can substantiate the argument, who can show the facts.  There is no more difficult vocation in the universe, and no more honorable or sacred one.  If a kindergartner is looked upon, or paid, or treated as a nursery maid, her ranks will gradually be recruited from that source.  The ideal teacher of little children is not born.  We have to struggle on as best we can, without her.  She would be born if we knew how to conceive her, how to cherish her.  She needs the strength of Vulcan and the delicacy of Ariel; she needs a child’s heart, a woman’s heart, a mother’s heart, in one; she needs clear judgment and ready sympathy, strength of will, equal elasticity, keen insight, oversight; the buoyancy of hope, the serenity of faith, the tenderness of patience.  “The hope of the world lies in the children.”  When we are better mothers, when men are better fathers, there will be better children and a better world.  The sooner we feel the value of beginnings, the sooner we realize that we can put bunglers and botchers anywhere else better than in nursery, kindergarten, or primary school (there are no three places in the universe so “big with Fate"), the sooner we shall arrive at better results.

I am afraid it is chiefly women’s work.  Of course men can be useful in many little ways; such as giving money and getting other people to give it, in influencing legislation, interviewing school boards, securing buildings, presiding over meetings, and giving a general air of strength and solidity to the undertaking.  But the chief plotting and planning and working out of details must be done by women.  The male genius of humanity begets the ideas of which each century has need (at least it is so said, and I have never had the courage to deny it or the time to look it up); but the female genius, I am sure, has to work them out, and “to help is to do the work of the world.”

If one can give money, if only a single subscription, let her give it; if she can give time, let her give that; if she has no time for absolute work, perhaps she has time for the right word spoken in due season; failing all else, there is no woman alive, worthy the name, who cannot give a generous heartthrob, a warm hand-clasp, a sunny, helpful smile, a ready tear, to a cause that concerns itself with childhood, as a thank-offering for her own children, a pledge for those the hidden future may bring her, or a consolation for empty arms.

There is always time to do the thing that ought to be, that must be done, and for that matter who shall fix the limit to our powers of helpfulness?  It is the unused pump that wheezes.  If our bounty be dry, cross, and reluctant, it is because we do not continually summon and draw it out.  But if, like the patriarch Jacob’s, our well is deep, it cannot be exhausted.  While we draw upon it, it draws upon the unspent springs, the hill-sides, the clouds, the air, and the sea; and the great source of power must itself suspend and be bankrupt before ours can fail.