better. Why, then, should it be assumed that it is the natural thing for a married woman to take over these particular departments of work, and that when a bride undertakes to love, honour, and obey her husband, she also undertakes to scrub his floors and fry his steaks? The answer to that question seems to be, not that it is natural for a woman to like a form of labour which is usually monotonous and without prospect, but that it is quite natural for a man to dislike it—and therefore leave it to some one else.
One of the best examples, in a small way, of the tendency I have been speaking of I got not long ago from a friend of mine, a woman of the working-class. I happened to be one of an audience she was addressing, when she suddenly put to it the unexpected question—"Why does the father carve the joint in rich people's houses, when in poor people's houses it is the mother who carves it?" One, at least, of her audience was entirely at a loss for an answer to the conundrum until it was duly furnished by the speaker—running as follows: "In rich people's houses the father carves the joint, because there is always enough to go round and the carver can
