se are the darling witnesses of his conduct, the applauders
of his valour, at once beloved and valued. The wounded seek their
mothers and their wives; undismayed at the sight, the women count each
honourable scar and suck the gushing blood. They are even hardy enough
to mix with the combatants, administering refreshment and exhorting them
to deeds of valour," and adds moreover, that "To be contented with one
wife was peculiar to the Germans; while the woman was contented with one
husband, as with one life, one mind, one body."

It was inevitable that before the sons of women such as these, the sons
of the parasitic Roman should be swept from existence, as the offspring
of the caged canary would fall in conflict with the offspring of the
free.

Again and again with wearisome reiteration, the same story repeats
itself. Among the Jews in the days of their health and growth, we find
their women bearing the major weight of agricultural and domestic toil,
full always of labour and care--from Rachel, whom Jacob met and loved
as she watered her father's flocks, to Ruth, the ancestress of a line of
kings and heroes, whom her Boas noted labouring in the harvest-fields;
from Sarah, kneading and baking cakes for Abraham's prophetic visitors,
to Miriam, prophetess and singer, and Deborah, who judging Israel
from beneath her palm-tree, "and the land had rest for forty years."
Everywhere the ancient Jewish woman appears, an active sustaining power
among her people; and perhaps the noblest picture of the labouring
woman to be found in any literature is contained in the Jewish writings,
indited possibly at the very time when the labouring woman was for the
first time tending among a section of the Jews to become a thing of the
past; when already Solomon, with his seven hundred parasitic wives and
three hundred parasitic concubines, loomed large on the horizon of the
national life, to take the place of flock-tending Rachel and gleaning
Ruth, and to produce amid their palaces of cedar and gold, among them
all, no Joseph or David, but in the way of descendant only a Rehoboam,
under whose hand the kingdom was to totter to its fall. (The picture
of the labouring as opposed to the parasitic ideal of womanhood appears
under the heading, "The words of King Lemuel; the oracle which his
mother taught him.") At risk of presenting the reader with that with
which he is already painfully familiar, we here transcribe the
passage; which, allowing for