Mason Croft is Miss Marie Corelli’s home. Probably no writer of fiction—not plays, mind you, but pure fiction—ever made so much money, or has been so widely read, as Marie Corelli. The little girl without fortune—by pen, ink, and paper and her own imaginative mind—has won a lovely home. It is a fine old house, charmingly furnished, and possesses a large meadow (the “croft“) and an enticing winter garden. The châtelaine keeps four or five horses and is a Lady Bountiful. Yes, and all this is done by a woman with a tiny weapon of magic power. So came the end of a delightful gathering— But stop! As Marie Corelli wrote the story of that day in a few pithy words, let me be allowed to repeat her message to the _Evening News_: “To-day, October 6th, America owns for the first time in history a property of its own in Shakespeare’s native town. “The ‘Harvard House,’ the gift of Mr. Edward Morris, of Chicago, to Harvard University, was opened to-day by the American Ambassador in the presence of a large and representative gathering of American social magnates amid the greatest enthusiasm. “I am proud and glad to know that my dream of uniting the oldest university in the States to the birth town of the Immortal Shakespeare has been carried to a successful issue.—MARIE CORELLI.” CHAPTER XIX ON WOMAN NOWADAYS Woman nowadays. Poor dear! How she is abused, derided, called this, that, and the other—but she goes steadily on her own way, and she is forging ahead. This will be woman’s century. Everything that is new, old age dubs “deterioration.” Because the modern girl is not early Victorian, does not wear low dresses and satin slippers by day, shriek at a mouse or faint, she is called “unwomanly.” Surely this is ridiculous. She is stronger mentally and physically, she is beginning to take her place in the world; and because in the transition stage she has forgotten how to make cordials—which she can buy so much cheaper at any Co-operative Stores—she is styled “undomesticated.” Every age has its own manners, and customs and ideals. No, no, you dear old people, don’t think her unsexed. Woman’s sphere should be the home; but her horizon must be the world. In one sense there is nothing new under the sun. In another everything changes, is renewed continually, and should be new. Therefore, to call re-arrangement deterioration is absurd. It is more often advancement. We can no more go back than we can do without the telephone, telegraph, or taxi-cab. We are all progressing, improving; the world is improving. Read Society books of a couple of centuries back, and note the change. Note the coarseness of Fielding or Smollett, and see the refinement of to-day. It is a very good world that we live in, but youth must not be sacrificed to old age, any more than old age must be sacrificed to youth. Both must stand alone.