eing a remembrance mainly drawn from one chapter of the larger
book. The armed native guards standing against the uncurtained windows,
it was impossible to open the shutters, and the room was therefore
always so dark that even the physical act of writing was difficult.

A year and a half after, when the war was over and peace had been
proclaimed for above four months, I with difficulty obtained a permit to
visit the Transvaal. I found among the burnt fragments the leathern back
of my book intact, the front half of the leaves burnt away; the back
half of the leaves next to the cover still all there, but so browned and
scorched with the flames that they broke as you touched them; and there
was nothing left but to destroy it. I even then felt a hope that at some
future time I might yet rewrite the entire book. But life is short; and
I have found that not only shall I never rewrite the book, but I
shall not have the health even to fill out and harmonise this little
remembrance from it.

It is therefore with considerable pain that I give out this fragment. I
am only comforted by the thought that perhaps, all sincere and earnest
search after truth, even where it fails to reach it, yet, often comes
so near to it, that other minds more happily situated may be led, by
pointing out its very limitations and errors, to obtain a larger view.

I have dared to give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not
at all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this
little book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of
literary perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because
(and this matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the
subject-matter itself if its genesis were not exactly understood.

Not only is this book not a general view of the whole vast body
of phenomena connected with woman's position; but it is not even a
bird's-eye view of the whole question of woman's relation to labour.

In the original book the matter of the parasitism of woman filled only
one chapter out of twelve, and it was mainly from this chapter that this
book was drawn. The question of the parasitism of woman is, I think,
very vital, very important; it explains many phenomena which nothing
else explains; and it will be of increasing importance. But for the
moment there are other aspects of woman's relation to labour practically
quite as pressing. In the larger book I had devoted one chapter en