The most important stimuli are other _persons_, capable of setting into action new thoughts, new emotions, new conduct. We need what Graham Wallas calls "face to face associations of ideas",--ideas called into being by words, moods, and deeds of others. It is this group of stimuli that the busy housewife conspicuously lacks. "She has no one to talk to," especially in the modern apartment life. It is true she has her children to scold, to discipline, to teach, and to talk _at_; but contact with child minds is not satisfying, has not the flavor of companionship, is not reciprocal in the sense that adult minds are. There therefore results introspection and daydreaming, both of which may be of slight importance to some women but which are distinctly disastrous to others. If the married life is satisfactory the daydreaming and introspection may be very pleasurable, as they usually are at the beginning of marriage. The young bride dreams of love that does not swerve, of understanding that persists, of success, of riches to come, of children that are lovely and marvelous. And the happy woman also finds her thoughts pleasant ones, and her castles in the air are mere enlargements of her life. But the dissatisfied woman, the unhappy woman, finds her daydreams pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. She is constantly coming back to reality; reality constantly obtrudes itself into her dreams. The daydreaming is rebelled against as foolish, as puerile, as futile. A struggle takes place in the mind; disloyal and disastrous thoughts creep in which are constantly dismissed but always reappear. The profoundest disgust and deënergization may appear, and fatigue, aches, pains, and weariness of life often results. One may compare interest to a tonic. How often does one see a little group, who for the time being are not interesting to one another, sit sleepy, tired, bored, yawning, restless. Then a new person enters, a person of importance or of interest. The fatigue disappears like magic, and all are bright, energetic, sparkling. The basis of club life is the monotony of the home; man uses the saloon, the clubroom, the pool room, the street corner, the lodge meeting, as an escape from the unstimulating atmosphere of wife and family,--the hearth. But for the housewife there is usually no escape, though she needs it more than her husband does. Furthermore the non-domestic type, the woman with especial ability, the woman who has been courted, petted, and sought for before marriage is the one who reacts most to the monotony of the home. There are plenty of women who consider the home a refuge from a world they find more strenuous, more fatiguing than they can stand, or who find in housework a consecration to their ordained duty. Which type is the better woman depends upon the point of view, but it is safe to say that feminism and the industrial world are making it harder and harder for an increasing number of women to settle down to home-keeping.