One sees here, besides, a splendid opening for the rich uncle, the benevolent godfather, the affectionate grandfather, the kindly aunt, the successful brother.  They will come bearing gifts—­not the silver cup, if you please, but the Deferred Annuity.  ’I bring you, my dear, in honour of your little Molly’s birthday, an increase of five pounds to her Deferred Annuity.  This makes it up to twenty pounds, and the money-box getting on, you say, to another pound.  Capital! we shall have her thirty-five pounds in no time now.’  What a noble field for the uncle!

The endowment of the daughter is essentially a woman’s question.  The bride, or at least her mother for her, ought to consider that, though every family quiver varies in capacity with the income, her own lot may be to have a quiver full.  Heaven forbid, as Montaigne said, that we should interfere with the feminine methods, but common prudence seems to dictate the duty of this forecast.  Let, therefore, the demand for endowment come from the bride’s mother.  All that she would be justified in asking of a man whose means are as yet narrow, would be such an endowment, gradually purchased, as would keep the girls from starvation.

For my own part, I think that no woman should be forced to work at all, except at such things as please her.  When a woman marries, for instance, she voluntarily engages herself to do a vast quantity of work.  To look after the house and to bring up the children involves daily, unremitting labour and thought.  If she has a vocation for any kind of work, as for Art, or Letters, or Teaching, let her obey the call and find her happiness.  Generally she has none.  The average woman—­I make this statement with complete confidence—­hates compulsory work:  she hates and loathes it.  There are, it is true, some kinds of work which must be done by women.  Well, there will always be enough for those occupations among women who prefer work to idleness.

There is another very serious consideration.  There is only so much work—­a limited quantity—­in the world:  so many hands for whom occupation can be found—­and the number of hands wanted does not very greatly exceed that of the male hands ready for it.  Now, by giving this work to women, we take it from the men.  If we open the Civil Service to women, we take so many posts from the men, which we give to the women, at a lower salary; if they become cashiers, accountants, clerks, they take these places from the men, at a lower salary.  Always they take lower pay, and turn the men out.  Well, the men must either go elsewhere, or they must take the lower pay.  In either case the happiest lot of all—­that of marriage—­is rendered more difficult, because the men are made poorer; the position of the toiler becomes harder, because he gets worse pay; then man’s sense of responsibility for the women of his family is destroyed.  Nay, in some cases the men actually live, and live contentedly, upon the labour of their wives.  But when all is said about women, and their rights and wrongs, and their work and place, and their equality and their superiority, we fall back at last upon nature.  There is still, and will always remain with us, the sense in man that it is his duty to work for his wife, and the sense in woman that nothing is better for her than to receive the fruits of her husband’s labour.