and avalanche. It is the face of one who has brought men into the world in
labour and sorrow, and toiled mightily to sustain them; and dead must be
the mind to the phases of human existence, who does not see in that
toilworn figure one of the mighty pillars, which have in the long ages of
the past sustained the life of humanity on earth, and made possible its
later development; and much must the tinsel of life have dazzled him, who
fails to mark it with reverence and, metaphorically, to bow his head before
it--the type of the mighty labouring woman who has built up life.

But, it may be said, what if, in the ages to come, it should never again be
possible for any man to stand bowed with the same respect in the presence
of any other of earth's mighty toilers, who should also be mother and
woman? What, if she, who could combine motherhood with the most unending
muscular toil, will fall flaccid and helpless where the labour becomes
mental? What if, struggle as she will, she can become nothing in the
future but the pet pug-dog of the race, lying on its sofa, or the Italian
greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What if woman, in spite of her
most earnest aspirations and determined struggles, be destined to failure
in the new world that is rising because of inherent mental incapacity?

There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion. It is often
said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the past and
present, and in all classes of society in which she is not parasitic, do
demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility and mental
activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron's wife who guided
her large household probably had to expend far more pure intellect in doing
so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that the wife of the city
accountant probably expends today more reason, imagination, forethought,
and memory on the management of her small household, than he in his far
simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil; that, as there is no cause for