of parochial matters, wherever they have been allowed to share it, proves
their intellectual and moral fitness for the new forms of labour.

All these statements are certainly interesting, and may be unanswerable.
And yet--if the truth be told, it is not ultimately on these grounds that
many of us base our hope and our certitude with regard to the future of
woman. Our conviction as to the plenitude of her powers for the adequate
performance of lofty labours in these new fields, springs not at all from a
categorical enumeration of the attainments or performances of individual
women or bodies of women in the past or present; it has another source.

There was a bird's egg once, picked up by chance upon the ground, and those
who found it bore it home and placed it under a barn-door fowl. And in
time the chick bred out, and those who had found it chained it by the leg
to a log, lest it should stray and be lost. And by and by they gathered
round it, and speculated as to what the bird might be. One said, "It is
surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we took it to the
water it would swim and gabble." But another said, "It has no webs to its
feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose it will scratch and
cackle with the others on the dung-heap." But a third speculated, "Look
now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, and can crack nuts!" But
a fourth said, "No, but look at its wings; perhaps it is a bird of great
flight." But several cried, "Nonsense! No one has ever seen it fly! Why
should it fly? Can you suppose that a thing can do a thing which no one
has ever seen it do?" And the bird--the bird--with its leg chained close
to the log, preened its wing. So they sat about it, speculating, and
discussing it: and one said this, and another that. And all the while as
they talked the bird sat motionless, with its gaze fixed on the clear, blue
sky above it. And one said, "Suppose we let the creature loose to see what
it will do?"--and the bird shivered. But the others cried, "It is too