Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/623

Rh own showing, these women should remain unmarried, and, if this involves a sacrifice on their part, it is left for him to show us that such sacrifice is ignoble, or in any sense threatening to the public welfare."

A response to this comes from the women physicians, who, in their work for their own sex and for children, feel, in all humility, that they are doing more for humanity than if they limited themselves to the reproduction of their kind. Granting that each of these women might leave behind her the ideal four successors, what is this in comparison with the many women whom she may have saved from disease and death; the households to which she has taught better ways; the new standards of purity and self-restraint for which she has bravely fought?

In such a discussion it is difficult not to individualize; but, well as I know these women, I am surprised at the breadth of their views, their candor, and their humility in regard to their own achievements. But it is a humility which permits no abatement of their just claims. They no longer admit any question as to their intellectual capacity. With the simplicity of conscious strength they take their place beside the men who challenge them, and are not at all afraid to face the result of their own actions. It is also plain that they are, on the whole, contented with the lot which they have chosen. The sacrifice, if it be such, has been made with open eyes and of free will, and there is no sighing after the possibilities which they have rejected.

"But," I ask, "do you never feel, especially as you grow older, the lack of some young strength upon which to lean, some fresh energy to which to bequeath your own experience?"

As might be expected, the answer to this is varied. In some instances the strength of the maternal instinct has led to the adoption of children; in others, to some special work which keeps up the connection with childhood; while again there are women, as there are men, in whom the instinct is lacking, and who find other interests sufficient to fill the gap.

Mr. Allen's suggestion as to the possible readjustment of the marriage relation, and his pledge that men will meet women halfway in any such attempt, is received without special enthusiasm. That is, the general feeling is, that it is not in the marriage relation, either in its legal or social aspect, that the root of the difficulty is to be found. Rather, they consider, it must be looked for in the standards with which men and women enter into that relation. It is constantly proved, by the evidence of happy marriages, that the contract easily adjusts itself where the parties to it comprehend and accept its terms. Not that there is not room for improvement in minor particulars, especially in the direction of certain legislative changes; but that, fundamentally, the