There is not the slightest fear that the United States will become an irreligious nation. Some church pews may be empty, some men may go very seldom to service, or confession, but that most men think and feel the influence of religion upon the young and upon the family circle is too well known and established to admit of any doubt. The heads of families who are most careless about their own personal lives are often most earnest in urging upon their families all the ministrations of whatever churches they may chance to attend. It matters no longer from what denomination is selected the clergyman who shall ask grace at a large public dinner, or open a solemn public gathering with prayer, or as to what may be the creed of the spiritual teacher who may be asked to take part in deliberations upon grave moral interests of the community. All this is immensely encouraging, and promises lasting good to the nation. CHAPTER XXII. WOMAN AND HER WORK. For a whole generation the public has been hearing a great deal of woman’s rights. Already, however, woman has secured one of the greatest rights in the world. She has the right to labor in any capacity in which men hitherto have been employed. Some close observers have dignified this change by calling it the liberation of woman. But closer observers realize that it is also the liberation of man. Woman is doing a great deal of work which man used to do and which it was supposed only man was competent to do, but woman has stepped in and done it just as well as man ever did, and men, sometimes with thanks and occasionally with curses, have retired to other kinds of labor more fit for strong arms. The opinion of men on this subject would probably receive no consideration from the gentler sex, but a journal recently started specially to advance the interests of women, declares that at the present time there are over three hundred occupations in the United States, aside from housekeeping, in which women find abundant and remunerative employment. What woman has said, man would be a brute to unsay. There has been a decided gain to the world by this change, but the greatest gain has been to the sex to which the world has been, if not cruel, certainly indifferent. Woman has been the slave, the plaything, the toy of man so long that it is hard to get out of the public mind the idea that woman is simply an appendage to the ruder being, and that whatever she is or is to have depends upon the generosity of man. The generosity of man is no more to be depended upon by the gentler sex than it is by men themselves. All men are generous when they are not likely to lose anything by it. All men also are selfish, and woman would not now have her present chance in the United States were it not that men saw a gain for themselves in the change.