-past eight he
was in the midst of a vehement plea for an enlargement of female
education, in the course of which he uttered several things rather
disturbing to the nerves of Mrs. Mumbray, and other ladies
present.--Woman, it was true, lived an imperfect life if she did not
become wife and mother; but this truism had been insisted on to the
exclusion of another verity quite as important: that wifehood and
motherhood, among civilized people, implied qualifications beyond the
physical. The ordinary girl was sent forth into life with a mind
scarcely more developed than that of a child. Hence those monstrous
errors she constantly committed when called upon to accept a husband.
Not one marriage in fifty thousand was an alliance on terms fair to the
woman. In the vast majority of cases, she wedded a sort of man in the
moon. Of him and of his world she knew nothing; whereas the bridegroom
had almost always a very sufficient acquaintance with the
circumstances, habits, antecedents, characteristics, of the girl he
espoused. Her parents, her guardians, should assure themselves--pooh!
even if these people were conscientious and capable, the task was in
most cases beyond their power.

"I have no scheme for rendering marriages universally happy. On the
contrary, I believe that marriages in general will always serve as a
test of human patience." (Outbreak of masculine laughter.) "But
assuredly it is possible, by judicious training of young girls, to
guard them against some of the worst perils which now threaten their
going forth into the world. It is possible to put them on something
like an equality in knowledge of life with the young men of
corresponding social station." ("Oh, shameful!" murmured Mrs. Mumbray.
"Shocking!") "They must be treated, not like ornaments under
glass-eases, but like human beings who, physiologists assure us, are
born with mental apparatus, even as men are. I repeat that I don't want
to see them trained for politics" (many faces turned towards the middle
of the hall) "and that I lament the necessity imposed on so many of
them of struggling with men in the labour-market. What I demand is an
education in the true sense of the word, and that as much at the hands
of their mothers as of the school-teacher. When that custom has been
established, be sure that it will affect enormously the habits and
views of the male population. The mass of men at present regard women
as creatures hoodwinked for them by nature--o