"By the way, Senator Southard, speaking of scanty equipment, do you know of anything crueler than thrusting a woman out into the world to fight for herself and her fatherless children with no weapons but a needle's point and a broom-stick? It is getting better all the time, I will admit, but education in my day was like teaching a boy to swim and a girl to wade, and then taking them out into deep water and shoving them both overboard. Of course the boy can strike out. It was intended that he should. Deep water helps him. But the girl--Beg pardon? The girl, you think, generally shoves herself out in these days? Not always. Often the swimmer who is bearing her and her little ones up goes down. Death doesn't care anything about sex. And I have never noticed that he enquires even whether a man can be spared, or how many are dependant upon him. He just sends a big wave over him and down he goes. Then, of course, the woman who has been carried along before this has to strike out with one hand while she holds the children up with the other. Often she can't do more than 'tread water' until the oldest boy is able to swim." And again the Senator's mind went back to the brave little mother in black "treading water"--that was about what it was--she could hardly keep their heads above the waves. He looked up at the ceiling with eyes that did not see the frescoing. They were filled with a vision of the little unpainted house, the hollyhocks, the kitchen fire around which they had all crowded (she would not let one of them go)--the scanty table--the patched knees. And she had never lived to see him here! "I wonder they any of them reach the shore," Mrs. Pennybacker was saying when he came back to the committee-room, "I don't believe many of them would if it were not for the touch of little hands. They would give up and go under. But the very thing that you would think would drag them down is what buoys them up. With a child's hand clinging to her hand, and a child's looking into hers, the way they look up into a mother's eyes, a woman's _got_ to struggle. She can't help it any more than she can help breathing." "It is the parent's instinct, I suppose," said the Senator, thoughtfully. "I don't know. It doesn't seem to be the male parent's instinct. His first motion generally is to disencumber himself. A _man_ can give his children away and not half try."