much before twelve o’clock, but Joe would open the door for me just as pleasant as if he hadn’t been waked out of a sound sleep.” She was so triumphantly unconscious of the incongruity of a sturdy son in bed while his mother earned his food, that her auditors said never a word, and in silence we saw a hero evolved before our eyes, a defender of the oppressed, the best beloved of his mother, who was losing his high spirits and eating his heart out behind prison bars. He could well defy the world even there, surrounded as he was by that invincible affection which assures both the fortunate and unfortunate alike that we are loved, not according to our deserts, but in response to some profounder law. This imposing revelation of maternal solicitude was an instance of what continually happened in connection with the Devil Baby. In the midst of the most tragic reminiscences, there remained that something in the memories of these mothers which has been called the great revelation of tragedy, or sometimes the great illusion of tragedy; that which has power in its own right to make life palatable and at rare moments even beautiful. CHAPTER III WOMEN’S MEMORIES--DISTURBING CONVENTIONS In sharp contrast to the function of woman’s long memory as a reconciler to life, revealed by the visitors to the Devil Baby, are those individual reminiscences which, because they force the possessor to challenge existing conventions, act as a reproach, even as a social disturber. When these reminiscences, based upon the diverse experiences of many people unknown to each other, point to one inevitable conclusion, they accumulate into a social protest, although not necessarily an effective one, against existing conventions, even against those which are most valuable and those securely founded upon cumulative human wisdom. But because no conventionalized tradition is perfect, however good its intent, most of them become challenged in course of time, unwittingly illustrating the contention that great social changes are often brought about less by the thinkers than by “a certain native and independent rationalism operating in great masses of men and women.” The statement is well founded that a convention is at its best, not when it is universally accepted, but just when it is being so challenged and broken that the conformists are obliged to defend it and to fight for it against those who would destroy it. Both the defenders of an old custom and its opponents are then driven to a searching of their own hearts.