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292 woman, the preservation of her reputation her incessant and tormenting care, for society requires it untarnished, although it does not offer her the natural prize for it, the husband. The bachelor can go into restaurants and saloons, pass his leisure hours in his clubs, which are becoming more and more a substitute for family life, he can travel alone, go to walk alone, and has a hundred ways of deluding himself into oblivion of the coldness and barrenness of his home, unblessed by the love of wife and child. All these solaces are denied to the single woman if she wishes to keep her reputation clear; she is condemned to a perpetual solitude in her sorrow over her wasted life. If she owns property she can only increase it with difficulty, it is much more liable to be diminished or lost entirely, for she is far less competent than man to conduct business affairs, that is, to protect her possessions against the sharks swarming around them, owing to her training and the customs of society. But if she has no property the picture grows indistinguishable from the hopeless darkness that settles down upon it. Only a few and unremunerative means of earning a livelihood are accessible to woman. The uneducated girl of the lower classes goes out to service and thus supports herself, but never learns the meaning of independence and liberty, while her character is crippled by constant humiliations. Slow starvation is the result of woman's independent efforts, and working by the day, she receives on an average one half as much as a man, although her natural wants are about the same. The educated girl of the upper classes becomes a teacher; in most cases she enters upon the slave's life of a governess; in some countries a limited number of subordinate official positions or clerkships are open to her, but none of them allow a cultivated and intelligent woman to practice her talents and inclinations, to satisfy her inner life, which