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CONSTANCE L. MAYNARD, ON THE 



appears in outbursts, and tlie principle worked on is that of 

 Might is Eight." This is not wrong : it is nothing but uneven 

 growth. It is the man-spirit claiming his inheritance, and 

 obeying the first command ever given to the human race, 

 " Subdue the earth — ^have dominion." 



At about two years old our children scream and fight, and say 

 " No " and " I won't," and clutch a thing so tightly, they will 

 tear it and hurt themselves rather than give way ; but, a little 

 later, skill and cunning begin to be mixed with force. Even as 

 Primitive Man found it was easier to snare a wild animal than 

 to encounter its strength face to face, so there comes in a spirit 

 of invention among our babes which it is hardly fair to call 

 lying. The child finds a better way of gaining its ends than by 

 pitting its little strength against that of a grown person, and that 

 is by some kind of artifice or deception. Up to about seven years 

 old children may be considered as racial rather than individual 

 characters, but after this the boy and the girl begin to di:ffer a 

 Httle, though in my opinion they should be treated alike for 

 some years longer. The new development is the birth of 

 sympathy within, and protective care of the weaker side, and 

 the sense of compassion. This is the awakening of the Woman- 

 spirit, and in our grand old Narrative that will never be dis- 

 credited we see how true it is that Eve is created a long while 

 after Adam. Some children are most luminous examples of this 

 development of character, and you may see a little boy who was 

 a terror of screams and hitting out at two years old, and who at 

 four did not know truth from falsehood, and would try cruelly 

 to stamp upon the frogs in the garden, become a very Prince 

 Pitiful by eight or nine. Eve is created, the balance is attained, 

 and all goes well. 



Now turn from these bright instructive little pictures at our 

 knee and glance at the whole world in its present position. All 

 stages are simultaneous here. The lowest stage is brute force, 

 where the woman, by her obvious muscular inferiority, becomes 

 the drudge and the beast of burden. The early Moravian 

 missionaries describe a feast among the Esquimaux : the men 

 are sitting round the captured seal, cooking and eating for five 

 or six hours at a time, and throwing the bones over their shoulders 

 to a mixed crowd of women and dogs, there to be wrangled for 

 with cries and blows. A httle higher in the scale and you may 

 see women counted as a great treasure, but woefully misused. 

 Man reaches the very height of his ingenious tyranny, and then 



