watchfulness? Has not mother-love been working over perplexing problems
and worries of home and of the training of the children that wifely
love may make her seek to solve in secret? Is man, then, the weaker sex
that he must be pampered and treated as tenderly as a boil trying to
keep from contact with the world?

In their hurry to attain some ambition, to gratify the dream of a life,
men often throw honor, truth, and generosity to the winds. Politicians
dare to stand by and see a city poisoned with foul water until they
"see where they come in" on a water-works appropriation. If it be
necessary to poison an army,--that, too, is but an incident in the
hurry for wealth.

This is the Age of the Hothouse. The element of natural growth is
pushed to one side and the hothouse and the force-pump are substituted.
Nature looks on tolerantly as she says: "So far you may go, but no
farther, my foolish children."

The educational system of to-day is a monumental institution dedicated
to Hurry. The children are forced to go through a series of studies
that sweep the circle of all human wisdom. They are given everything
that the ambitious ignorance of the age can force into their minds;
they are taught everything but the essentials,--how to use their senses
and how to think. Their minds become congested by a great mass of
undigested facts, and still the cruel, barbarous forcing goes on. You
watch it until it seems you cannot stand it a moment longer, and you
instinctively put out your hand and say: "Stop! This modern slaughter
of the Innocents must _not_ go on!" Education smiles suavely,
waves her hand complacently toward her thousands of knowledge-prisons
over the country, and says: "Who are you that dares speak a word