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It is quite pertinent to ask, What is woman's proper sphere? Every true woman instinctively feels, and she may profess it or not, that a woman's happiest place is, as Mrs. Browning says, " in the sweet safe corner of the household fire, behind the heads of the children." Such a home is the ideal of almost every girlish heart. But there are some who never have it. To enter upon life with the desire to get such a home is to defeat that very purpose, or to obtain in its place a miserable substitute; for, like very other gracious gift, it comes not by seeking, but in its own natural way. With some, a bright vision of married life faded in its realization into cruel mockery. With others the black pall of bereavement has shut the very sunshine out of the heavens. In other homes, the woman's heart yearns for little ones, but she looks forward to a future of childlessness. What shall these women do? Because the heart is desolate and the hands are empty should the head be empty too? Let us not deceive ourselves. Whether a woman works in the shelter of her own home or outside of it, she has duties to society and an influence over it, which she cannot avoid. How good or how broad that influence may be depends upon her intellectual and moral nature.
Whatever the past may have been, we know that the future woman can and will take any place she is competent to fill. She ought to wish for no other. It is of little use for women to whine over their wrongs or to storm or scold at man's tyranny. Men are quite willing to give us a place in the ranks of the world's workers as we are to earn it. Still, it is well to remember that whatever has helped to elevate women to her present position has been done by those brave spirits who have resolutely wrought at their chosen labour, ignoring the petty ostracism of their next door neighbors, who called them "singular" 'eccentric' or "strong-minded." We must not judge harshly those who are called to work outside of the beaten paths. When a woman has exceptional gifts, she has probably exceptional work in the world to do, and she ought to do it.
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