se welfare it is destined. However, the
I.F.E.M. would have to deal with this obstacle and conceal its real
intentions under another name. I am sure if its object were sufficiently
wrapped-up that refined men and women could take advantage of it without
loss of self-respect--the response to such an institution by both sexes
would be enormous. A club, ostensibly for promoting social intercourse,
might be the solution, and subscription dances, concerts, organised
excursions would not be difficult to arrange, and would make a source of
brightness and interest in many drab lives. Country branches could be
started if the thing proved a success.

One constantly sees in the newspapers proof of the fact that there are a
very large number of middle-class young men able and anxious to marry,
who lack feminine acquaintances of their own social standing from whom
to make a choice. Unfortunate _mesalliances_ are often the result, and
it seems to me a sad and wasteful thing that these uxoriously-inclined
men cannot be brought into contact with some of the thousands of young
women whose lives are passed in uncongenial toil and who are eating out
their hearts in their anxiety for a home and a husband of their own.
Until the I.F.E.M. becomes fact, here is splendid work ready to hand for
a philanthropist of infinite tact, and large, sympathetic heart. What a
chance to add to the sum of human joy! What a rich reward for the
expenditure of but a little time and money!

IV

THE TRAGEDY OF THE UNDESIRED

'So man and woman will keep their trust,
Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.

'Yea, each with the other will lose and win,
For the Strife of Love's the abysmal Strife,
And the Word of Love is the Word of Life.

'And they that go with the Word unsaid,
Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.'

--W. E. HENLEY.

This is a tragedy of which few men know the existence and certainly no
man in these woman-ridden isles can ever have experienced. Men always
treat with derision the woman anxious for matrimony, and gibe equally at
the spinster who fails to attain it. Heaven alone knows why, since by
men's laws and traditions the married state has been made to mean
everything desirable for a woman, and the unmarried condition everything
undesirable. 'People think women who do not want to marry unfeminine;
people think women who do want to marry immodest; people combine both
opinions by regarding