race. "Be not simply good, be good for something," said Henry D. Thoreau. A bright-eyed girl of eighteen used to come to me on Friday evenings to give me German lessons. To be sure, I have lived in Germany, and she has never been out of Illinois, but then that language is not my specialty, while it is hers. "How is it that though so young, you have made yourself independent?" I inquired of her one day. Listen to the reply: "My mother was always quoting this saying of Carlyle: The man who has a sixpence commands the world-to the extent of that sixpence.' I early laid this sentiment to heart. Besides, when I was fifteen years old, I heard a sermon on the text: This one thing I do.' Being of a practical turn of mind, I made an application of which the preacher, perhaps, had no intention. I thought, why not in every-day affairs as well as in religion do one thing well, rather than many things indifferently, and in that way secure the magic sixpence of Carlyle! My father was a rich man then, but I resolved to prepare myself to teach the German language, of which I was very fond, by way of a profession. When the Chicago fire came we lost our property, but I discovered that I could not only support myself, but help my father to many a convenient sixpence, because in prosperous days I had fore-armed myself with a cultivated specialty."

As she told me this, I thought how, from widely different premises and conditions in life, young people may reach similar conclusions. For instance, on the top of the great St. Bernard, I said to the " Hospitable Father," a noble young monk, "How is it that you, so gifted and well taught, are spending your life away up here among eternal

snows?" And I shall never forget his look of exaltation as he simply answered: ""Tis my vocation-voilà!"

After all, this is the vital question: With what sort of a weapon will you ward off the attacks of the blood-hound Poverty, which Dame Fortune is pretty sure to set on everybody's track sooner or later, that she may try his mettle, and learn what manner of spirit he is of? In times like these, when men's hearts are failing them for fear, when riches are saved the trouble of "taking to themselves wings" by the faithless cashiers and book-keepers who are adepts at furnishing these flying implements, and, above all, when labor is coming to be king, the question "What will you do?" has fresh significance. Remember, going forth from the uncertain Eden of your dreams, into the satisfying pleasures of honest, hard work, "the world is all before you where to choose." Will you share some other woman's home, and help her make it beautiful? No task more noble or more needed awaits the thoughtful worker of to-day. The world exists but for the sake of its homes. Will you bestow your hand upon some fine æsthetic industry, as drawing, designing, engraving, photographing? Will you telephone or telegraph? Will you be an architect a printer? an editor? Will you enter one of the three learned professions? Braver women than you or I have won a foothold for us in each of them; as to the brainhold, that is our affair. I will not now pursue the question further. Only Miss Penny's "Cyclopædia of Woman's Occupations" (a book I recommend to your attention) can exhaust it, and with it exhaust you and the world's work, too, for that matter!

After all, it doesn't so much signify what you may do as

"The good

that you do it well, whatever it may be. For the value of skilled labor is estimated on a democratic basis, nowadays. President Eliot, of Harvard University, the cook in the Parker House restaurant, and Mary L. Booth, who edits Harper's Bazar, each receives $4000 per year. Think a moment. Will you be led to say, old ways are good enough for me," and so drop into the swollen ranks of teacherdom, or rattle awhile on a martyrized piano, and then set up for a musician, though you have not a particle of music in throat or finger-tips? Or will you stay at home and let papa support you until you grow tired of doing nothing and expecting nothing, and proceed to marry some man whom you endure rather than love, just to get decently out of your dilemma?

Nay, I do you injustice. Few girls who breathe the free air of our Eastern mountains and Western prairies will be so cowardly. I may not construct your horoscope, but this much L will venture-that when you marry, no matter what you find, you will seek not a name, behind which to cover up the insignificance of your own; not a "good provider," to feed and clothe one who has learned how to feed and clothe herself; not a "natural protector," to shield you in his plaidie, the gallant, gallant laddie, from the cauld, cauld blast; but you will seek (and may Heaven grant that you shall find) that rarest, choicest, most elusive prize of man's existence, as of woman's; one which-mournfully I say it—the modern marriage is by no means certain to involve—namely, a mate. At this juncture, shrewd mater familias whispers to pater: "That's the first orthodox word she's said." Some youth throws down my book and mutters to himself, There, I knew it would all come to this! Look at the

66

absurdity of these women! Why, they preach up all sorts of trades and professions, and then they come back, at last, to the 'good old way' they have forsaken, and advise every young lady to get a situation in a school of one scholar, and her board thrown in."

Meanwhile, heroic Hypatia sits near by, and "musing in maiden meditation, fancy free," on a 99 "career, murmurs within herself, "To this complexion must it come at last !" !” Peace, peace, good friends! This seeming inconsistency is readily explained. In this century, when the wage of battle has cost our land an army of her sons, when widow's mourn, and unwedded thousands are forced to meet the hard-faced world (from which rose-water theorists would shield them), America is coming to the rescue of her daughters! For the nearer perfect-that is, the more Christian -a civilization has become, the more carefully are the exceptional classes of society provided for. All our philanthropic institutions under State or private patronage illustrate this. In less enlightened days, your ideal woman composed the single, grand class for which public prejudice set itself to provide. She was to be the wife and mother, and she was carefully enshrined at home. But, happily, this is the world's way no longer. The exceptions are so many, made by war, by the thousand misunderstandings and cross-purposes of social intercourse, by the peculiar features of the transition period in which we live, by the absurdly extravagant customs of our day, and the false notions of both men and women-that not to provide for those exceptions would be a monstrous meanness, if not a crime. And the provision made in this instance is the most rational-indeed, the only rational one which it is in

the power of society or government to make for any save the utterly incapable-namely: a fair chance for self-help. Nor (to pursue the line of our argument still further) can we forget that skeleton hand which, in utter disregard of "the proprieties" in destiny's weird drama, thrusts itself so often into the charmed domestic circle, and snatches the beloved "provider" away forever, while it sets gaunt famine by the fireside in his stead. Furthermore can we forget that, in ten thousand families, wives are this moment waiting in suspense and agony the return of wretched husbands to homes made hideous by the drunkard's sin--wives whose work of brain or hand alone keeps their children from want, now that their "strong staff is broken, and their beautiful rod." There are delicate white fingers turning the page on which I print these words, that will never wear the marriage ring; there are slight forms bending over my friendly lines, which, not far down the years, will be clothed in widow's weeds. Alas, there are as surely others, who, when they have been wooed and won, shall find that they are worse than widowed. And what of these three classes of women, sweet and helpless? Clearly, to all of them I am declaring a true and blessed gospel, in this good news concerning honest independence and brave self-help! Clearly, also, no one is wise enough to go through the assembly of my readers, and tell us who, in future years, shall need a bread-winning weapon with which to defend herself and perchance also the helpless ones between whom and the world there may be no arm but hers. But it is a principle in public as well as private economy, that the wisest foresight provides for the remotest contingency, and thus, in its full force, all that I have been saying applies