“And you think, therefore, that they should not have a scientific education?”

“No, unless all scientific prying into things is a mistake.  Women may be more likely at first to be upset than men, but they will recover their balance when the novelty is worn off.  No amount of science will entirely change their emotional nature; and besides, with all our science, I don’t see that the supernatural has any less hold on this generation than on the former.”

“Yes, and you might say the world was never before so credulous as it is now.  But what was the other thing?”

“Why, that co-education is likely to diminish marriages among the co-educated.  Daily familiarity in the classroom at the most impressionable age, revelation of all the intellectual weaknesses and petulances, absorption of mental routine on an equality, tend to destroy the sense of romance and mystery that are the most powerful attractions between the sexes.  It is a sort of disenchanting familiarity that rubs off the bloom.”

“Have you any statistics on the subject?”

“No.  I fancy it is only a notion of some old fogy who thinks education in any form is dangerous for women.”

“Yes, and I fancy that co-education will have about as much effect on life generally as that solemn meeting of a society of intelligent and fashionable women recently in one of our great cities, who met to discuss the advisability of limiting population.”

“Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “this is an interesting age.”

I was less anxious about the vagaries of it when I saw the very old-fashioned way in which the international drama was going on in our neighborhood.  Mr. Lyon was increasingly interested in Margaret’s mission work.  Nor was there much affectation in this.  Philanthropy, anxiety about the working-classes, is nowhere more serious or in the fashion than it is in London.  Mr. Lyon, wherever he had been, had made a special study of the various aid and relief societies, especially of the work for young waifs and strays.

One Sunday afternoon they were returning from the Bloom Street Mission.  Snow covered the ground, the sky was leaden, and the air had a penetrating chill in it far more disagreeable than extreme cold.

“We also,” Mr. Lyon was saying, in continuation of a conversation, “are making a great effort for the common people.”

“But we haven’t any common people here,” replied Margaret, quickly.  “That bright boy you noticed in my class, who was a terror six months ago, will no doubt be in the City Council in a few years, and likely enough mayor.”

“Oh, I know your theory.  It practically comes to the same thing, whatever you call it.  I couldn’t see that the work in New York differed much from that in London.  We who have leisure ought to do something for the working-classes.”

“I sometimes doubt if it is not all a mistake most of our charitable work.  The thing is to get people to do something for themselves.”