fellow-women alone, but for the benefit of humanity at large, it is
necessary she should seek to readjust herself to life, which lends to the
modern woman's most superficial and seemingly trivial attempts at
readjustment, a certain dignity and importance.

It is this profound hidden conviction which removes from the sphere of the
ridiculous the attitude of even the feeblest woman who waves her poor
little "Woman's rights" flag on the edge of a platform, and which causes us
to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always wisely thought
out, in which she would represent the suffering and evils of woman's
condition, as wrongs intentionally inflicted upon her, where they are
merely the inevitable results of ages of social movement.

It is this over-shadowing consciousness of a large impersonal obligation,
which removes from the sphere of the contemptible and insignificant even
the action of the individual young girl, who leaves a home of comfort or
luxury for a city garret, where in solitude, and under that stern pressure
which is felt by all individuals in arms against the trend of their
environment, she seeks to acquire the knowledge necessary for entering on a
new form of labour. It is this profound consciousness which makes not less
than heroic the figure of the little half-starved student, battling against
gigantic odds to take her place beside man in the fields of modern
intellectual toil, and which, whether she succeed or fail, makes her a
landmark in the course of our human evolution. It is this consciousness of
large impersonal ends to be attained, and to the attainment of which each
individual is bound to play her part, however small, which removes from the
domain of the unnecessary, and raises to importance, the action of each
woman who resists the tyranny of fashions in dress or bearing or custom
which impedes her in her strife towards the new adjustment.