lly, by those mistaken notions of her
duty to others which were so long inflicted upon women, to be their
own curse and the misfortune of all whom they were designed to
benefit. She had sacrificed her health in her early married life to
what she believed to be her duty as a wife, and so had left herself
neither nerve nor strength enough for the never-ending tasks of the
mistress of a household and mother of a family on a small income, the
consequence of which was that shortness of temper and querulousness
which spoilt her husband's life and made her own a burden to her. She
was highly intelligent, but had carefully preserved her ignorance of
life, because it was not considered womanly to have any practical
knowledge of the world; and she had neglected the general cultivation
of her mind partly because intellectual pursuits were a pleasure, and
she did not feel sufficiently self-denying if she allowed herself any
but exceptional pleasures, but also because there was a good deal of
her husband's work in the way of letters and official documents that
she could do for him, and these left her no time for anything but the
inevitable making and mending. Busy men take a sensible amount of rest
and relaxation, of food and fresh air, and make good speed; but busy
women look upon outdoor exercise as a luxury, talk about wasting time
on meals, and toil on incessantly yet with ever-diminishing strength,
because they take no time to recoup; therefore they recede rather than
advance; all the extra effort but makes for leeway.

The consequence of Mrs. Caldwell's ridiculous education was that her
judgment was no more developed in most respects than it had been in her
girlhood, so that when she lost her husband and had to act for her
children, she had nothing better to rely on for her guidance than
time-honoured conventions, which she accepted with unquestioning faith
in their efficacy, even when applied to emergencies such as were never
known in the earlier ages of human evolution to which they belonged. She
had starved herself and her daughters in mind and body in order to
scrape together the wherewithal to send her sons out into the world, but
she had let them go without making any attempt to help them to form
sound principles, or to teach them rules of conduct such as should keep
them clean-hearted and make them worthy members of society; so that all
her privation had been worse than vain, it had been mischievous; for the
boys, unaid