heir children, the
number of incapables."

"Well," said Bob, "what would you have? What is to be done?"

"In the first place," said I, "I would have it felt, by those who are
seeking to elevate woman, that the work is to be done, not so much by
creating for her new spheres of action as by elevating her conceptions
of that domestic vocation to which God and Nature have assigned her.
It is all very well to open to her avenues of profit and advancement
in the great outer world; but, after all, _to make and keep a home_
is, and ever must be, a woman's first glory, her highest aim. No work
of art can compare with a perfect home; the training and guiding of a
family must be recognized as the highest work a woman can perform; and
female education ought to be conducted with special reference to
this.

"Men are trained to be lawyers, to be physicians, to be mechanics, by
long and self-denying study and practice. A man cannot even make shoes
merely by going to the high school and learning reading, writing, and
mathematics; he cannot be a bookkeeper or a printer simply from
general education.

"Now women have a sphere and profession of their own,--a profession
for which they are fitted by physical organization, by their own
instincts, and to which they are directed by the pointing and manifest
finger of God,--and that sphere is _family life_. Duties to the state
and to public life they may have; but the public duties of women must
bear to their family ones the same relation that the family duties of
men bear to their public ones. The defect in the late efforts to push
on female education is, that it has been for her merely general, and
that it has left out and excluded all that is professional; and she
undertakes the essential duties of womanhood, when they do devolve on
her, without any adequate preparation."

"But is it possible for a girl to learn at school the things which fit
for her family life?" said Bob.

"Why not?" I replied. "Once it was thought impossible in school to
teach girls geometry or algebra, or the higher mathematics; it was
thought impossible to put them through collegiate courses; but it has
been done, and we see it. Women study treatises on political economy
in schools, and why should not the study of domestic economy form a
part of every school course? A young girl will stand up at the
blackboard, and draw and explain the compound blowpipe, and describe
all the processes of making oxygen and hydroge