BENJAMIN HATHAWAY--_By the Fireside._


The question of celibacy is too large and complicated to be here
discussed in its moral and sociological aspects. It is a condition that
confronts us, must be accepted, and the best made of it. Whether by
economic compulsion or personal preference, it is a fact that a large
number of American men remain bachelors, and a corresponding number of
American women content themselves with a life of "single blessedness."
It is a tendency of modern life that marriage be deferred more and more
to a later period of maturity. Accordingly the period of spinsterhood is
an important one for consideration. It is a question of individual
mental attitude whether the period be viewed by the single woman as a
preparation for possible marriage, or as the determining of a permanent
condition of life. In either case the problem before her is to choose,
like Mr. Hathaway's heroine, "the better part."

The single woman has an advantage over her married sister in freedom
of choice, of self-improvement, and service to others. Says George Eliot
of the wife, "A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts."
The "bachelor girl," on the other hand, has virtually all the liberty
of the man whom her name indicates that she emulates.

To the unmarried woman, especially the one who may subsequently marry,
education in the broad sense of self-culture and development is of
primary importance. The question of being should take precedence over
doing, although not to the exclusion of the latter, for character is
best formed by action. But all her studies, occupations, even her
pastimes, should be pursued with the main purpose of making herself
the ideal woman, such an one as Wordsworth describes, one with: