them to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far
off the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up
to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that is
growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on the
baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And they
leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to seek for
new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?--perhaps to find
them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, "Ah, good old mother duck,
can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the water back
into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was
there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours swim again, it
must be in other waters." New machinery, new duties.)

But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women's material
domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient field
of labour.

Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult years
were reached. Hers was the training and influence which shaped them. From
the moment when the infant first lay on her breast, till her daughters left
her for marriage and her sons went to take share in man's labour, they were
continually under the mother's influence. Today, so complex have become
even the technical and simpler branches of education, so mighty and
inexorable are the demands which modern civilisation makes for specialised
instruction and training for all individuals who are to survive and retain
their usefulness under modern conditions, that, from the earliest years of
its life, the child is of necessity largely removed from the hands of the
mother, and placed in those of the specialised instructor. Among the
wealthier classes, scarcely is the infant born when it passes into the
hands of the trained nurse, and from hers on into the hands of the