en in general were backing up. It was work of
the highest constructive type--original in its conception, full of
imagination and idealism, rich in its capacity for growth--a work to
fit the aspiration of its day and so full of the future!

Now, when conditions are such that a few rise to great eminence from
the ordinary ranks of life, it means a good general average. The
multitude of women of rare achievements, distinguishing the
Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods of American history are
the best evidences of the seriousness, idealism, and intelligence of
the women in general. Their services in the war are part of the
traditions of every family whose line runs back to those days. Loyal,
spirited, ingenious, and uncomplaining, they are one of the finest
proofs in history of the capacity of the women of the mass to respond
whole-heartedly to noble ideals,--one of the finest illustrations,
too, of the type of service needed from women in great crises. But the
rank and file which conducted itself so honorably in the Revolution
was not a whit more noble and intelligent than the rank and file of
the succeeding period. It would have been impossible ever to have
established as promptly as was done the higher and the general schools
for girls if women had not given them the support they did, had not
been willing, as one great educator of the early part of the
nineteenth century has recorded--"to rise up early, to sit up late, to
eat the bread of the most rigid economy, that their daughters might be
favored with means of improvement superior to what they themselves
possessed." And back of this self-denial was what? A desire that life
be made easier for the daughter? Not at all--a desire that the
daughter be better equipped to "form the character of the future
citizen of the Republic."

It is not alone that justice is wounded by denying women a part in the
making of the civilized world--a more immediate wrong is the way the
movement for a fuller, freer life for all human beings is hampered. A
woman with a masculine chip on her shoulder gives a divided attention
to the cause she serves. She complicates her human fight with a sex
fight. However good tactics this may have been in the past, and I am
far from denying that there were periods it may have been good
politics, however poor morals, surely in this country to-day there is
no sound reason for introducing such complications into our struggles.
The American woman's li