The woman of the past has especially been cramped up, bound around, and blindfolded by her special form of belief, by her tradition, by her social customs, by her education, by her whole environment; and the effect will remain stamped more or less upon her individuality long after the predisposing causes have passed away and better influences and circumstances have taken their place. But the present is full of encouragement. The new life has begun: the woman is here;--not the martyred woman of the past; not the self-absorbed woman of the present, but the awakened woman of the future. That woman whose faculties have been cultivated, whose gifts have been trained, whose mind has been enlarged, whose heartbeats respond to the touch of the unseen human, and whose quickened insight recognizes father, brother, sister, and friend beneath the strange as well as the dilapidated robe. This woman whose face no artist has painted, who is not yet familiar, is among us, and will remain. Her work humanizes and reconciles, and the changes it will effect will come so noiselessly that the majority will not be aware of them till they are accomplished, and then each one will announce, and perhaps believe, that they themselves have brought these things about. But this will not matter, for when the work is done it is really of little consequence who did it, since all who do any good work at all are simply agents and ministers, charged with a task it is their business to perform, and happy only as they are able to execute it. It is those who are "let alone," who live for and in themselves, who are the unhappy ones; and for these, though they possess fine houses, much gold, stocks and bonds, the poorest worker may well fervently pray that the new life may come to these also. The Days That Are[1] We live in an age of discontent. Discontent has been deified. It has been called divine; and unrest, the seal as well as the sign of progress. Doubtless there is a time and a place even for discontent, for there is no faculty that has not its function. But discontent, which is a sacred fire when it burns within and is kept for home use, is a mischievous and destroying element when it is widely distributed and unthinkingly-employed by ignorance and short-sightedness. [Footnote 1: _The Cycle_.] Then it is certain that if discontent is good, content is far better, and thankfulness better yet. If time teaches us anything, it is to work and wait and trust; to be thankful for what is--for the digging and seeding time as well as for the harvest; for one must come before the other.