522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wholesome food and clothing adapted to climate, upon the future 

 health and mental development of her children. It seems to be only 

 just now dawning on women that domesticity — that is, the care of the 

 household and children — is in itself a profession for which the best 

 training and the fullest development attainable are not too much. 



The education of women has tended to develop along the same 

 lines as that of men. The classical education for the gentleman has 

 changed to the general education for the average man, and to the 

 specialized education for the industries as well as for the profes- 

 siojis. A similar change is taking place in the education of women, 

 but has reached only the second stage. Those who first insisted upon 

 the value of a higher education for women thought it sufficient that 

 they should have the same opportunities as men. This experiment 

 has been tried now for a generation, and it is found that all women do 

 not need the same kind of training as men any more than all men 

 need a purely classical or a purely scientific education. In other 

 words, individualism is breaking up all the accepted lines of educa- 

 tion for women as it has for men. As a result, differentiation of 

 courses within the higher training is demanded to meet the practical 

 needs of a life in which no two individuals can possibly do precisely 

 the same things. The fact that one third of all women in the 

 United States are married sets them aside as needing a peculiar train- 

 ing for their profession. 



In domestic life women need at least two things: first, the great- 

 est general culture attainable to enrich the home life and to retain 

 the sympathies of children, as well as to store up for themselves 

 resources in hours of difficulty, loneliness, or sorrow; second, they 

 need an education adapted to the everyday business, especially to 

 the emergencies, of domestic life. No education is complete nor, 

 indeed, of great permanent value that does not teach how to live 

 contentedly and to economize nerve energy. To be contented, one 

 must feel sure that one is in the right place, and must have spiritual 

 and intellectual resources to tide over life's emergencies whose end 

 one can not see. To be economical of nerve energy, one must learn 

 a finely balanced self-control and a large-minded discrimination be- 

 tween the values of competing duties and attractions. 



It is a significant fact that of one hundred and eighty-four living 

 children of two hundred and twenty-eight almshouse women, less 

 than one third are self-supporting. One fourth are lost — that is, they 

 have been separated from the mother in one way or another, and 

 she no longer knows where they are. The women themselves give 

 all sorts of plausible reasons why their children do not support 

 them; but the fact is, as the stories show, that nineteen women were 

 cast off by their relatives or children because of their drunken. 



