl who only sings or plays or crochets is considered by her
sister-women to be a butterfly; when society girls are being trained
nurses; when, if you are paying calls upon a fashionable friend, you
are quite apt to be told that she is living at Hull House this month;
when a girl whose face generally appears in the society column
suddenly comes out as the composer of a new song; when a girl who
dances best at balls calmly announces that she is taking a course at
the university; when everything nowadays is gone into so seriously,
the time has come to look the question of the new woman squarely in
the face--to put a stop to cheap witticisms at her expense and to give
her your honest respect.

The new woman has attacked the problem of how to live. Not how to live
for show, not how to veneer successfully, but how