In humbler ways, too, much might be done to stem the morbid activity of the collective female conscience. Big sins lie at the doors of the hosts of good men and women who turn out year by year tons of “books for the young” to serve as nutriment for the hungry nestlings of culpable, thoughtless parents. It is hard to overstate the pernicious effect of this class of _motif_ literature. _Féerie_ in old or new dress is the only nourishing food for the happy child who is to remain happy. The little girl, aged seven, who lately wrote in her diary before going to bed, “Of what _real_ use am I in the world?” had, it is certain, been denied her Andersen, her Grimm, her Carroll, even her Blue fairy book. Turned in to browse on “Ministering Children,” “Agatha’s First Prayer,” and the fatal “Eric”--into how many editions has this last well-meaning but poisonous romance not passed--the little victim of parental stupidity is thus left with an organ damaged for life by over-much stimulation at the start. This new massacre of the innocents is of purely nineteenth-century growth. It dates from the era of the awakened conscience, and is coincident with the formation of all the societies for the regeneration of the human race. _Per contra_, the wife-woman, though but seldom to be met with in the multitudinous pages written by women, is the well-beloved, the chosen of the male artist. Week-days and Sundays he paints her portrait. Shakespeare returns to her again and again, as though it were hard to part from her. Wicked Trix stands out as bold leader of one bad band. Tess belongs to the family, though she is of another branch; so does Cathy of Wuthering Heights, and Lyndall of the African Farm; whilst latest and slightest scamp of the lot comes dancing Dodo of Lambeth. Save in a strictly specialised sense, none of this class can be said to contrive the greatest good of the greatest number. These are the women to whom the nursery is at best but an interlude, and at worst a real interruption of their life’s strongest interests. They are not skilled in dealing with early teething troubles, nor in the rival merits of Welsh and Saxony flannel stuffs. Their crass ignorance of all this deep lore may, it is true, go far to kill off superfluous offspring, but, unjust as it would appear, these are the mothers who each succeeding year become more and more adored of their sons. Fribblers though they be, they sweeten the world’s corners with the perfume of their charm. And the bit of world’s work in which they excel is the keeping alive the tradition of woman’s witchery. Who, then, can deny them their plain uses? When Fate is kind and bestows the fitting partner, the fires of their love never die down. They remain lovers to the end. Their husbands need fear no rival, not even in the person of their own superior son. When Fate is unkind and things go crookedly, these are the women whose wreckage strews life’s high road, and from whom their wiser sisters turn reprovingly away.