bothers of any kind. They are free to lead the higher life. What I
am waiting for is a glimpse of the higher life. One of them, it is
true, has taken up the violin. Another of them is devoting her
emancipation to poker work. A third is learning skirt-dancing. Are
these the "higher things" for which women are claiming freedom from
all duty? And, if so, is there not danger that the closing of our
homes may lead to the crowding up of the world with too much higher
things?

May there not, by the time all bothers have been removed from woman's
path, be too many amateur violinists in the world, too many skirt-
dancers, too much poker work? If not, what are they? these "higher
things," for which so many women are demanding twenty-four hours a
day leisure. I want to know.

One lady of my acquaintance is a Poor Law Guardian and secretary to a
labour bureau. But then she runs a house with two servants, four
children, and a husband, and appears to be so used to bothers that
she would feel herself lost without them. You can do this kind of
work apparently even when you are bothered with a home. It is the
skirt-dancing and the poker work that cannot brook rivalry. The
modern woman has begun to find children a nuisance; they interfere
with her development. The mere man, who has written his poems,
painted his pictures, composed his melodies, fashioned his
philosophies, in the midst of life's troubles and bothers, grows
nervous thinking what this new woman must be whose mind is so
tremendous that the whole world must be shut up, so to speak, sent to
do its business out of her sight and hearing, lest her attention
should be distracted.