ry reflected on it. She didn't like it. And she began to see other
things she didn't like in this protraction of the period of
singleness.

Her work for the Bureau of Labor had taken her into many places, among
all sorts of women. She began to observe the irregular living which is
inevitably associated with a system of late marriages.

Mr. Lester F. Ward has learnedly and elaborately informed us that if
we go back to the origin of life on this planet we shall find that the
female was the only sex then existent, being original life itself,
reproducing itself by division of itself, and that the male was
created as an afterthought of nature's for the purpose of introducing
greater variation into the development of living things. The male, to
begin with, had only one function. That was to be a male. He was
purely a sex-thing.

Whether this biological theory stands or falls, it is certain that it
squares with the present character of the sexes. The sex which
originated as a sex-thing remains the more actively sexed.

There was once a very good sociologist called Robert Louis Stevenson
who made many researches into the psychology of the human race. While
on his "Inland Voyage" he observed in this matter that "it is no use
for a man to take to the woods; we know him; Anthony tried the same
thing long ago and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there
is this about some women, that they suffice to themselves and can walk
in a high and cold zone without the countenance of any trousered
being."

The celibate life is more possible for most of them by nature. If it
were not for that fact, the postponement of marriage would by this
time have demolished the ethical code.

Even as things stand, Mary was quite willing to admit, when she saw
it, that there are two kinds of women greatly increasing in modern
days. Both have always existed, but now they are increasing very
rapidly and in parallel lines of corresponding development.

In one column is the enormous army of young women who remain
unmarried till twenty-five, till thirty, till thirty-five. Even at
that last age, and beyond it, in a well-developed city like, say,
Providence, R.I., in the age period from thirty-five to forty-five,
twenty out of every hundred women are still single.

In the other column is the enormous army of young women who, outside
of the marriage relation altogether, lead a professional sex life,
venal, furtive, ignoble, and debasing; an arm