484 



The Review of Reviews. 



Photograph by] \Swahte, Southsea. 



The late Mrs. Thurston. 



MRS. THURSTON. 



The Author for October has a note by M. B. L. 

 on Mrs. Thurston. The writer of " John Chilcot, 

 M.P.," possessed a singularly agreeable and gentle 

 personality. She had none of the exuberance, or 



the very natural 

 desire to discuss 

 herself and her 

 work, which is 

 so typical of the 

 literary tem- 

 perament. Even 

 to her intimates 

 she seldom 

 spoke of her 

 books, and yet 

 it is clear that 

 her work must 

 liave meant a 

 ;;reat deal to 

 lier. Each of 

 lier stories 

 .shows conscien- 

 tious care; and 

 when she was 

 engaged on a 

 new one it 

 would absorb 

 her to the ex- 

 clusion of every- 

 thing else. As so often happens the novel which 

 most closely reflected the life she knew, namely 

 •' The Fly on the Wheel," was that which her readers 

 liked the least. Her first long novel, " The Circle," 

 was founded on a short story which was an early 

 imaginative effort, not written with a view to pub- 

 lication. 



THE WOMAN THAT IS TO BE? 



In the October Fonim Miss H. A. Lar.sen writes 

 on Ellen Key, the Swedish authoress, as an apostle of 

 life. She says that her untranslated essay, " The 

 Woman of the Future," is like a whirr of white wings. 

 Ellen Key writes : — 



she is chaste, not because slic is coltl, but because she is 

 passionate. She is noble, not because she is pale, but because 

 she is fuU-blooiled. She is soulful, and therefore sensuous ; she 

 is proud, and therefore true. She demands a great love, because 

 she can give an even greater. Her refined idealism will make 

 the erotic problem very difficult of solution and sometimes 

 insoluble. But, on the other hand, she will be able to feel and 

 give a happinfss that is much deeper, richer, and more lasting than 

 anything \vc have hitherto called happiness. Many qualifies of 

 the present wife and mother will prubably be lacking in tlie 

 woman of the future. She will always remain a mistress, and 

 iinly so will she become a mother. .She will dedicate her best 

 strength to the difficult art of being at once a mistress and a 

 mother. To create the felicity of life will be her religious cult. 

 She will understand and reverence the physical and psy- 

 chological conditions of health and happiness, and therefore 

 she will bring a clearer vision and a deeper sense of respon- 

 sibility to the choice of her children's father. She will bear 

 and foster healthy and beautiful human beings, .and she herself 



will possess a finer beauty and a longer youth than the woman 

 of the present. . . . Her nature gushes forth, IVesh and free 

 like the swell of the waterfall, but, like the waterfall, bound 

 in a firm inner rhythm. However far she may go— in tlie 

 intoxication of joy, the passion of tenderness, or the vehemence 

 of pain — she never loses herself She is many women and yet 

 always one. 



THE RELIGION OF LIFE. 



Of Ellen Key's general mission the writer says : — 



She preaches the religion of joy instead of the religion of 

 duty, and joy she sees in the most intense activity of all our 

 powers, whether of work or love, of sacrifice or merely of sensu- 

 ous delight in colour and motion. As the athlete nmst renounce 

 the lesser pleasures for the supreme pleasure of knowing that 

 every fibre in his body is obedient to his will, so the believer in 

 life must often renounce its slighter impulses to satisfy the 

 greater, and this is the only moral self-renunciation. Our petty 

 worries and amusements leave us no time for great emotions, 

 not even for our giiefs. W'e sliould make a silence, \\ here they 

 can meet us " in sable-clothed majesty " and teach us their lesson ' 

 from the depths of life. Sometimes an individual may find the 

 truest enhancement of his own life in a sacrifice for another. 

 The widened sympathy gained by living in another's life may 

 give him at last a deeper joy than that which he gave up. But 

 where it is a question of little soul-stunting conventions and 

 compromises, there sacrifice is the sin of sins. 'Ihere the 

 individual must assert his righi to live the life of his own soul, , 

 even if he must live it by dying for it. jj 



CO-OPERATIVE HOUSING FOR EDUCATED WOMEN 

 WORKERS. 



The response made to an appeal published in the 

 March number of the Review of Reviews for money 

 in support of a scheme to establish a Co-operative 

 Residence for ladies has been very helpful, and the 

 society has been put on a sound footing in spite 

 of much unlooked-for opposition, and a company 

 registered with shares at jQi each and dividends 

 limited to five per cent. A small hou.se has been 

 leased to begin with, and its few rooms are already 

 practically filled by permanent residents. 



The Directors and their friends feel quite satisfied 

 that this encouragement justifies their having at- 

 tempted a solution, in this manner, to such an old- 

 standing difficulty as is presented by the housing 

 of working ladies, whose need of homelike and 

 refined surroundings is so distressingly great, and 

 whose lack of capital puts it entirely out of their 

 power to co-operate for their own well-being without 

 outside assistance. If the full number for whom the 

 estimate was made, viz., forty to fifty ladies, are to be 

 accommodated this winter it is absolutely imperative 

 that adjoining premises should immediately be leased, 

 and for this purpose, with furniture and fittings, etc., 

 j^5oo must be provided at a very early date. 



The manageinent therefore urgently begs those 

 l.idies and gentlemen to whose notice the helpless 

 position of lady workers has in this respect been 

 brought home, immediately to apply for shares. 



A\'hen a sufficient number of residents can be 

 housed a coininitlee will be formed from among their 

 number, with one as secretary, to deal with their 

 difficulties and desires. Please note the new address 

 is No. 7, .Millman Street, Great Ormond Street, W.C. 



