SUBMISSION TO DISCIPLINE 239 



bility of holding their own counsel, all these are 

 lessons usually omitted from the youthful train- 

 ing of both village lasses and the daughters of 

 middle-class people. Those who understand them 

 far better are the average young women of the 

 upper classes, because, even if they themselves 

 have not been under good schoolroom discipline, 

 they have heard from their brothers what a public 

 school or a regiment demands from a young man, 

 and so soon develop similar qualities. It is, in- 

 deed, fortunate when such small failings and 

 weaknesses are overcome in childhood, because 

 they appear as insurmountable difficulties when 

 they have to be faced perhaps between twenty and 

 thirty years of age, at a time when all attention 

 should be centred upon technical knowledge for a 

 future profession, when character-building and the 

 unselfishness of community life should long ago 

 have been mastered. 



" It is easy enough to sit here and criticise, but 

 very different and difficult to be standing out in 

 the sun, fielding balls well, if you haven't done it 

 all your life," says the mason's good-looking wife, 

 always a loyal partisan of the gardeners. This 

 remark seems applicable to most criticisms of the 

 work of modern women, and yet those who know 

 by experience what splendid results they can 

 attain, what love they possess for work, only ven- 

 ture to point out those qualities that have not 

 yet reached perfection. 



So much lies before them in the near future, 

 such great things are expected of them at the 

 moment, that their well-wishers become anxiously 

 17 



