he "dregs of society" as if it were something
far removed from the knowledge and consciousness of his hearers.

The woman of the past has especially been cramped up, bound around,
and blindfolded by her special form of belief, by her tradition, by
her social customs, by her education, by her whole environment; and
the effect will remain stamped more or less upon her individuality
long after the predisposing causes have passed away and better
influences and circumstances have taken their place.

But the present is full of encouragement. The new life has begun: the
woman is here;--not the martyred woman of the past; not the
self-absorbed woman of the present, but the awakened woman of the
future. That woman whose faculties have been cultivated, whose gifts
have been trained, whose mind has been enlarged, whose heartbeats
respond to the touch of the unseen human, and whose quickened insight
recognizes father, brother, sister, and friend beneath the strange as
well as the dilapidated robe.

This woman whose face no artist has painted, who is not yet familiar,
is among us, and will remain. Her work humanizes and reconciles, and
the changes it will effect will come so noiselessly that the majority
will not be aware of them till they are accomplished, and then each
one will announce, and perhaps believe, that they themselves have
brought these things about. But this will not matter, for when the
work is done it is really of little consequence who did it, since all
who do any good work at all are simply agents and ministers, charged
with a task it is their business to perform, and happy only as they
are able to execute it. It is those who are "let alone," who live for
and in themselves, who are the unhappy ones; and for these, though
they possess fine houses, much gold, stocks and bonds, the poorest
worker may well fervently pray that the new life may come to these
also.

The Days That Are[1]

We live in an age of discontent. Discontent has been deified. It has
been called divine; and unrest, the seal as well as the sign of
progress. Doubtless there is a time and a place even for discontent,
for there is no faculty that has not its function. But discontent,
which is a sacred fire when it burns within and is kept for home use,
is a mischievous and destroying element when it is widely distributed
and unthinkingly-employed by ignorance and short-sightedness.

[Footnote 1: _The Cycle_.]

Then it is certain that if