How clearly I recall that crowd! It took much time to get our train, and, as we waited, almost unconsciously I began to take mental notes of what I saw. Soon my interest was fastened. I observed individuals with quickened attention from the very sharpness of my disillusionment. Incidents burnt themselves into my memory, not in themselves of great importance, but surely significant. I was being dragged back face to face with many questions difficult to solve. What impressed me sharply was the unhappy faces of almost all those wildly excited girls. To my fancy each one was hiding from herself, and hiding also from everyone else. One girl, in particular, I remember, a lank figure, brightly dressed and her head adorned by a wreathed Union Jack, whirling lean arms in an ecstasy of irritability, her shrill voice mounting from scream note to scream note. A sickness of soul cried from her restless over-taxed body. She was but one unit of a whole rowdy company. Even this night was used by them to grab at something to fool men--to smother God in their hearts. Just a play, a pretense, yes, a pretense of power, especially that; they had no thought beyond excitement, and that to me seemed only the first step. I could not believe that the new freedom, the new England would be made by such women. Their make-believe merriment, all this riotous celebrating of the world's stupendous Victory--what, after all, was it? And for me the desolate answer "Waste!" rang out from the unceasing noise. "Surely this squandering of Woman's gift, this failure of herself must cease now that peace has come!" The cry broke wordless from me. I understood the reality of my fear. I knew the peril to the future. It is the problem of unstable woman, clamorous and devouring, that cries aloud for solution. _First Essay_ THE PROSPERITY OF FOOLS WHICH TREATS OF WAR WORKERS, AND THE CHANGES THAT HAVE COME IN WOMEN'S IDEALS "The turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them."--Prov. i. 32. I I have lying upon my study table, on the chairs and even spreading over upon the floor, a heaped-up litter of documents. Board of Trade inquiries, Government reports, newspaper cuttings, recent books, articles from the reviews and popular magazines--all dealing, in one manner or another, with women's labor and their position as workers in the immediate past and in the future. Woman, eternally surprising, has established her power in new fields.