energy," just because a
stray thinker {179} supposes it would make them more interesting if
they all had a business life and dispensed that energy downtown? It
seems to me ill-advised to defy nature wholesale. I am willing to
work for bread, or for the love of work--but not to oblige illogical
theorists!

I'm glad I don't have to reconcile all the different views I hear!
One person will argue that woman's work in the home is so
complicated and taxing that it all ought to be done for her by
specialists, while she goes downtown and becomes some other kind of
specialist herself. This is the school of thought to which mother
belongs. One or two of its leaders are terribly clever--and mother is
rapturously sure that wisdom was born with them! She is so happy to
be advocating and expounding their ideas! I find this discipleship
pathetic. One does n't deny that they {180} have visions,--mother has
them also,--but to me their visions are not divine or beautiful.

The next person will be a reactionary, and say that we are going
straight to destruction because some women are thrown into
industrial competition with men.

A third will be sure that, because modern life with all its
industrial developments outside the home has drawn many women away
from home life, therefore all women ought to be thrown out of their
homes in a bunch and hustle for themselves in the market-place.
There's no longer anything to do at home, and if they stay there
they will get fat and lazy and parasitic. I argued about this half
the evening with an apple-faced youth of twenty-five who is still
supported by his mother. You would have supposed, to {181} hear him,
that feminine hands and feet were going to atrophy and fall off from
disuse, and that we should turn into some kind of chubby white grub
with mouths perpetually demanding to be fed.

I don't deny that there are indolent women in the world, but I
certainly never saw any parasites in the college set at Powelton.
Somebody will have to "show me" before I can get up any heat of
conviction on the subject!

No longer anything to do at home! It has kept me so busy putting one
attenuated little reformer-lady's flat to rights and training a cook
for her that I have n't had a minute, yet, to see about those
courses I meant to take at the University! I shall get around to
them presently, I hope.

Mother took the flat before