man's work to his capacities as long ages ago she graduated the colours on
the bird's breast. If we are not fit, you give us, to no purpose, the
right to labour; the work will fall out of our hands into those that are
wiser."

She talked more rapidly as she went on, as one talks of that over which
they have brooded long, and which lies near their hearts.

Waldo watched her intently.

"They say women have one great and noble work left them, and they do it
ill. That is true; they do it execrably. It is the work that demands the
broadest culture, and they have not even the narrowest. The lawyer may see
no deeper than his law-books, and the chemist see no further than the
windows of his laboratory, and they may do their work well. But the woman
who does woman's work needs a many-sided, multiform culture; the heights
and depths of human life must not be beyond the reach of her vision; she
must have knowledge of men and things in many states, a wide catholicity of
sympathy, the strength that springs from knowledge, and the magnanimity
which springs from strength. We bear the world, and we make it. The souls
of little children are marvellously delicate and tender things, and keep
forever the shadow that first falls on them, and that is the mother's or at
best a woman's. There was never a great man who had not a great mother--it
is hardly an exaggeration. The first six years of our life make us; all
that is added later is veneer; and yet some say, if a woman can cook a
dinner or dress herself well she has culture enough.

"The mightiest and noblest of human work is given to us, and we do it ill.
Send a navvie to work into an artist's studio, and see what you will find
there! And yet, thank God, we have this work," she added, quickly--"it is