NORA (_undisturbed_):--I mean I passed from father's hands into yours. You settled everything according to your taste; and I got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to--I don't know which--both ways, perhaps. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong. It is your fault that my life has been wasted. HELMER:--Why, Nora, how unreasonable and ungrateful you are. Haven't you been happy here? NORA:--No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But your house has been nothing but a play-room. Here I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa's doll-child. And the children, in their turn, have been my dolls. I thought it fun when you played with me, just as the children did when I played with them. That has been our marriage, Torvald.... And that is why I am now leaving you! HELMER (_jumping up_):--What--do you mean to say-- NORA:--I must stand quite alone, to know myself and my surroundings; so I can't stay with you. HELMER:--Nora! Nora! NORA:--I am going at once. Christina will take me for tonight. HELMER:--You are mad! I shall not allow it. I forbid it. NORA:--It is no use your forbidding me anything now. I shall take with me what belongs to me. From you I will accept nothing, either now or afterwards.... HELMER:--To forsake your home, your husband, and your children! You don't consider what the world will say. NORA:--I can pay no heed to that. I only know what I must do. HELMER:--It is exasperating! Can you forsake your holiest duties in this world? NORA:--What do you call my holiest duties? HELMER:--Do you ask me that? Your duties to your husband and your children. NORA:--I have other duties equally sacred. HELMER:--Impossible! What duties do you mean? NORA:--My duties towards myself. HELMER:--Before all else you are a wife and a mother. NORA:--That I no longer believe. I think that before all else I am a human being, just as much as you are--or at least I will try to become one. A Girl Strike-Leader BY FLORENCE KIPER FRANK (American poetess, born 1886) A white-faced, stubborn little thing Whose years are not quite twenty years, Eyes steely now and done with tears, Mouth scornful of its suffering-- The young mouth!--body virginal Beneath the cheap, ill-fitting suit, A bearing quaintly resolute, A flowering hat, satirical. A soul that steps to the sound of the fife And banners waving red to war, Mystical, knowing scarce wherefore-- A Joan in a modern strife. Comrade Yetta[A] [A] By permission of the Macmillan Co. BY ALBERT EDWARDS (The story of an East Side sweat-shop worker who becomes a strike-leader. The present scene describes a meeting in Carnegie Hall)