woman who has ideals and can carry them out." In other words, a woman with a soul, and the ability to express that soul.

These essays pass next, naturally, to the discussion of the type, women in action, that is, performing her mission in this life. Two writers agree that the useful woman spends her life in doing good. So do gods; so do angels; so do even poor weak men of the right aspirations and characters. This is true as truth, but of no value whatever to us differentiating useful women from the same kind of angels and men.

Four of these young women are agreed that the useful woman serves society best when she develops to the highest degree of culture her own personality and individuality. The force of the description is lost in the shadow of the ever-present generality. The most useful woman to society is undoubtedly that woman who is herself and not somebody else. But why is this not even truer of men and angels? This is the third time that I have associated men and angels together. It is proper, I know, in good society and literature, to associate women and angels. If I were dealing in affinities at this juncture, I would place myself in line with good society and literature. But I am dealing in missions and generalities, and find myself forced to be at variance with good society and literature.

We next meet with this description of the useful woman, "The regulation of her own life without depending on others." This ideal mission finds two advocates out of the sixteen. It is free of the sin of over generalizing, but lacks in clearness and discrimination. The ideal of independence has yielded a number of types of women. There is the woman who finds the essence of her independence in the assumption of political rights. With her the question of suffrage is the question par excellence. The ideal suggests also economic freedom. To gain a livelihood all fields of endeavor must be opened to her. The masculinization of any honest avenue to a competence is a sin against her selfhood.

The ideal also emphasizes the righteous revolt against the sphere assigned to

woman by a hoary antiquity in which she was a slave, a tool, an ornament for the satisfaction of the various passions and appetites of her owner and lord.

Our task would have been simplified had these two young women more clearly defined their ideas of the independent woman. As a mere academic question the right of suffrage cannot consistently be denied to intelligent women, self-supporting, and property owners, and be freely granted to ignorant negroes and foreigners simply because they happen to be of the male sex. From the standpoint of the useful woman, the question is not one of exercising a right, but the being excused from one particular obligation to society in order that she may better perform a number of other peculiar duties to society, whose performance will be interfered with by this masculinization of herself.

Labor, professional or manual, knows no sex. All men and women must be laborers. Any division of women into working and non-working classes is false and unnatural. The whole social scheme is the effort of the ages to arrive at a proper distribution of the labors necessary for the conduct of society between men and women. Man's work and woman's work represent society ideas as to this distribution, and are real facts and as such to be respected and as far as possible to be adhered to.

The independence which rescues a woman from the position of tool or slave to man is more soul liberty than political or economic. This is no doubt what the essayists had in mind when they thus described the mission of their ideally useful woman.

Only eight of these sixteen average young women agree that marriage is the Mecca of useful womanhood. This is decidedly interesting and furnishes some good food for reflection. When we are in a mood to abuse the attitudes of yesterday's civilization toward woman, we describe her with no other outlets for the exercise of her soul forces than those which have as their object the mating of herself to some man or men. It is proudly hailed as an earmark of an advanced civilization that now women find

many other outlets for their soul activities than in mating. Under the new regime, marriage is relegated to a secondary place in the woman catalogue of goals for her life work. This theorizing finds support in the results of such investigations as mine. But perhaps it is not fair to put this valuation upon the omissions on the part of the other eight. The new woman may have learned better than her sister of yesterday the lesson of the suppression of her natural inclinations. Investigators forget that comparisons are odious. The woman of yesterday is not the peer of the woman of today, but that is not her fault. It is a question of social horizon. The limited social horizon of our mothers handicapped them in their highest development. The transition from a narrower to a broader social horizon is unfortunately handicapping the women of today. Tomorrow's woman will have adjusted herself to the new horizon, and then she will, as in the past, continue to marry but not be given in marriage. She will see to this matter for herself. Man's over-lordship in the matter of mating will have ceased.

Another interesting revelation is indicated by this investigation. Too much. energy and time has been wasted in discussing the effects of higher education of women upon the matrimonial market. The removal of marriage as the leading goal of a woman's life is not a phenomena of higher education, but a general transitional movement among all women, incident to the extension of their social horizon.

The scales have been removed from her eyes. She no longer sees men as trees walking the earth. It is not the responsibilities of marriage that she seeks to avoid. Women

were never more

nobly eager to assume burdens and responsibilities than today. It is base slander which accuses her of a desire to shirk responsibility. It is the fallen condition of her idols that sends her off into social settlement work, into professional work, yea, into every other avenue of service and responsibility than marriage.

But by and by in the ordinary course of affairs her association with life as it is will destroy her ideals and idols born

of the cloister, and give her in their stead others, which will make mating as attractive as it ever was under the old ideals.

All of these eight young women naively and properly assume that wifehood involves motherhood. As a corollary to the proposition that all useful women will marry, nine of the essayists describe the further mission of the useful woman as one of home-founding and making. This admits of no discussion. Until all social ideals are completely revolutionized, the making of a home will continue to be the pre-eminent sphere of a woman. By this touchstone must all other possible ideals for a useful womanhood be tested.

The attainment of lofty ideals as the mission of a woman during her sojourn upon this planet of ours receives but one suffrage. A misapprehension as to ideals leads to a misstatement of the matter. The mission of any life is not the attaining of ideals, but the realizing them in life. Ideals are not attained. They are inspirations.

We

Lofty ideals as a woman's mission in life is a two-edged sword and needs to be handled with the utmost care. are too apt to err in distinguishing between that which is lofty and that which is mean. Many a good woman has sought for lofty ideals at the shrine of some popular idol, whilst crucifying the only opportunity for the realizing of lofty ideals which lay right at her hand in her immediate environment of home. Call not that common and unclean which God has set apart, was the vision's injunction to Peter, when his Jewish instincts revolted against meat condemned by his ceremonial law. Society needs that same vision today. God's brand is upon much of that in life which we call common.

The possible list of missions for women becomes long and monotonous in these essays. The most refreshing feature of the list is the conspicuous absence of the woman with A MISSION, spelled with great capitals, to make society over, and REFORM every constituent element of society, especially MEN.

No sane man can fail to honor, respect -yea, love the women who with becoming diligence perform the missions of use

fulness to society outlined for them by these essayists. One of these missionseekers is rewarded by the vision of a wife or mother or sweetheart so using her influence with some man as to make out of him a man which society values as great. This ideal has but one serious defect. It is of necessity too limited in its possibility. All good women, bearing within their characters the possibility of moulding great men, are not wives or mothers, and alas, some not even sweethearts. And yet it must be admitted that for a limited number of women this has proved a most fertile mission field. The tailor, Andrew Johnson, would never have been President of the United States had it not been for his wife's influence upon him. To mention the names of the men who have ascribed their rise to greatness to the influences exerted upon them by their mothers would be the summoning of a very brilliant galaxy.

Society, in its narrowest sense, as a mission for women receives one of the sixteen suffrages. With its highly socialized conscience, this type of a society woman is in as much of minority in the world society as among these essayists. Let her be in the same minority in the considerations of this paper.

Only one of these searchers for missions hit upon social service. In view of the socializing of fiction and the press and the pulpit and the theater of the day, this betrays either a lack of reading of current literature on the part of these youth, or an insensibility to the subtle. influence which it has been exericsing upon society generally. The meeting and mingling of two lines of thought upon social questions, to-wit, first, that man is by divine order the race's breadwinner; and second, that woman, not man's slave, toy or ornament, but his equal, happening at a time of the greatest mental and social activities has resulted in a great life-giving stream of social service, sending its saving streams into every sore and neglected spot of society.

This revival of the best spirit of christianity, as a cult, appeals very strongly to a woman's nature. To ease a little bit the heartache of society seems to her

a more fitting work than to make society over again. And she is right. Eased of its pain, relieved of the pressure of its hurt, society has become well of some of these ills. The knife of the reformer, like that of the surgeon, has killed.

How to produce the ideal woman described was the second problem placed before these young women, or in other words, what specific fields of learning would yield best food for the nourishing of the womanhood which was to bless the world?

At this point, these papers assume a decided resemblance to the first book of the Illiad of Homer, to-wit, a catalogue of the illustrious great among the world's mental disciplines. Every woman, says one of the sixteen, ought to acquaint herself thoroughly with the practices and principles of arithemtic; and every man who has been compelled to spend weary moments untangling the business affairs of his womankind, heartily says "Amen" to this. One, evidently taught to begin at foundation principles, remarks that grammar ought to be a part of the mental furnishings of every woman, and one is reminded of the little story of the beautifully garbed, stylishly carriaged woman who, ushered to the row in which her opera seats were situated, startled the intellectual atmosphere of the select quarter of the opera house with the following outrage upon the king's English: them seats ourn?" At such a time one would heartily agree with our mentor.

"Is

Two mention languages as a discipline especially calculated to fit a woman for usefulness in her share of life. This designation is ambiguous. However, I take it that the term is used in the sense of a progressive study of grammar, rhetoric, and literature. This being true, of course, the study of language is funda

mental.

One young woman thinks that geography, probably political, is essential to the correct forming of a useful woman. She is not clear as to whether it is its practical or disciplinary value that she has in mind. It certainly furnishes no mean aid in the matter of mental adjustments. Foreign languages receive six suffrages. Their utilitarian value to

young women is assumed. It prepares for travel; introduces to a wider field of literature. Versatility is gained.

It was something of a surprise to me that literature, in general, received only one-half the suffrages of the young women. I had expected to find the study of literature placed at the very top of any list of study-disciplines for young

women.

Of course these eight young women had in mind the technical subjects of literature as taught in the schools. Whilst quite different from the life-study of literature, still forms its vestibule.

Four young women specify zoology of the sciences as a desirable disciplinary faculty in the producing of the woman. they have idealized. These four young women had framed their conceptions from a study of the descriptive text books upon this subject. Their chiefest value. was their insistence upon classification in great detail. Probably the same four catalogue botany also with the necessary study-disciplines for a woman. That broader science, comprehensive of both zoology and botany, biology, is given a specific place in the curricula of studies for useful women by six of the essay

writers.

Seven young women think that it is impossible to form the described useful woman and leave out of her course of study the English bible. It is no doubt the ethical results rather than the religious of biblical teachings which these young women had in mind, so that we can link with the study of the bible the study of ethics as an independent science. By so doing, we are enabled to add six additional verdicts in favor of the study of ethics for women.

This large proportion in favor of an education under high moral standards is encouraging. It augurs well for the future. And in these papers the emphasis is properly placed. The final moral standards of any land is the standard set for its womenkind. Every man unconsciously inherits his moral standard from his mother, not from his father.

Society's ills are due more to defects defective in the ethical standards of women than of men. I do not mean to

intimate that men's standards have been better or higher, but that they are less. potent for good or ill than those of their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.

Music as a study-discipline is the sole commander of all the votes of these sixteen essay writers. This was not altogether a matter of personal bias, as some of them were not students of music. It is interesting to note that on the part of every one of these young ladies, the old view-point of music as an accomplishment was avowedly abandoned. Its value is measured by its power to train the mind and form the soul. The strongest essay of the sixteen found in the study of music food for all the disciplinary needs of a woman. No system of physical training yet devised better meets the demands of the developing body. Music affords the opportunity for the exercise of the greatest attention, and discounts all ordinary text book course in pedagogy and psychology. Musical notation affords a good course in numbers. The laws of harmony involve the processes of logic. Chords and discords are lifeteachers.

The study-discipline receiving the next largest consideration is that which is usually designated Art, using the word art in a very restricted sense. Eleven of the young women assign it a place among the soul-trainers of women. Elocution, an old-time accomplishment study, is ranked as a seirous study-discipline for women by eight essayists. by eight essayists. Seven of these girls think that a sane mind in a sound body is consummation devoutly to be desired, and that this may be recommended that physical training be given a prominent place in the curricula of schools for girls

and women.

The following study-disciplines are given places in courses of study for vromen: Sociology, by seven writers; Astronomy, by six; Chemistry, by six; Psychology, by three; Physiology, by seven; History, by three; Economics, by three; Logic, by two; Physics, by one. Mathematics was more popular than I expected, receiving eight endorsements. Its power to develop the reasoning powers was dwelt upon by each of the theorists.

Astronomical truths grow from generation to generation, like the truths of medicine or the physics of electricity, at the rate the incisive thinkers of each age interpret the phenomena they are studying. Nightly vigils long continued in the study of the motions of the sun, moon, fixed stars, eclipses, and our earth, bring on spells of brain fag and a corresponding dulling of the reason. Inferences

drawn when in such a state could be easily mixed with error, especially if the data were scanty and but little attention had been given to the collateral sciences of optics and electricity.

The learned among the ancient Chaldeans, Egyptians, Chinese, and the Hindoos, did not study the phenomena of the stars and planets,' but worshipped them. This prevailed until about 160 B. C., when Hipparchus of Bythnia made a catalogue of 1,080 stars. 290 years later, Ptolemy of Alexandria (?), by extending the work begun by Hipparchus, succeeded in stamping it as the Ptolemic system of the Universe. Certain it is that the worship of the stars together with Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles prevailed for upwards of fourteen centuries. Ptolemy's theories were displaced by Copernicus who in 1543 just before his death, published a work on The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies. The noted astronomer Tycho Brahe, a Dane, was the last to hold the earth to be the center of the universe. Copernicus made it possible for Kepler, Galileo with his telescope that magnified 32 times, Sir Isaac Newton, and more recently three generations of the Herschels with others who are now in active work, to give a firm setting to the Copernicum system.

Astronomy is studied under physical astronomy and theoretical astronomy. Our knowledge of the motions, size and distance of the sun, planets and stars is mostly theoretical. Astronomers make but little use of the reasoning part of their brains. No reasoning can be car

ried on where there is but one ideating center of the brain used as is the case in the study of astronomy. Generally speaking the student of the sky uses only his eye and since its images of distant objects without intervening bodies are uncoroborated by one or more of the other sense organs, no conclusions could be reached or judgments formed worthy the name. This is so obvious that I think it not amiss to speak of astronomy as a "science" of theories.

The earth is an oblate spheroid, bulging out at the equator, and flattened at the poles. The equator is an imaginary line passing around the earth from west to east, dividing it into a northern and southern hemisphere. The axis of the earth is an imaginary line passing through the earth from north to south, on which it makes its daily revolutions. The axial diameter is important in this discussion, in that it is probable that the thickness of the atmosphere diminishes proportionally from the equator to the poles. The earth has an Atmosphere. The atmoshas an ATMOSPHERE. The atmosphere can be regarded as a mixture of exygen, nitrogen, a small amount of two or three other gases, carbonate of lime and magnesium, crystalized grits of sea salt carried into high altitudes by ocean mist and frozen, mist droplets, and fine particles of organic and inorganic matter. The depth of this ungainly mixture has been estimated by M. Liais, from observations made at Rio Janeiro and other places on the "twilight arc," to be from 198 to 212 miles at 10 degrees north of the equator. It is deepest at the equator and shallowest at the poles. The earth with its 25,000 miles circumference at the equator would friction off by speeding on its axis at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, more dust into the air than it would at 69 degrees north where the circumference is only half as great. The lower strata of the atmosphere is organically rich with dense flora of bac