right to go to a divorce court and dissolve the
partnership. As it is an arrangement between equals, for mutual
convenience and happiness, when it ceases to be convenient or agreeable
to me, it is perfectly reasonable that I should withdraw. That is to my
self-interest guided by reason. Thousands upon thousands of other women
are doing it, and no up-to-date enlightened person thinks any the worse
of them--so why shouldn't I?

You, my well meaning, but out-of-date husband, may be imagined as
replying to this briefly as follows:

"What has become of all the deep and beautiful feelings of faith and
devotion and self-sacrifice, which throughout the ages have given a
heavenly significance to the ideal of motherhood and wife-hood? Woman
was not made in the same mold as man and such was evidently not the
intention of the all-wise Creator. But in man's imagination and in his
better nature, the essence of woman's purpose and greatness has appeared
to consist in being a sort of guardian angel of the home and family. Her
crown was made of purity, chastity, modesty, infinite tenderness and
patience and underlying fidelity to her sacred cause. It is to her in
this capacity, with such a crown upon her head, that the noblest of men
have been willing to bow down, in humbleness and submission, not as to
an equal, or a rival in worldly prowess, but as to a superior and more
exquisite soul.

"That is the birthright of woman, the glory of her creation, yet between
your petty motives of self-interest and the up-to-date enlightenment of
your intellect, you are trying to argue it off the face of the earth.
You have exchanged a spiritual ideal of womanhood for a material mess of
pottage."

* * * * *

There have been plenty of vain and selfish women, in the past, just as
there have been profligate women and immoral men; but in the communities
of the past, where faith and aspiration were wont to flourish and be
sustained and encouraged by religion, such selfishness was not to be
avowed or imitated. In the light of finer and more spiritual feelings,
it appeared as a deficiency and corruption of character. But in the
up-to-date rule of reason, backed by the analysis and conclusions of
science, there is no need to conceal it, or excuse it. It is the strong
minds, not the weak ones, which set the example; the enlightened,
scientific, matter-of-fact intellects, which proclaim the principle and
encourage the timi