man's
sphere was greatly agitated, and was academically and forensically
debated pro and con, women themselves were practically settling the
matter at issue by accepting positions in commercial life, with
little regard to the censure of critics or the praise of friends. The
independence shown by women, their self-assertiveness, indicated that
their failure previously to break into the outer world of affairs was
not due to the force of convention, but to the lack of opportunity.
Their excess in the population of the country afforded them strong
ground for the claim, which they practically made in accepting the
opportunities of business life,--that the sphere of domesticity was
not open to them all. It is not a question as to whether woman is
or is not in her sphere outside of the home or the limited circle of
aesthetic following; for the time of theorizing is already past, and
women have become so identified with industry as to preclude the
possibility of a return to the narrower life. _Vestigia nulla
refrorsum_ is the motto of woman to-day, and has been from the early
part of the nineteenth century. She is in the line of progress, and
following her manifest destiny. The fears of the faint-hearted and the
regrets of the conservative cannot alter the established fact that
the practical status which women achieved in the nineteenth century is
theirs, to be recognized and furthered.

The views prevailing in the nineteenth century with regard to
matrimony were not greatly different from those of the eighteenth: it
was considered just as discreditable to be an old maid, and marriage
was the goal of existence for young women; but there was a portion of
the sex who were willing to brave the aspersions cast upon them and
to remain single--when the opportunity to do otherwise was not
wanting--in order that they might follow careers which offered to them
greater interest or profit. It was inevitable that such choice should
lay them open to the charge of unsexing themselves and of being
recreant to that _esprit de corps_ of womankind which finds its common
interest in the achieving of matrimony. Women would never have
wrought out their independence of action if there had not been a great
widening of life's opportunities. The ease of locomotion, abundant
opportunities for education, and the lightening of domestic labor
by inventions, were the important factors which made it possible
for women to step out into the avenues of active