Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/198

 the Buddhists. A great many more of you, I suppose, have a beautiful genius for an occupation more various than that of Leonardo da Vinci and the many-sided men of the Renaissance. I mean the occupation of domestic managership, including in one endlessly versatile person the professions of wife, mother, nurse, dietitian, milliner, tailor, economist, artist, architect, teacher, religious guide, counsellor, and dictator—I have mentioned only a few of the activities which every competent matriarch undertakes. Yet many of you, I suspect, with a real talent for this rich life of high and varied service, in which every virtue and every charm count, many of you have been persuaded that this life is not service but servitude, and are considering whether you should not renounce your beautiful talent and devote yourselves to selling bonds or writing for the short-story magazines. "I don't want to spend all my life washing dishes," you have cried—as if washing dishes were a hundredth part of the fascinating things you are expected to do!

I suspect this unrest to be present among the