they used to in skirts and are less weary at each day's end.
And nobody worries them at all. There has not been the
faintest suspicion of an insult or an advance from any one
of the thousands of men and boys of all classes whom they
have ridden with upon their 'lifts,' sometimes in dense
crowds, sometimes in an involuntary tete-a-tete.

"Other employments which girls follow and dress for
bifurcatedly in this great and progressive store are more
astonishing than the operation of elevators. A charming
young plumber had made no compromise whatever with
tradition. She was in overalls like boy plumbers wear,
except that her trousers were not tight, but they were well
fitted. A little cap of the same material as the suit,
completed her jaunty and attractive costume. And cap and
suit were professionally stained, too, with oil and things
like that, while her small hands showed the grime of an
honest day's competent, hard work.

"The coming summer will see an immense amount of England's
farming done by women and, I think, well done. Organisations
already are under way whereby women propose to help decrease
the food shortage by intelligent increase of the chicken and
egg supply, and this is being so well planned that
undoubtedly it will succeed. Eggs and chickens will be
cheap in England ere the summer ends.

"I have met three ex-stenographers who now are at hard work,
two of them in munition factories (making military engines
of death) and one of them on a farm. I asked them how they
liked the change.

"'I should hate to have to go back to work in the old long
skirts,' one replied. 'I should hate to go back to the old
days of relying upon some one else for everything that
really matters. But--well, I wish the war would end and I
hope the casualty lists of fine young men will not grow
longer, day by day, as Spring approaches, although everybody
says they will.'

"Mrs. John Bull takes girls in pantaloons quite calmly and
approvingly, now that she has learned that if there are
enough of them, dad and the boys will pay no more attention
to them in trousers than they would pay to them in skirts."

We have preferred to quote the exact wording of the original article,
for the reason that while the facts are familiar to most of us, the
manner of putting them could not, to our mind, be more graphic. Some
day, when the Wateaus of the future are painti