drapery, and kindly aided to preserve their balance by
the devoted attentions of the same companions. Mrs. Blank, meanwhile, will
look complacently on, with the other matrons: they are not supposed to know
the current reputation of those whom their daughters meet "in society;"
and, so long as there is no actual harm done, why should they care? Very
well; but why, then, should they care if they encounter those same
disreputable characters when they go to drop a ballot in the ballot-box? It
will be a more guarded and distant meeting. It is not usual to dance
round-dances at the ward-room, so far as I know, or to bathe in clinging
drapery at that rather dry and dusty resort. If such very close intimacies
are all right under the gas-light or at the beach, why should there be
poison in merely passing near a disreputable character at the City Hall?

On the whole, the prospects of Mrs. Blank are not encouraging. Should she
consult a physician for her daughters, he may be secretly or openly
disreputable; should she call in a clergyman, he may, though a bishop, have
carnal rather than spiritual eyes. If Miss Blank be caught in a shower, she
may take refuge under the umbrella of an undesirable acquaintance; should
she fall on the ice, the woman who helps to raise her may have sinned.
There is not a spot in any known land where a woman can live in absolute
seclusion from all contact with evil. Should the Misses Blank even turn
Roman Catholics, and take to a convent, their very confessor may not be a
genuine saint; and they may be glad to flee for refuge to the busy, buying,
selling, dancing, voting world outside.

No: Mrs. Blank's prayers for absolute protection will never be answered, in
respect to her daughters. Why not, then, find a better model for prayer in
that made by Jesus for his disciples: "I pray Thee, not that Thou shouldst
take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the
evil." A woman was made for something nobler in the world, Mrs. Blank, than
to be a fragile toy, to be put behind a glass case, and protected from
contact. It is not her mission to be hidden away from all life's evil, but
bravely to work that the world may be reformed.

THE EUROPEAN PLAN

Every mishap among American women brings out renewed suggestions of what
may be called the "European plan" in the training of young girls,--the
plan, that is, of extreme seclusion and helplessness. It is usually
forgotten, in these sug