for a person's highest
good, for that person's sake.

Gradually the glamour of society, the lethe of a luxurious life,
paralyzed her ambition, which clamored less and less peremptorily for
recognition, until at length she subsided into a life of almost total
inaction.

Multitudes of women in this country to-day are vegetating in luxurious
homes, listless, ambitionless, living narrow, superficial, rutty lives,
because the spur of necessity has been taken away from them; because
their husbands, who do not want them to work, have taken them out of an
ambition-arousing environment.

But a life of leisure is not the only way of paralyzing the development
of a wife's individuality. It can be done just as effectively by her
becoming a slave of her family. I believe that the average wife is
confined to her home a great deal too much.

Many women do not seem to have any existence outside of the little home
orbit; do not have any special interests or pleasures to speak of apart
from their husbands. They have been brought up to think that wives have
very little purpose in life other than to be the slaves and playthings of
their lords and masters, to bear and bring up children, and to keep
meekly in the background.

The wife who wishes to hold her husband's affection, if he is ambitious,
must continue to grow, must keep pace with him mentally. She must make a
continual investment in self-improvement and in intellectual charm so
that her mental growth will compensate for the gradual loss of physical
charm. She must keep her husband's admiration, and if he is a
progressive man he is not likely to admire a wife who stands still
mentally. Admiration is a very important part of love.

You may be very sure that if you have an ambitious husband you must do
something to keep up with him besides lounging, idling about the home,
reading silly novels, dressing stylishly and waiting for him to return at
night. If he sees that your sun rises and sets in him, that you have
little interest outside, that you are not broadening and deepening your
life in other ways by extending your interests, reaching out for
self-enlargement, self-improvement, he will be disappointed in you, and
this will be a great strain upon his love.

It is impossible for a girl who has had only a little schooling to
appreciate the transforming power that comes from liberal education and
broad culture. For the sake of her husband and children and her own
peac