than that, they were often skilled in all the arts of the housewife, and
many times they showed themselves the careful stewards of their
husbands' fortunes. The women of the people, on the other hand, were not
shown any special consideration on account of their sex, and were quite
generally expected to work in the fields with the men. Their homes were
so unworthy of the name that they required little care or thought, and
their food was so coarse that little time was given to its preparation.
Simple-minded, credulous, superstitious in the extreme, with absolutely
no intellectual uplift of any kind, and nothing but the sordid drudgery
of life with which to fill the slow-passing hours, it is no wonder that
the great mass of both the men and the women of this time were
hopelessly swallowed up in a many-colored sea of ignorance, from which,
with the march of the centuries, they have been making slow efforts to
rise. So the lady sat in the great hall in the castle, clad in some
gorgeous gown of silk which had been brought by the patient caravans,
through devious ways, from the far and mysterious East; surrounded by
her privileged maidens, she spun demurely and in peace and quiet, while
out in the fields the back of the peasant woman was bent in ceaseless
toil. Or again, the lady of the manor would ride forth with her lord
when he went to the hunt, she upon her white palfrey, and he upon his
black charger, and each with hooded falcon on wrist; for the gentle art
of falconry was almost as much in vogue among the women as among the men
of the time. Often it happened that during the course of the hunt it
would be necessary to cross a newly planted field, or one heavy with the
ripened grain, and this they did gaily and with never a thought for the
hardship that they might cause; and as they swept along, hot after the
quarry, the poor, mistreated peasant, whether man or woman, dared utter
no word of protest or make moan, nor did he or she dare to look boldly
and unabashed upon this hunting scene, but rather from the cover of some
protecting thicket. Scenes of this kind will serve to show the great