take; at the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we
sat down passive; at the great truths staring us in the face, which we
failed to see; at the truths we grasped at, but could never quite
get our fingers round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so
little--but, what you will never know is how it was thinking of you and
for you, that we struggled as we did and accomplished the little which
we have done; that it was in the thought of your larger realisation and
fuller life, that we found consolation for the futilities of our own."

"What I aspired to be, and was not, comforts me."

O.S.

Chapter I. Parasitism.

In that clamour which has arisen in the modern world, where now this,
and then that, is demanded for and by large bodies of modern women, he
who listens carefully may detect as a keynote, beneath all the clamour,
a demand which may be embodied in such a cry as this: Give us labour and
the training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves
alone, but for the race.

If this demand be logically expanded, it will take such form as this:
Give us labour! For countless ages, for thousands, millions it may be,
we have laboured. When first man wandered, the naked, newly-erected
savage, and hunted and fought, we wandered with him: each step of
his was ours. Within our bodies we bore the race, on our shoulders we
carried it; we sought the roots and plants for its food; and, when man's
barbed arrow or hook brought the game, our hands dressed it. Side by
side, the savage man and the savage woman, we wandered free together and
laboured free together. And we were contented!

Then a change came.

We ceased from our wanderings, and, camping upon one spot of earth,
again the labours of life were divided between us. While man went forth
to hunt, or to battle with the foe who would have dispossessed us of
all, we laboured on the land. We hoed the earth, we reaped the grain,
we shaped the dwellings, we wove the clothing, we modelled the earthen
vessels and drew the lines upon them, which were humanity's first
attempt at domestic art; we studied the properties and uses of plants,
and our old women were the first physicians of the race, as, often, its
first priests and prophets.

We fed the race at our breast, we bore it on our shoulders; through us
it was shaped, fed, and clothed. Labour more toilsome and unending than
that of man was ours; yet did we never cry out that it was too hea