Page:The Education and Employment of Women.djvu/8

8 practical ways, is a desire which springs from no conceit of cleverness, from no ambition of the prizes of intellectual success, as is sometimes falsely imagined, but from the conviction that for many women to get knowledge is the only way to get bread, and still more from that instinctive craving for light which in many is stronger than the craving for bread. "Amongst the wealthier classes,"—I give the words of one who has much knowledge of that of which she speaks— "women are better provided for materially, though even here they are often left to the mercy of the chances of life, indulged and petted whilst fortune smiles, left helpless to face the storm of adverse circumstances; but here, more often than elsewhere, one meets with those sad, dreary lives, that have always seemed to me amongst the worst permitted evils of earth,—

is true of many a life. Even sharp misfortune is sometimes a blessing in a life of this sort; something to do, and leave to do it. I do not say that any possible education, any freedom of career, any high training of faculty, would spare all this waste; some part of it is of that sad mystery of life which we cannot explain, and for the unveiling of which we can only wait and pray. But I am quite sure that much of it is altogether needless, and comes from the shutting up in artificial channels of those good gifts of God which were meant to flow forth freely and bless the world. If I could only tell, as I have felt it in my own life, and in the lives of other women whom I have loved, how wearily one strains the eyes for light, which often comes not at all!

"God knows it all, and if men do not know it, it is because they have been, I will not say they are, cruelly and criminally thoughtless. I wish some of those men who talk as if they imagined our life a delightful one, could but be women