It will be necessary later to refer to the larger part played by American women, as compared with English, in the intellectual life of the country,--a matter which itself has, as will be noticed, no little bearing on the question of the merits and demerits of the co-education of the sexes. The best intellectual work, the best literary work, the best artistic work, is still probably done by the men in the United States; but an immensely larger part of that work is done by women than in England, and in ordinary society (outside of the professional literary and artistic circles) it is the women who are generally best informed, as will be seen, on literature and art. To which is to be added the fact that they take a much livelier and more intelligent interest than do the majority of Englishwomen in public affairs, and assume a more considerable share of the work of a public or quasi-public character in educational and similar matters. It might be supposed that this greater prominence of women in the national life of the country was in itself a proof that men deferred more to them and placed them on a higher level; but when analysed it will be found far from being any such proof. Rather is woman's position an evidence of, and a result of, man's neglect. By which it is not intended to imply any discourteous or inconsiderate neglect; but merely that American men have been, and still are, of necessity more busy than Englishmen, more absorbed in their own work, whereby women have been left to live their own lives and thrown on their own resources much more than in England. The mere pre-occupation of the men, moreover, necessarily leaves much work undone which, for the good of society, must be done; and women have seized the opportunity of doing it. They have been especially ready to do so, inasmuch as the spirit of work and of pushfulness is in the atmosphere about them, and they have been educated at the same schools as the men. The contempt of men for idleness, in a stage of society when there was more than enough work for all men to do, necessarily extended to the women. It is not good, in the United States, for any one, woman hardly more than man, to be idle. Women being compelled to organise their own lives for themselves, they carried into that organisation the spirit of energy and enthusiasm which filled the air of the young and growing communities. Finding work to their hands to do, they have done it--taking, and in the process fitting themselves to take, a much more prominent part in the communal life than is borne by their sisters in England or than those sisters are to-day, in the mass, qualified to assume. Precisely so (as often in English history) do women, in some beleaguered city or desperately pressed outpost, turn soldiers. No share in, or credit for, the result is to be assigned to any peculiar forethought, deference, or chivalrousness on the part of the men, their fellows in the fight. It is to the women that credit belongs.