Would it be so invariably easy a thing for a home-keeper to do,
at the one opportunity of the year, or the four years, on a
particular day, her duty in this matter? It is easy to say that it
takes no more time than a hundred other things that some do; but
setting apart all the argument that previous time and strength
must have been spent in properly qualifying, how many of
the hundred other things are done now without interruption,
postponement, hindrance, through domestic contingencies? or are
there a hundred other things done when the home contingencies are
really met by a woman? A woman's life is not like a man's. That
a man's life may be--that he may transact his out-door business;
keep his hours and appointments; may cast his vote on election
day; may represent wife and children in all wherein the community
cares for, or might injure him and them--the woman, some woman,
must be at the home post, that the home order may go on, from
which he derives that command of time, and freedom from hindering
necessities, which leave him to his work. And so, as the old
proverb says, while man's work is from sun to sun--made definite,
a matter to which he can go forth, and from which he can come
in--a woman's work, of keeping the place of the forthgoing and
incoming, is never done, from the very nature and ceaseless
importance of it.

Must she go to the polls, sick or well, baby or no baby, servant
or no servant, strength or no strength, desire or no desire? If
she have cook and housemaid they are to go also, and number her
two to one, anyway; probably on election day, which they would
make a holiday, they would--as at other crises, of birth,
sickness, death, house-cleaning, which should occur in no