women in
the future. While the women are young, ambition and the charm of freedom
bear them gaily along. Generally better educated than the men of their
own class, habituated to a personal expenditure which would correspond
with a large family expenditure, their intelligence prevents their
falling desperately in love with the men whom they might marry. But in
the thirties they have visions of the future which are deeply
disturbing; and in the forties they face the tragedy of a lonely old
age. Some men and women there must always be whose lives lack the
fulfilment of family life because of ill health or the accidents of
personal relations. But most women, if they are willing to pay the same
price for a significant family life that they so gladly pay for
professional success, will find the way open to live all of life. Why is
it that women count it an honor to work and starve for an art, but
dishonor to undergo privations for their children? All that is here said
of women may be said of men, but the man's period of family life is
longer than woman's, and the tragedy of lonely old age with him seems
less overwhelming.

The old plea that we must have an army of celibate women because in
civilized countries there is a preponderance of females does not hold at
present in the United States. The census of 1910 shows an excess of
2,691,678 males in this country. Nor is this entirely due to
immigration. More boys than girls are always born in civilized lands;
and of native white people born of native parents in the United States
there were, in 1910, 25,229,294 males and 24,259,147 females, a
difference obviously due to natural causes. New England alone in America
has a preponderance of females; and the excess there, as also in England
and Germany, is needed all along the frontiers of civilization. With the
industrial and social freeing of women now going on, we may reasonably
hope that the communities of old maids left behind, through the
emigration of young men, will be broken up.

Of course, it will be pointed out that many men and women who do marry
fail to realize the ideal presented in these pages. Every form of living
is dangerous and not every one can hope to be a successful husband and
father or wife and mother. Even devotion to religion furnishes many
inmates for insane asylums; athletic contests leave a line of cripples
behind them; and railroad disasters fill thousands of graves annually.
The institution of marriage