ss, yet undecided. She has not had time to
recover from centuries of no-education and mis-education: She is only
just beginning to understand that neither beauty nor tact can take the
place of skill, and that to do a man's work she must prepare for it as
a man prepares; but even if time proves that in creative works she
cannot attain masculine grandeur of conception and power of execution,
she may be just as excellent in her own way; and there are and always
will be people who prefer Mrs. Browning to Milton, and George Eliot to
Lord Bacon.

At first sight there seems some plausibility in the assertion that
woman's physical inferiority will always render her unfit to do men's
work. But all physical excellence is a matter of cultivation; and it
would be very easy to prove that women are not naturally physically
weaker than men. In all savage nations they do the hardest work, and
Mr. Livingstone acknowledged that all his ideas as to their physical
inferiority had been completely overturned.

In China they do the work of men, with the addition of an infant tied
to their back. In Calcutta and Bombay, they act as masons, carry
mortar, and there are thousands of them in the mountain passes bearing
up the rocky heights baskets of stone and earth on their heads. The
women in Germany and the Low Countries toil equally with the men.
During the late war I saw American women in Texas keep the saddle all
day, driving cattle or superintending the operations in the
cotton-patch or the sugar-field. Nay, I have known them to plough,
sow, reap, and get wood from the cedar brake with their own hands.

Woman's physical strength has degenerated for want of exercise and
use; but it would be as unfair to condemn her to an inferior position
on this account as it was for the slave master to urge the necessity
of slavery because of the very vices slavery had produced. However, if
women are really to succeed they must give to their preparation for a
profession the freshest years of life. If it is only taken up because
marriage has been a failure, or if it is pursued with a divided mind,
they will always be behind-hand and inferior. But the compensation is
worth the sacrifice. A profession once acquired, they have home,
happiness, and independence in their hands; the future, as far as
possible, is secure, the serenity and calmness of assurance
strengthens the mind and sweetens the character, and from the
standpoint of a self-sustaining celibacy