ple. That a woman's intellect is
eminently fitted for business is proved by the enormous amount of
business she gets through without any special training for it: but those
faults in a woman of which some men complain are simply the results of
her not having had a special training. She does not know the laws of
business. She does not know the rules of the game she is playing; and
therefore she is playing it in the dark, in fear and suspicion, apt to
judge of questions on personal grounds, often offending those with whom
she has to do, and oftener still making herself miserable over matters of
law or of business, on which a little sound knowledge would set her head
and her heart at rest.

When I have seen widows, having the care of children, of a great
household, of a great estate, of a great business, struggling heroically,
and yet often mistakenly; blamed severely for selfishness and ambition,
while they were really sacrificing themselves with the divine instinct of
a mother for their children's interest: I have stood by with mingled
admiration and pity, and said to myself--"How nobly she is doing the work
without teaching! How much more nobly would she have done it had she
been taught! She is now doing the work at the most enormous waste of
energy and of virtue: had she had knowledge, thrift would have followed
it; she would have done more work with far less trouble. She will
probably kill herself if she goes on: sound knowledge would have saved
her health, saved her heart, saved her friends, and helped the very loved
ones for whom she labours, not always with success."

A little political economy, therefore, will at least do no harm to a
woman; especially if she have to take care of herself in after life;
neither, I think, will she be much harmed by some sound knowledge of
another subject, which I see promised in these lectures,--"Natural
philosophy, in its various branches, such as the chemistry of common
life, light, heat, electricity, &c., &c."

A little knowledge of the laws of light, for instance, would teach many
women that by shutting themselves up day after day, week after week, in
darkened rooms, they are as certainly committing a waste of health,
destroying their vital energy, and diseasing their brains, as if they
were taking so much poison the whole time.

A little knowledge of the laws of heat would teach women not to clothe
themselves and their children after foolish and insufficient fashions,