its time--did we ever cry out that the labour allotted to us was too hard
for us? Did we not know that the woman who threw down her burden was as a
man who cast away his shield in battle--a coward and a traitor to his race?
Man fought--that was his work; we fed and nurtured the race--that was ours.
We knew that upon our labours, even as upon man's, depended the life and
well-being of the people whom we bore. We endured our toil, as man bore
his wounds, silently; and we were content.

Then again a change came.

Ages passed, and time was when it was no longer necessary that all men
should go to the hunt or the field of war; and when only one in five, or
one in ten, or but one in twenty, was needed continually for these labours.
Then our fellow-man, having no longer full occupation in his old fields of
labour, began to take his share in ours. He too began to cultivate the
field, to build the house, to grind the corn (or make his male slaves do
it); and the hoe, and the potter's tools, and the thatching-needle, and at
last even the grindstones which we first had picked up and smoothed to
grind the food for our children, began to pass from our hands into his.
The old, sweet life of the open fields was ours no more; we moved within
the gates, where the time passes more slowly and the world is sadder than
in the air outside; but we had our own work still, and were content.

If, indeed, we might no longer grow the food for our people, we were still
its dressers; if we did not always plant and prepare the flax and hemp, we
still wove the garments for our race; if we did no longer raise the house
walls, the tapestries that covered them were the work of our hands; we
brewed the ale, and the simples which were used as medicines we distilled
and prescribed; and, close about our feet, from birth to manhood, grew up
the children whom we had borne; their voices were always in our ears. At