woman has got to learn how to make her jelly jell? Is
that your notion?"

"Exactly that. She must learn not to waste her strokes. Any scheme of
education for woman that leaves that out works an injury. If women are
to be a permanent part of the army of wage-earning Americans they must
learn to get full value from their minds or hands--either one, it's the
same. The trouble with us women is that there's a lot of the old
mediaeval taint in us."

"Mediaeval? Say that some other way, Sylvia."

"I mean that we're still crippled--we women--by the long years in which
nothing was expected of us but to sit in ivy-mantled casements and work
embroidery while our lords went out to fight, or thrummed the lute under
our windows."

"Well, there was Joan of Arc: she delivered the goods."

"To be sure; she does rather light up her time, doesn't she?" laughed
Sylvia.

"Sylvia, the day I first saw a woman hammer a typewriter in a man's
office, I thought the end had come. It seemed, as the saying is, 'agin
nater'; and I reckon it was. Nowadays these buildings downtown are full
of women. At noontime Washington Street is crowded with girls who work
in offices and shops. They don't get much pay for it either. Most of
those girls would a lot rather work in an office or stand behind a
counter than stay at home and help their mothers bake and scrub and wash
and iron. These same girls used to do just that,--help their
mothers,--coming downtown about once a month, or when there was a circus
procession, and having for company some young engine-wiper who took them
to church or to a Thanksgiving matinee and who probably married them
some day. A girl who didn't marry took in sewing for the neighbors, and
as like as not went to live with her married sister and looked after her
babies. I've seen all these things change. Nowadays girls have got to
have excitement. They like spending their days in the big buildings; the
men in the offices jolly them, the men bookkeepers and clerks seem a lot
nicer than the mechanics that live out in their neighborhood. When they
ain't busy they loaf in the halls of the buildings flirting, or reading
novels and talking to their bosses' callers. They don't have to soil
their hands, and you can dress a girl up in a skirt and shirt-waist so
she looks pretty decent for about two weeks of her wages. They don't
care much about getting married unless they can strike some fellow with
an automobile who can buy them better c