INTRICACY OF WOMAN'S LIFE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8432, 3 August 1889, Page 6

INTRICACY OF WOMAN'S LIFE.

One of the most marked characteristics of modern life is the enormous increase which it makes in its demands npon w#man. It has always beeo true, from the dawn of civilisation, that the role of women in society and in life has been more intricate, although less broad, than that of men. It has always been asked at tho hands of women that they should be a thousand times more flexible than men ; that they should adapt themselves to a hundred conditions which men ignorad or soorned ; and that they play in the drama of life a soore of parts to every one which was undertaken by their fathers and brothers and sons. As life has constantly grown more and more complex, this difference between the sexes has increased rather than diminished. Life to-day, demands of a woman mors changes in a day than a man is required to compass in a month. She must, from moment to moment, be one thing after another— the wife, the mother, the woman of society, the leader in reforms, the sharer in this work of charity and that labor and intellectual progress, until it is a miracle that she is able to do any of the multitudinous duties imposed upon her. Of oourse, in a great measure thia is due to the fact that women will accept these burdens. Men escape much by the simple method of refusing to take it upon them. It is idle to expeot mon to bend to all ohanges with whioh women euonmber thf-ir lives, so the lives of mon remain, and are more likely to remain, more aim pis than those of the other sex. Wornon are, as a rule, snffloienily well able to oppose their wills to porsonal opposition, but the women are few and hard to seek who are capable of standing oat againßtciroumstanoes. Perhaps the difference is that a man argues with himself and is satiaGed with hia oonelusion, while a woman must ajgue with a seeoud person, or her arguments are apt to be as wate? apilied upon the ground which, can,not he gathored again A man convinces himself that he is right, and, that Is the end of it. He aeta upon tha.t conclusion, while a woman in a similar oase would be apt to find it impossible to be satisfied unless Bh<j could hare the confirmation of somo ons else to assure that Bhe was justiQed inher decision. "' ' But whatever \b % ea.use, of the fact tbeje is no, doaht, The woman who is of the world, to-day must be prepared to he all things ia auososßion. She must he th.c careful housewife, the sooial lea.de;, the veligieuse, the scholar, tho wit, the confidant, all in turn. She m ust compass at least a show of all learning ; Bhe must be in sympathy with all branches oE knowledge and feeling and thought ; Bhe muat attend to a hundred forms of life of the very existence of whioh her grandmothers w,ere ignorant. We »re part of a w,ho)K asid although a woman m^y som,e pxtent d.raw hereulf from current, and in the end she is fjoroed to, choose between being left a i stranded wajf on the ahoro of the stream and taking her part of whatever the life of; her tirae may be.