y-looking
lad, and asked him if he wanted a job. It was what the boy was looking
for.

"Got a character?" asked the farmer. The boy replied that he had for the
last two years been working for Mr. Muggs, the ironmonger--felt sure that
Mr. Muggs would give him a good character.

"Well, go and ask Mr. Muggs to come across and speak to me, I will wait
here," directed the would-be employer. Five minutes went by--ten
minutes. No Mr. Muggs appeared. Later in the afternoon the farmer met
the boy again.

"Mr. Muggs never came near me with that character of yours," said the
farmer.

"No, sir," answered the boy, "I didn't ask him to."

"Why not?" inquired the farmer.

"Well, I told him who it was that wanted it"--the boy hesitated.

"Well?" demanded the farmer, impatiently.

"Well, then, he told me yours," explained the boy.

Maybe the working woman, looking for a husband, and not merely a
livelihood, may end by formulating standards of her own. She may end by
demanding the manly man and moving about the world, knowing something of
life, may arrive at the conclusion that something more is needed than the
smoking of pipes and the drinking of whiskies and sodas. We must be
prepared for this. The sheltered woman who learnt her life from fairy
stories is a dream of the past. Woman has escaped from her "shelter"--she
is on the loose. For the future we men have got to accept the
emancipated woman as an accomplished fact.

The ideal World.

Many of us are worried about her. What is going to become of the home? I
admit there is a more ideal existence where the working woman would find
no place; it is in a world that exists only on the comic opera stage.
There every picturesque village contains an equal number of ladies and
gentlemen nearly all the same height and weight, to all appearance of the
same age. Each Jack has his Jill, and does not want anybody else's.
There are no complications: one presumes they draw lots and fall in love
the moment they unscrew the paper. They dance for awhile on grass which
is never damp, and then into the conveniently situated ivy-covered church
they troop in pairs and are wedded off hand by a white-haired clergyman,
who is a married man himself.

Ah, if the world were but a comic opera stage, there would be no need for
working women! As a matter of fact, so far as one can judge from the
front of the house, there are no working men either.

But outside the opera house i