od
a heavy responsibility for the sorrows which befell the nation and
struck down the South exhausted and almost destroyed.

A chapter on the Women of Canada affords chief interest for the account
of the _habitantes_, the only distinct Canadian type of womanhood,
though the author recognizes the advanced position occupied by the woman
of British North America.

Of the recent developments of the American woman's activities, the
sphere of which is ever enlarging, the author admirably projects on his
page all the salient movements. Many phases of activity are of course
tentative and their permanency and value are yet undetermined, while
others mark the appreciation of the obligations associated with wealth
or the need of diversion attending the enjoyment of leisure; all,
however, are characteristic of the unresting energy of the American
woman. If this characteristic is responsible for some illogical and
occasionally harmful manifestations, the fact remains that the sum of
the results is vastly preponderant for the good of the nation and the
advancement, morally, intellectually, and physically of humanity.

The author is to be congratulated for his boldness in undertaking to set
forth the broad picture of woman's part in the movements of the last
quarter of a century. The task is perplexing, almost terrifying to mere
man; conditions are in a state of flux or, more properly speaking,
bubbling activity, but a wise discrimination has been shown in the
present case. Much of the American woman's history that is unfamiliar
will be found in this volume, which is sympathetic throughout, and
expresses admiration for the noble and the good in all the stages of
that subtle evolution which we now recognize as the American woman.

JOHN A. BURGAN.
_Hammonton, New Jersey_.

CHAPTER I

THE ABORIGINAL WOMAN

THE attempt to crystallize within the space of a single chapter even the
most salient facts concerning the aboriginal woman of America is one
foredoomed to failure. It is true that even in the present advanced
state of ethnology there is comparatively little knowledge of the
conditions which have obtained, and even of those which do obtain, among
the red people of our continent; we can indeed see and record the outer
results, but the inner causes are still in great measure hidden from us.
The American Indian is a peculiar people in the strictest sense of the
words; an