We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two thousand years,
and study our descent; our breed is our explanation. We are the daughters
of our fathers as well as of our mothers. In our dreams we still hear the
clash of the shields of our forefathers as they struck them together before
battle and raised the shout of "Freedom!" In our dreams it is with us
still, and when we wake it breaks from our own lips! We are the daughters
of those men.

But, it may be said, "Are there not women among you who would use the
shibboleth, of freedom and labour, merely as a means for opening a door to
a greater and more highly flavoured self-indulgence, to a more lucrative
and enjoyable parasitism? Are there not women who, under the guise of
'work,' are seeking only increased means of sensuous pleasure and self-
indulgence; to whom intellectual training and the opening to new fields of
labour side by side with man, mean merely new means of self-advertisement
and parasitic success?" We answer: There may be such, truly; among us--
but not of us! This at least is true, that we, ourselves, are seldom
deceived by them; the sheep generally recognise the wolf however carefully
fitted the sheepskin under which he hides, though the onlookers may not;
and though not always be able to drive him from the flock! The outer world
may be misled; we, who stand shoulder to shoulder with them, know them;
they are not many; neither are they new. They are one of the oldest
survivals, and among the most primitive relics in the race. They are as
old as Loki among the gods, as Lucifer among the Sons of the Morning, as
the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as pain and dislocation in the web of
human life.

Such women are as old as that first primitive woman who, when she went with
her fellows to gather wood for the common household, put grass in the