Schools and governesses are better now, but some of the old confusions still hover round the education of a girl. Nowadays everybody airs his views about the public schools in print, but there is a certain element of simplicity in a boy’s education: in most cases, after all, he has got to be prepared for a definite profession. There is no definite profession for which little Alice is to be prepared, unless she takes the reins into her own hands in time, as some of our older Alices are learning to do. There is still the impression abroad, even among the wage-earning classes, that, until it is more or less discernible whether and what she is going to marry, it does not matter very much what she learns or what she does, provided that she keeps out of mischief. In those families, especially, where in the last resort it is not necessary for the daughters to earn their living in the labour market, this policy of drift is most obvious. A little French, a little music, a little history, a little recitation of approved poets—that is the recipe for the education of a “nice, refined girl.” As if any girl worth her salt would be content with a diet of spoon feeding. It is only those who have never learnt anything that imagine any useful learning to be possible without the desire to know more than it was good for you to be taught. The child’s mind is a bursting reservoir of energy, and it is hard that it should be wasted by being drained to make imitation waterfalls in an artificial garden. It usually shows a tendency to flow in some definite direction: why, in Heaven’s name, should it be diverted?