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 were making their way, mostly by their own perseverance, but partly also by the encouragement they received from a few far-sighted and liberal men. But what told most of all was the improvement in young girls’ education; for with the rise in their education went that lever of all improvement, their ambition. Nobler aspirations began to fill their enlarged minds. University examinations and university establishments had now, for a generation of pupils, been making havoc of the little needlework, little music, little French, little history, little geography, little theology, which formerly had been judged proper for the young lady brain, and—no insignificant matter—the newspaper press had long ago dropped the bantering (not to say scurrilous and ribald) tone in which in past days it had been accustomed to criticise all efforts of women to compete with men. Much, very much, still remained to be accomplished, but the progressive and self-respecting portion of the female community felt that if it was a minority, it was a minority which had a great future before it, and which felt its strength increasing steadily year by year.

But the year 189— was destined to witness a disastrous reaction which threw out the calculations of the reformers. It may seem strange at first that the extension of the suffrage to women did not, after all, prove any safeguard against reaction, in fact, the contrary; but it is to be remembered that only a limited class, namely female householders, had as yet been included. A married woman, not a householder in her own right, might be as cultivated and experienced as you please, with the veriest dolt or brute for a husband; she had no voice in the making of the laws under which she lived; she bore her full share of burdens, but no share of privileges. The previous Parliament, though it had broken the ice, had not mustered courage to take the plain, straightforward course of giving a vote to every wife whose