XVIII
IF the division of the home, and the inevitable consequences that followed on that division, had done nothing more than teach some of us to value our health and respect our brains we should have very good cause to bless the break-up of that over-estimated institution. But, as a matter of fact, our contact with the wider world is doing a great deal more for us than that. It is testing our powers in new directions; it is bringing new interests into our lives; it is teaching us how very like we are unto our brothers—given similar environment; and, most important of all, it is sweeping away with a steady hand that distrust and ignorance of each other which was alike the curse and the natural result of age-long isolation in the home and immemorial training in the service, not of each other, but only of our masters.
It may be true that women in general once disliked and meanly despised each other. At
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