WOMEN PROFESSIONS AND SKILLED LABOR. 463 



the character of women, and is not the result of education. Mungo 

 Park tells us that, when sick and thirsting, and maltreated by the 

 natives of Africa, the women of the savage tribe visited him and sup- 

 plied his wants. I will give one instance, which is a type of charac- 

 ter, and shows how sympathy and natural feeling may interfere with 

 professional advancement. 



The wife of a practising physician, being of a scientific tendency 

 of mind, acquired a theoretical knowledge of her husband's profession. 

 The husband died, and left the widow poor and with several children, 

 some of them so young as to demand much of her time and thought. 

 She continued the study of medicine with the design of making it the 

 means of support for herself and children. To this end she attended 

 lectures at a woman's medical college. Before she obtained her di- 

 ploma, an old, superannuated Presbyterian clergyman excited her sym- 

 pathy by his forlornness. She gave him a home in a very womanly 

 wa y s he made him her husband. Here was a double burden an 

 old man, and little children. This physician, although laden with her 

 great, womanly heart, was prosperous in a small way. She secured 

 the position of house-physician in the hospital connected with the col- 

 lege, with a small salary, and with sufficient time to attend to private 

 patients. Her pecuniary prospects were better than those of young- 

 physicians of the other sex. The husband soon died. At this point 

 in the history occurred an incident which seems to me to be phenome- 

 nal, and yet is typical. A second old clergyman, equally forlorn 

 and wretched as the first, accepted the charity of this woman by be- 

 coming her husband. Her practice slowly increased ; her children 

 were well clad and well educated. A daughter married, and moved, 

 with her husband, to a distant city. A son studied medicine, and the 

 last husband died. The next act in this singular history reveals an 

 intensity of maternal feeling entirely opposed to a business success in 

 a difficult profession. Gifted with a fine mind, as thoroughly edu- 

 cated in her profession as the majority of medical men, with good 

 health, and having reached that time of life when she was functionally 

 at rest, and with every encouragement to remain at her post, yet she 

 made a better mother than doctor. She resigned her position in the 

 hospital ; abandoned her private practice ; and moved to the city in 

 which her daughter resided, in order to be near her child and grand- 

 children and there, in a strange community, recommenced the diffi- 

 cult occupation of a female physician. This history is truly a physio- 

 logical study, and reveals the intensity of feeling which may exist in 

 all women upon subjects which lie near the heart. 



The common standard of professional success is a pecuniary one. 

 Public opinion will apply this standard to women as rigidly as it does 

 to men. It is a common experience to meet men of the highest men- 

 tal training in their professions, yet who fail completely in a business 

 sense, owing to idiosyncrasies of mind. In this way the sympathies 



