What have been the results on the character and usefulness of women themselves?

Favorable.  They have opened to them a wider life and more variety of career.  While the special graces of the feminine character do not appear to have suffered, there has been produced a sort of independence and a capacity for self-help which are increasingly valuable as the number of unmarried women increases.  More resources are open to an American woman who has to lead a solitary life, not merely in the way of employment, but for the occupation of her mind and tastes, than to a European spinster or widow; while her education has not rendered the American wife less competent for the discharge of household duties.

How has the nation at large been affected by the development of this new type of womanhood, or rather perhaps of this variation on the English type?

If women have on the whole gained, it is clear that the nation gains through them.  As mothers they mold the character of their children; while the function of forming the habits of society and determining its moral tone rests greatly in their hands.  But there is reason to think that the influence of the American system tells directly for good upon men as well as upon the whole community.  Men gain in being brought to treat women as equals, rather than as graceful playthings or useful drudges.  The respect for women which every American man either feels, or is obliged by public sentiment to profess, has a wholesome effect on his conduct and character, and serves to check the cynicism which some other peculiarities of the country foster.  The nation as a whole owes to the active benevolence of its women, and their zeal in promoting social reforms, benefits which the customs of Continental Europe would scarcely have permitted women to confer.  Europeans have of late years begun to render a well-deserved admiration to the brightness and vivacity of American ladies.  Those who know the work they have done and are doing in many a noble cause will admire still more their energy, their courage, their self-devotion.  No country seems to owe more to its women than America does, nor to owe to them so much of what is best in social institutions and in the beliefs that govern conduct.

By permission of James Bryce and the Macmillan Company.

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THE ASCENT OF ARARAT

From ‘Trans-Caucasia and Ararat’

About 1 A.M. we got off, thirteen in all, and made straight across the grassy hollows for the ridges which trend up towards the great cone, running parallel in a west-north-westerly direction, and inclosing between them several long narrow depressions, hardly deep enough to be called valleys.  The Kurds led the way, and at first we made pretty good progress.  The Cossacks seemed fair walkers, though less stalwart than the Kurds; the pace generally was better than