undertaken some adventure, might have answered some call, which now he
cannot answer. Does that mean that he regrets his choice? No, not for
a moment! It only means that human nature is so rich and so varied that
whatever life you forego will sometimes seem to you the better choice. You
will think, for a moment, that you might have chosen differently. If that
happened to St. Francis, believe me, it will happen to you. But yet, is it
not a heroic path that I point out to you? Is it not possible that to this
generation heroism may be possible in such a way, on such a scale, that you
will leave this world nobler in moral stature because of the hardness
which you endured, the choice that you made? Women, to whom this comes home
specially at this time, may it not be that you, by taking this way, will
become the mothers in spirit of women in a happier generation, on whom will
never again be imposed our cramped, stifling, sub-human conception of what
women ought to be? You will show to the world not only that the individual
woman of genius may have a value to Humanity beyond her sex, but that every
woman has that value. In solving your own problem, and taking hold of life
where most it hurts you, you will end by making a moral standard nobler, a
humanity richer and more human, a womanhood freer, greater, more Christlike
than it was. And future generations shall rise up and call you blessed.



III


CONSIDERATION OF OTHER SOLUTIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF THE DISPROPORTION OF THE
SEXES


"My spirit's bark is driven