Page:University Education for Women.djvu/17

 for women, or work like Miss Clough's in starting a new institution. Pioneer work requires as a rule not only enterprise and ability but capital, at least in the sense of power to wait for remuneration, and therefore must be done by those with some means of their own, either alone or in combination with others. Girls with independent means have therefore a larger choice of work than those who are limited to immediately remunerative occupations and a larger choice carries with it a greater responsibility in choosing.

There is another kind of work for women which must not be left out of account or underrated, I mean home work apart from marriage. There are many homes which have a reasonable claim on a girl's time and energies even at some sacrifice of her own future. There are often gaps in domestic life which can best be filled by the unmarried girls or women of the family—help wanted in the care of old people and children and invalids, or in making the work of other members of the family go smoothly. This kind of work can best be done by women, not only because they are generally better adapted to it, but because if any sacrifice of a future career is involved, it will neither be so certain nor so great in the case of a woman, as it would generally be in the case of a man. Only (and this I say chiefly to mothers) in encouraging any girl to devote herself entirely to home work, let us count the cost and compare it with the gain. Do not let us ask her to give up the chance of filling or preparing herself to fill a more useful place in the world for the sake of employing her—as mothers are, I think, sometimes tempted to do—in trivial social duties from which she might be spared with little loss to anyone.

A girl's choice of occupations then may be limited by distinct calls of duty, as well as by other circumstances: but what I am urging is that the talents and opportunities—taking talents in the widest sense of the word—which nature has given her are a trust to be used conscientiously for the benefit of the world, and that consequently she