girls! And there is no escape, not even in common sense. A woman
considered sensible in the very highest degree will dress her little
girl like other little girls, or perish in the attempt. How many do
thus perish, or are helped to perish, we shall never know. A frail,
delicate woman said to me one day, "Oh, I do hope the fashions will
change before Sissy grows up, for I don't see how it will be possible
for me to make her clothes." You observe her submissive, law-abiding
spirit. The possibility of evading the law never even suggests itself.
There is many a feeble mother of grown and growing "Sissys" to whom
the spring or fall dressmaking appears like an avalanche coming to
overwhelm her, or a Juggernaut coming to roll over her. She asks not,
"How shall I escape?" but, "How shall I endure?" Let her console
herself. These semi-annual experiences are all "mission." All sewing is
"mission;" all cooking is "mission." It matters not what she cooks,
nor what she sews. "Domestic," and worthy all praise, does the
community consider that woman who keeps her hands employed, and is
bodily present with her children inside the house.

But her bodily presence, even with mother love and longing to do her
best, is not enough. There should be added two things,--knowledge and
wisdom. These, however, she does not have, because to obtain them are
needed what she does not get,--leisure, tranquillity, and the various
resources and appliances of culture; also because their importance is
not felt even by herself; also because the community does not yet see
that she has need of them. And this brings us round to the point we
started from,--namely, that the present unsatisfactory state of things
is owing largely to the want of insight, or _unenlightenment_,
which prevails concerning what woman needs and must have in order
rightly to fulfil her mission.