It is needless to dwell upon this phase of a past the ideals of which are as dead to us as the goddesses of Greece and the heroines of the Nibelungenlied. It has been sufficiently emphasized already, and concerns us here only as it shows us the spirit under which our grandmothers were born and bred. It cannot be denied that they were a wise, strong race, rearing thinkers and statesmen who have left few worthy successors, though they did not spend much time in discussing the best methods of training children, were better versed in domestic than social economics, and doubtless had misty ideas about Buddhism and the ultimate destiny of Woman. It may be superfluous, also, to say that many of them had occasion to think little of their restrictions, and would have resented the suggestion that they had any which were not good for them, if not positively desirable. Limitations, even hardships, do not necessarily imply misery. People are curiously flexible, and get a sort of happiness from trying to fit themselves to conditions which, though unpleasant, are inevitable. Then, conditions are not always hard because they have unlimited possibilities in that direction. One may even wear a chain and ball quite comfortably so long as one stands still, or if the chain be a silken one and the ball cast in pleasant places. The difficulty is that one does not always wish to stand still; nor is it always possible, whatever the inclination may be. The march of events is irresistible, and one is often forced to a change of position to escape being trampled upon. Besides, in a society that is based upon the right of people to do as they choose within certain very flexible limits, one half is not likely to continue to do, without a protest, what the other half says it ought to do, when it is compelled to take its full share of burdens and rather more than its full share of sacrifices, without any choice as to cakes and ale. These daughters of liberty held no longer the places of honor accorded to rank, and were not only without visible dignities of any kind, except as the palest of satellites, but were largely, if not altogether, excluded from the intellectual life of their husbands. They were told to be content with the dignity of maternity, while they were virtually shut out from the things that consecrate maternity. It was under such conditions that the woman’s club was born. Men had already set up clubs of their own, and women had no choice but to do the same thing, or drift into the hopeless position of their respectable Athenian sisters of the classic age, who lived in fashionable but ignorant seclusion, while their brilliant husbands sought more congenial companionship elsewhere.