The woman lawyer will always be the exception, and if she makes a good thing of her venture nobody is a penny the worse. But examine the home where the wife and mother spends her day in a factory, in the field, whose occupation requires no talent or ambition, and their physical and moral effects are of a very different nature from those that follow the winning of diplomas. The woman works as hard and as long as her husband, and is paid less. They return home to a cold hearth, an uncooked dinner. The man, never an angel where his stomach is concerned, swears and threatens, then sulks and goes off to the wine-shop. There is no compensation for the missing comfort in the few miserable francs earned. No women are more admirably adapted for making the home happy than Frenchwomen. Their general competence is matched only by their industry; and it is a pity to see these fine domestic qualities wasted on outdoor work. Of course, in the case of widows nothing can be said. When the bread-winner is taken away, the woman must perforce shut the house door, and go abroad in quest of the right to live. Girls are in their proper sphere, too, in working manfully on their father’s farm until their marriage, and fatherless girls, without that most useful of national institutions, the _dot_, must needs find bread wherever they can. But the outside labour of the wife and mother can never be too deeply deplored, above all in the case of the best of wives or mothers, such as Frenchwomen, taking them as an average, usually are. [Illustration: BLESSING THE WHEAT _J. A. Breton_]