, there is a silently working but determined
tendency for the sphere of woman's domestic labours to contract itself;
and the contraction is marked exactly in proportion as that complex
condition which we term "modern civilisation" is advanced.

It manifests itself more in England and America than in Italy and Spain,
more in great cities than in country places, more among the wealthier
classes than the poorer, and is an unfailing indication of advancing
modern civilisation. (There is, indeed, often something pathetic in the
attitude of many a good old mother of the race, who having survived,
here and there, into the heart of our modern civilisation, is sorely
puzzled by the change in woman's duties and obligations. She may be
found looking into the eyes of some ancient crone, who, like herself,
has survived from a previous state of civilisation, seeking there a
confirmation of a view of life of which a troublous doubt has crept
even into her own soul. "I," she cries, "always cured my own hams, and
knitted my own socks, and made up all the linen by hand. We always did
it when we were girls--but now my daughters object!" And her old
crone answers her? "Yes, we did it; it's the right thing; but it's so
expensive. It's so much cheaper to buy things ready made!" And they
shake their heads and go their ways, feeling that the world is strangely
out of joint when duty seems no more duty. Such women are, in truth,
like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her ducklings to
the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is left but
baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to it, and
walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce them
to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far off
the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up
to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that
is growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on
the baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And
they leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to
seek for new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?--perhaps
to find them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, "Ah, good old
mother duck, can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the
water back into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter
when it was there, but it has