or woman, the boy or girl, who is not interested in anything
outside of his or her own immediate comfort and that related thereto,
who eats bread to make strength for no special cause, who pursues
science, reads poetry, studies books, for no earthly or heavenly
purpose than mere enjoyment or acquisition; who goes on accumulating
wealth, piling up money, with no definite or absorbing purpose to
apply it to anything in particular."

Perhaps we expect to-day, more than men have at any other time in the
world's history, that girls as well as boys, must look forward to
doing something definite in life. It is not deemed sufficient for
anyone simply "to be." The whole world is now living the verb "to do."
The grace, strength, beauty and worth of womanhood is being enhanced
with the constantly enlarging sphere of women's work. The primitive,
almost heathen, notion that the feminine sex constituted a handicap in
the achieving of great success in a great majority of the fields of
human endeavor is rapidly fading away. It can no longer stand in the
light of the brilliant achievements women are making everywhere.
Indeed, men are becoming well convinced that their presumed supremacy
in many of the world's spheres of work is being successfully
challenged at every point. So general is this experience becoming that
the present status of things might well be set forth somewhat after
the following style:

MAN, POOR MAN!

The question used to be, 't is true,
"What tasks are there for girls to do?"
But now we've reached an epoch when
We ask: "What is there left for men?"

They'll keep enlarging "woman's sphere"
Till man, poor, shrinking man, we fear,
Must grow quite useless, after while,
And go completely out of style.

This piece of frivolity can well be pardoned on account of its
absurdity. The great work of the world is so broad, so deep, so high,
that it calls for the best endeavors of all girls and boys, women and
men. That the door of opportunity is henceforth to be open to all is
an assurance that the work is to be more grandly and beautifully done
than ever before. What women may do in the years to come is
wonderfully set forth by what women have done in the past. All history
is filled with the splendid achievements of the women of the world. A
girl of to-day will find no reading more helpful and inspiring than
the lives of such noble women as Martha Washington, Queen Victoria,