It is true the erroneous idea still prevails in many homes that the daughter must willingly sacrifice her social task for the family, a sacrifice which the family would never even wish on the part of a son. But the assurance that the daughter _could_ have made another choice instils in the family, unconsciously, a new conception of her sacrifice, and gives to herself the courage to assume a position in the home other than that she held at the time when no choice remained to her. If the total of efficacious daughterly love of to-day and earlier times be estimated, this total would not prove less now. But it is now given rather in a great sum; earlier, on the contrary, in many small coins. Because of the professional work of the daughter, there are now often lacking in the home the ready obliging young hands whose help father and brother so willingly engrossed; the cheerful comforter, the admiring listener. But in a great hour the daughter or sister gives now often a hundred times more in deep, personal understanding. One draws a false conclusion when one thinks that the more closely a family holds together the more it signifies a corresponding unity and devotion. The young act in submission because they permit themselves to be cowed by the family authority which like a steam-roller passed over their wills and their hearts. But the indignation that they experienced in their innermost hearts, the criticism which they exercised among one another, were not less bitter than that which they to-day openly utter. The home life of fifty years ago was a school of diplomacy; it especially served to oppose cunning to the father’s authority, and the mother often taught the children to use this weapon of weakness. Now the father does not wish to make himself ridiculous by saying: “I forbid you,” for the daughter answers: “Well, then, I will wait until I am twenty-one.” The threat, “I disinherit you,” recoils from the determination of the daughter, “I can work.” Only in a distant province, in a little town, or among the “upper ten thousand” of a large city, where the daughters still often receive a “general education,” which does not fit them to earn their living, are they occupied all day without the feeling of having worked. They serve at five o’clock teas, embroider for charity bazaars, etc. But they also experience the power of the spirit of the time strongly enough to know that they lead a selfish life but not a life of self. The lower the scale of riches the more housework do the daughters have to perform. But as a result of the patriarchal organisation of labour they still perform this without their own responsibility, without the joy of independence, without regular unoccupied time and without one penny at their disposal!