The whole scheme of woman's life at this present time is untenable and unfair. She wants to have all the pleasures and none of the disagreeables. Her husband goes to the City and does monotonous and unpleasant work there; but his wife thinks herself very hardly dealt with if asked to do monotonous housework at home. Yet she does nothing more elevating nor more advantageous. Novel-reading, fancy-work, visiting and letter-writing, sum up her ordinary occupations; and she considers these more to the point than practical housekeeping. In fact it becomes a serious question what women think themselves sent into the world for--what they hold themselves designed by God to be or to do. They grumble at having children and at the toil and anxiety which a family entails; they think themselves degraded to the level of servants if they have to do any practical housework whatever; they assert their equality with man, and express their envy of his life, yet show themselves incapable of learning the first lesson set to men--that of doing what they do not like to do. What, then, do they want? What do they hold themselves made for? Certainly some of the more benevolent sort carry their energies out of doors, and leave such prosaic matters as savoury dinners and fast shirt-buttons for committees and charities, where they get excitement and _kudos_ together. Others give themselves to what they call keeping up society, which means being more at home in every person's house than their own; and some do a little weak art, and others a little feeble literature; but there are very few indeed who honestly buckle to the natural duties of their position, and who bear with the tedium of home-work as men bear with the tedium of office-work.