sufficient unto the
evil thereof is the other. Each day has to bear burdens passed down from
so many other days; each person has to bear burdens so complicated, so
interwoven with the burdens of others; each person's fault is so fevered
and swollen by faults of others, that there is no disentangling the
question of responsibility. Every thing is everybody's fault is the
simplest and fairest way of putting it. It is everybody's fault that the
average home is stupid, dreary, insufferable,--a place from which fathers
fly to clubs, boys and girls to streets. But when we ask who can do most
to remedy this,--in whose hands it most lies to fight the fight against
the tendencies to monotony, stupidity, and instability which are inherent
in human nature,--then the answer is clear and loud. It is the work of
women; this is the true mission of women, their "right" divine and
unquestionable, and including most emphatically the "right to labor."

To create and sustain the atmosphere of a home,--it is easily said in a
very few words; but how many women have done it? How many women can say to
themselves or others that this is their aim? To keep house well women
often say they desire. But keeping house well is another affair,--I had
almost said it has nothing to do with creating a home. That is not true,
of course; comfortable living, as regards food and fire and clothes, can
do much to help on a home. Nevertheless, with one exception, the best
homes I have ever seen were in houses which were not especially well kept;
and the very worst I have ever known were presided (I mean tyrannized)
over by "perfect housekeepers."

All creators are single-aimed. Never will the painter, sculptor, writer
lose sight of his art. Even in the intervals of rest and diversion which
are necessary to his health and growth, every thing he sees ministers to
his passion. Consciously or unconsciously, he makes each shape, color,
incident his own; sooner or later it will enter into his work.

So it must be with the woman who will create a home. There is an evil
fashion of speech which says it is a narrowing and narrow life that a
woman leads who cares only, works only for her husband and children; that
a higher, more imperative thing is that she herself be developed to her
utmost. Even so clear and strong a writer as Frances Cobbe, in her
otherwise admirable essay on the "Final Cause of Woman," falls into this
shallowness of words, and speaks of women who live