AUGUST 425 



our individual lives. But we must remember that Jowett 

 lived in an atmosphere where learning for learning's sake 

 surrounded him, and the choice for him lay between well- 

 directed and mis-directed learning. I cling, however, to 

 the idea that even somewhat useless learning is better than 

 none, as the mere effort to learn does good. 



Mothers who like keeping their girls at home, and who 

 see them content in a round of empty gaiety and excite- 

 ment, often say : ' I am in no hurry for my girls to 

 marry ; they are happy and merry at home.' As men's 

 bachelor lives often unfit them for marriage, so girls' 

 lives are just as apt to do the same. They have to 

 fit themselves for either marriage or old-maidism, and 

 this is not done by prolonging unduly the life described 

 in one line by La Fontaine : La cigale ayant chante tout 

 V&te, etc. I remember my mother telling me that she 

 had rather pitied a sad-looking elderly girl at a Newcastle 

 ball. Her partner remarked : ' Yes, no wonder ; poor girl ! 

 she is just recovering from her seven-and-twentieth dis- 

 appointment.' This of course is an exaggeration, but it 

 is characteristic of what may happen. After a certain 

 amount of rushing about, a girl should herself realise that 

 she can no more live on social excitements without 

 deterioration than her body can thrive on sal-volatile. 

 These remarks 'must always apply only to the large 

 average. Women who are very attractive to men, as I 

 said in my first book, have the ball at their feet, and, as 

 regards the other sex, can do as they like. 



One of the best, noblest, and most useful old maids 

 I have ever known once said to me : ' Why was I not 

 warned, why did no one remind me that to most women 

 the chances do not come often, and that if we do not take 

 them while we are young and have something to give, 

 they do not come again, or not at any rate in the way 

 that, being older, we can accept ? ' 



