missions, and," with a stamp, "I am not going slumming among
the Italians. I have too much respect for the Italians. And what
shall I do with the rest of my life?" That was a frank statement
of what any girl of brains or conscience feels, with more or less
bitter distinctness, unless she marries early, or has some pressing
work for which she is well trained.

Yet even if that which is the profession of woman par excellence
be hers, how can she be perennially so interesting a companion
to her husband and children as if she had keen personal tastes,
long her own, and growing with her growth? Indeed, in that respect
the condition of men is almost the same as that of women. It would
be quite the same were it not for the fact that a man's business
or profession is generally in itself a means of growth, of education,
of dignity. He leans his life against it. He builds his home in
the shadow of it. It binds his days together in a kind of natural
piety and makes him advance in strength and nobility as he "fulfils
the common round, the daily task." And that is the reason why
men in the past, if they have been honorable men, have grown old
better than women. Men usually retain their ability longer, their
mental alertness and hospitality. They add fine quality to fine
quality, passing from strength to strength and preserving in old
age whatever has been best in youth. It was a sudden recognition
of this fact which made a young friend of mine say last winter,
"I am not going to parties any more; the men best worth talking
with are too old to dance."

Even with the help of a permanent business or profession, however,
the most interesting men I know are those who have an avocation
as well as a vocation. I mean a taste or work quite apart from the