02 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCU IM.DIA. 



B noble career for any young woman. It requires talent, patience, 

 enormous industry, and some courage, to endure jealous criticism. 



The quarrel in Edinburgh respecting the female doctors, and the oppo- 

 sition everywhere to the entrance of women upon men's chosen fields are 

 fresh enough in the memory of our readers. We need not enter upon 

 this subject here. 



Women of heroic force have great difficulty in finding their places in 

 the world. They are too active, too full of the unrest of genius, to be 

 always happy at home ; the great woman is, when young, like the ugly 

 duckling. She does not' please her mother or gratify her sisters. She 

 does not like to go to parties society bores her. She may not be pretty; if 

 she is, she does not care for compliments. If a great philanthropist, like 

 Florence Nightingale or Sister Dora, is being developed for the use of the 

 world, ten to one this particular bird is too large for the nest, and discom- 

 fits all the rest. 



A woman of literary gifts, like Miss Martineau, who is being brought 

 up to plain sewing, and who has to come to her real work through much 

 family strife and contention, is no doubt very disagreeable and troublesome 

 to those who have no strivings, no immortal fire to take care of. Such 

 women generally leave a record of much suffering, of early injustice, of 

 the unkindness of relatives, behind them, and claim that, had they been 

 treated better and better understood, they would have been finer charac- 

 ters and more useful to their day and generation. 



There is no doubt of the fact that a narrow-minded mother has often 

 ruined the development and the usefulness of her gifted daughter. She 

 least of all comprehends the child who, though her very own, has all the 

 qualities of another race. It once gave a very good mother the most 

 acute pain because her daughter threw an apple-paring into the fire 

 exactly like her aunt Clarissa. " What do you want to do that for, ex- 

 actly like your aunt ?" was the angry question. Aunt Clarissa was the 

 father's sister, and particularly disagreeable to the mother. It was a 

 perfectly honest and irresistible disgust. We can imagine how much 

 more powerful it would be if carried beyond apple-parings. 



A young artist in Paris, who made a good living for her mother and 

 sister, declared with tears that she had never been forgiven by either of 

 them for deserting her sewing-machine for the palette, and it was evident 

 that she was not clear in her own mind as to whether she had not di s ~ 

 graced herself. 



These are instances of narrowness happily conspicuous, and we hope 

 few. But should not parents deeply consider them, and ask themselves 



