om, lore, and religious tradition; she was, at least, the nominal
head of the family, and she had a large influence in tribal affairs."

For some years past certain progressive women have shown signs of a
reversion to the matriarchal state--or shall we say a disposition to
revive it? In spite of human progress we travel more or less in
circles, a truth of which the present war and its reversions is the
most uncompromising example.

In the married state, for instance, these women have retained their
own name, not even being addressed as Mrs., that after all is a polite
variation of the Spanish "de," which does not by any means indicate
noble birth alone, women after marriage proudly announcing themselves
as legally possessed. For instance a girl whose name has been Elena
Lopez writes herself after marriage Elena Lopez de Morena, the "de" in
this case standing for "property of." It will be some time before the
women of Spain travel far on the Northern road toward pride in sex
deliverance, but with us, and in Britain, the custom is growing
prevalent.

Then there is the hyphen marriage, more common still, in which the
woman retains her own name, but condescends to annex the man's. Once
in a way a man will prefix his wife's name to his own, and there is
one on record who prefixed his own to his wife's. But any woman may
have her opinion of him.

So far as I have been able to ascertain these marriages are quite as
successful as the average; and if the woman has a career on hand--and
she generally has--she pursues it unhampered. The grandmother or aunt
takes charge of the children, if there are any, while she is at her
duties without the home, and so far, the husband has been permitted
the compensation of endowing the children with his name.

The reversion to the prehistoric matriarchate can hardly be complete
in these days, but there are many significant straws that indicate the
rising of a new wind blown by ancient instincts. To look upon them as
shockingly advanced or abnormal is an evidence of conservatism that
does not reach quite far enough into the past.

A still more significant sign of the times (in the sense of linking
past with present) is the ever-increasing number of women doctors and
their success. Men for the most part have ceased to sneer or even to
be more than humanly jealous, often speaking in terms of the warmest
admiration not only of their skill but of their conscientiousness and
power of endurance