Women of this class want taking in hand by the stronger and more energetic. Many even of those who seem to do pretty well as independent workers, men and women alike, would be all the better for being farmed out; and _désoeuvrées_ women especially want extraneous guidance, and to be set to such work as they can do, but cannot make. An establishment which would utilize their faculties, such as they are, and give them occupation in harmony with their powers, would be a real salvation to many who would do better if they only knew how, and would save them from stagnation and apathy. But society does not recognize the existence of moral rickets, though the physical are cared for; consequently it has not begun to provide for them as moral rickets, and no Proudhon has yet managed to utilize the _désoeuvrés_ members of the State. When they do find a place of retreat and adventitious support, it is under another name. The retired man of business, utterly without object in his new conditions, is another portrait that meets us in country places. He is not fit for magisterial business; he cannot hunt nor shoot nor fish; he has no literary tastes; he cannot create objects of interest for himself foreign to the whole experience of his life. The idleness which was so delicious when it was a brief season of rest in the midst of his high-pressure work, and the country which was like Paradise when seen in the summer only and at holiday time, make together just so much blank dullness now that he has bound himself to the one and fixed himself in the other. When he has spelt over every article in the _Times_, pottered about his garden and his stables, and irritated both gardener and groom by interfering in what he does not understand, the day's work is at an end. He has nothing more to do but eat his dinner and sip his wine, doze over the fire for a couple of hours, and go to bed as the clock strikes ten. This is the reality of that long dream of retirement which has been the golden vision of hope to many a man during the heat and burden of the day. The dream is only a dream. Retirement means _désoeuvrement_; leisure is tedium; rest is want of occupation truly, but want of interest, want of object, want of purpose as well; and the prosperous man of business, who has retired with a fortune and broken energies, is bored to death with his prosperity, and wishes himself back to his desk or his counter--back to business and something to do. He wonders, on retrospection, what there was in his activity that was distasteful to him; and thinks with regret that perhaps, on the whole, it is better to wear out than to rust out; that _désoeuvrement_ is a worse state than work at high pressure; and that life with a purpose is a nobler thing than one which has nothing in it but idleness:--whereof the main object is how best to get rid of time. _THE SHRIEKING SISTERHOOD._