he met the woman. She picked out
a nice dry cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and
she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood
at the back of the cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail
down, across the opening of the cave; and she said: 'Wipe your feet,
dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.'"

As we looked, we saw the man fit an arrow to his bow, take aim, and
bring down a deer. He carried it to the cave. The woman rose to meet
him, the mat in her hand. He pushed her away savagely, took the mat
from her, and threw the deer on the ground. She picked herself up and
began to skin the deer with a knife which she slipped from her belt.
He lay down on the mat and went to sleep.

I heard my companion say: "_I_ did all the housekeeping of _that_
camp. It was woman's work. But now----"

She waved her hand and restored the city to my gaze.

"Now, of _this_ camp _you_ are the real housekeeper. The arranging of
it, the cleaning of it, the decorating of it, on the big scale, as a
total, all masculine, all yours! How you have expanded your duties,
you who were once just hunter and fighter, principally fighter! How
your sphere is swollen! You do not realize it. You are familiar enough
with the commonplace fact that most primitive industry in its origin
owed little to you except (a big 'except') the protection of your
sword against enemies. You are familiar with the fact that the
plaiting of mats and the tanning of hides and every other industrial
feature of housekeeping has passed from my control to yours in precise
proportion as it has ceased to be individual and has become
collective. You dominate everything collective. You understand that.
What you don't understand is this:

"It is not only the _industrial_ features of housekeeping which tend
to become collective. It is also its _administrative_ features. I will
give you just one illustration. I cannot now keep my premises clean,
beautiful, livable, except through the collective control of smoke,
garbage, billboards, noise. And that control is yours.

"Further!

"Even the tenderer phases of housekeeping, those which are more subtle
than mere administration, move steadily toward becoming yours. I will
give you an illustration of that. The very children, now no longer
always at their mothers' knees, but spread abroad through school and
park and playground and street and factory, are now much in your
hands, fo