otectors, are discontented
with their happy secluded security and rush into weak art, or feeble
literature, or dubious singing and acting, because their vanity and
restless immorality lead them into the market place, or on to the
stage. Not one of such women has been driven afield by indisputable
genius. Any work they have done would have been better done by some
unprotected, experienced woman already in the fields they have
invaded. And the indifference of this class to the money value of
their labor has made it difficult for the women working because they
must work or starve, to get a fair price for their work. It is the
baldest effrontery for this class of rich discontents to affect
sympathy with Woman's Progress. Nothing can excuse their intrusion
into the labor market but unquestioned genius and super-excellence of
work; and this has not yet been shown in any single case.

The one unanswerable excuse for woman's entrance into active public
life of any kind is _need_, and, alas, need is growing daily, as
marriage becomes continually rarer, and more women are left adrift in
the world without helpers and protectors. But this is a subject too
large to enter on here, though in the beginning it sprung from
discontented women, preferring the work and duties of men to their own
work and duties. Have they found the battle of life any more ennobling
in masculine professions than in their old feminine household ways? Is
work done in the world for strangers any less tiresome and monotonous
than work done in the house for father and mother, husband and
children? If they answer truly, they will reply, "The home duties were
the easiest, the safest, and the happiest."

Of course all discontented women will be indignant at any criticism of
their conduct. They expect every one to consider their feelings
without examining their motives. Paddling in the turbid maelstrom of
life, and dabbling in politics and the most unsavory social questions,
they still think men, at least, ought to regard them as the Sacred
Sex. But women are not sacred by grace of sex, if they voluntarily
abdicate its limitations and its modesties, and make a public display
of unsexed sensibilities and unabashed familiarity with subjects they
have nothing to do with. If men criticise such women with asperity it
is not to be wondered at; they have so long idealized women that they
find it hard to speak moderately. They excuse them too much, or else
they are too ind