INTRODUCTION 



known to the unknown, and, by studying the 

 few who are recorded in written history, judge 

 of that great majority who, though nameless, 

 have yet so largely helped to make up the world's 

 unwritten history. Just as many a flower blooms 

 and dies unseen, so many a woman must have 

 lived her life, serviceable to her special environ- 

 ment, but wholly unrecorded. Just as, in the 

 course of ages, the seeds of some humble plant 

 have been carried by wind or water from some 

 lonely region to one less remote, and made to 

 serve a purpose by adding to the sum-total of 

 beauty and usefulness, so the thoughts and deeds 

 of many an unremembered woman have doubtless 

 passed into the great ocean of thought, encircling 

 us to-day, and influencing us as a living force. 



Thus we have the women who figure in 

 history, and whom we must take as types of the 

 influential woman of the time, and the women 

 whom history has not so honoured. Of the 

 former, even when only portrayed in outline, we 

 can learn something, but how are we to learn 

 anything of the latter, whether living in the 

 seclusion of religious houses or in the world ? 

 Of those living in religious houses, we know 

 from records that, besides attending to their own 

 spiritual and mental education and tending the 

 sick, they conducted the cloister schools and 

 taught in them needlework, the art of con- 



xv b 



