ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN. J 3 



rently incompatible characters. She often brings to 

 married life bright counsels and wide serviceableness 

 and genuine if not inordinate affection ;^ but in both 

 active men and active women marriage is much influ- 

 enced by ambition, or a love of change, or obedience 

 to well-recognised custom and a desire to be ' settled 

 in life/ or from a sincere wish to enter a greater 

 sphere of usefulness. 



It is popularly believed that a mother's love is 

 greater than a father's. A mother's love is a telling 

 figure of speech ; but it is more poetically telling than 

 physiologically true. If the father is of an unim pas- 

 sioned temperament and the mother is not, the mother's 

 love is the greater ; but if the mother is unimpassioned 

 and the father is not, then the father's love is the 

 greater. Herein is another illustration of the fact that 

 sex plays a minor part in the classification of character. 

 Some men and some women are passionately attached 

 to their children ; some men and some women are not. 



It is in the domestic circle, and only here perhaps, 

 that the least pleasing aspect of the active and passion- 

 less and slightly gifted woman is discernible ; here she 

 throws off the disguises which she assumes in social 

 life ; here she indulges in disapproving and discon- 

 nected comment. Even here gleams of sunshine may 

 come, but no one can foresee when the sun will come 

 and when the cloud. It is curious that although the 

 busy unemotional woman is keenly self-conscious, she 

 has little or no self-analysis. If she is plainly accused 

 of habitual disapproval she is surprised and offended 

 and intimates, quite truly, that she desires only the 

 general good, " but some people do not know what is 

 good for them." She has one way of doing good to 

 her family, and quite another way of doing good to 



