Society has not liked it--was there to be no quiet anywhere? It is poor understanding that does not appreciate John Adams' parry of his wife Abigail's list of grievances, which she declared the Continental Congress must relieve if it would avoid a woman's rebellion. Under the stress of the Revolution children, apprentices, schools, colleges, Indians, and negroes had all become insolent and turbulent, he told her. What was to become of the country if women, "the most numerous and powerful tribe in the world," grew discontented? Now this world-old restlessness of the women has a sound and a tragic cause. Nature lays a compelling hand on her. Unless she obeys freely and fully she must pay in unrest and vagaries. For the normal woman the fulfillment of life is the making of the thing we best describe as a home--which means a mate, children, friends, with all the radiating obligations, joys, burdens, these relations imply. This is nature's plan for her; but the home has got to be founded inside the imperfect thing we call society. And these two, nature and society, are continually getting into each other's way, wrecking each other's plans, frustrating each other's schemes. The woman almost never is able to adjust her life so as fully to satisfy both. She is between two fires. Euripides understood this when he put into Medea's mouth a cry as modern as any that Ibsen has conceived:-- Of all things upon earth that grow, A herb most bruised is woman. We must pay Our store of gold, hoarded for that one day, To buy us some man's love; and lo, they bring A master of our flesh! There comes the sting Of the whole shame. And then the jeopardy, For good or ill, what shall that master be; 'Tis magic she must have or prophecy-- Home never taught her that--how best to guide Toward peace this thing that sleepeth at her side. And she who, laboring long, shall find some way Whereby her lord may bear with her, nor fray His yoke too fiercely, blessed is the breath That woman draws! Medea's difficulty was that which is oftenest in the way of a woman carrying her business in life to a satisfactory completion--false mating. It is not a difficulty peculiar to woman. Man knows it as often. It is the heaviest curse society brings on human beings--the most fertile cause of apathy, agony, and failure. If the woman's cry is more poignant under it than the man's, it is because the machine which holds them both allows him a wider sweep, more interests outside of their immediate alliance. "A man, when he is vexed at home," complains Medea, "can go out and find relief among his friends or acquaintances, but we women have none to look at but him." And when it is impossible longer to "look" at him, what shall she do! Tell her woe to the world, seek a soporific, repudiate the scheme of things, or from the vantage point of her failure turn to the untried relations of her life, call upon her unused powers?