, if a good job is to be done, in the same
way that it would be done in an office or wherever the woman might be
employed for pay. This housekeeping job can be as scientific and as
engrossing as any office job, or it may be a slipshod, haphazard affair
with everything at sixes and sevens. It all depends upon the woman
whether she makes this side of marriage a career or not.

There is another important aspect to this career. Any woman who means to
make marriage a successful career will study her husband, his
capabilities, his interests, even his peculiarities. She should know
about his business and about his pleasures. It is possible for her to be
a great factor in his success, not by thrusting herself forward as an
advisor, but by understanding so well his character and his career that
she can supplement his shortcomings, bring out the best that is in him,
and expand his interests by adding her own. Thus she can have a
vicarious career by virtue of what she has put into her husband's.

Perhaps the woman who does this is the happiest and most successful
woman, but she has to have the kind of temperament that can do it and do
it well, and in addition the circumstances of married life have to make
it possible. We might as well face the fact that today circumstances are
making it more and more difficult for a woman to lead what two
generations ago was considered the normal and natural life for any
woman. In those days even a woman who did not marry tried to find a
niche that she could fill in somebody's home. A maiden aunt or cousin
often took the place of a nurse or governess or even a hired servant and
was looked upon with pity, and expected to work early and late for her
room and board, and to be as devoted to the children of the family as
though they were her own.

Women today would not accept this situation so calmly, and the fact that
they can be and are largely self-supporting changes their economic
condition. It also changes their relationship to men and marriage.

The economic situation is such today that few young people can marry at
the age when their grandparents did. Many young people, rather than put
off their marriage indefinitely, get married with the realization that
both of them will have to continue working and that children are out of
the question until they have laid enough money aside or the man has had
enough increase in salary to take care of all the family expenses.

This is not a case of whethe