"No preparation? But are you acquainted with the different
temperaments a child may have, and the different combinations of them?
Are you competent to the direction and culture of the intellectual and
moral nature? Have you skill to touch the hidden springs of action?
Have you, thus uninstructed, the power, the knowledge, the wisdom,
requisite for guiding that mighty force, a child's soul?"

"Alas! there is hardly a day that I do not feel my ignorance on all
these points."

"Are there no sources from which knowledge may be obtained? There must
be books written on these subjects."

"Possibly; but I have no time to read them."

"No time?--no time to prepare for your chief mission?"

"It is our mission only in print. In real life it plays an extremely
subordinate part."

"What, then, in real life, is your mission?"

"Chiefly cooking and sewing."

"Your husband, then, does not share the common belief in regard to
woman's chief duty."

"Oh, yes! I have heard him express it many a time; though I don't
think he comprehends what a woman needs in order to do her duty by her