Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

that goes on, more or less, in many women's lives. Of course the same thing occurs, to a great degree, with busy men, whose brains are often as much occupied, to the exclusion of other things, in the work that interests them. But since, as a rule, they have more power of arrang- ing their lives to suit their tastes, their absorption affects less the happiness or convenience of others, and they often have a practical wife who helps them out of their difficulties. No doubt there are instances of both men and women who have the power of combining, in the highest sense, both work and play. A pathetic little touch in a woman's biography is of how Mrs. Browning wrote ' Aurora Leigh ' as an invalid in Paris. She was con- stantly interrupted by friends and visitors, and used quietly to tuck the little bits of paper under the pillow of her sofa, to resume her imaginative work when again alone. The complications of life were lessened for her by the fact that she [inhabited a sick-room. I think the women who will do most for the cause of their sex in the future are those who cease to fight for an equality with men, which is practically an impossibility, and will strive, from their youth up, to keep a just balance between duty, pleasure, and intellectual pursuits ; sometimes asking the help of others to decide when the two last must give way to the first. I am terribly tempted to scratch out this last sentence — it sounds so odiously priggish ; and yet, of course, we all know there is a good deal of truth in it. If a woman has been ever so successful in a profession, it is my experience that she gives it up after marriage. Every man always says, at the time of engagement, that he would not for the world interfere with her work ; but it always ends in the work being given up, if the house is to be properly kept. Imagine, if there were sickness or any other kind of domestic disaster in the house, the man would never dream of giving up his work, whatever DAUGHTERS 345 it might be. But think of a woman, head of any such household, sitting down under the circumstances to write a poem, or to paint a picture, or going out to her model- ling studio? The woman's profession must go to the wall, unless it is under the very exceptional circumstances when the woman is the bread-winner, or even partially so, and when disaster may increase the necessity for her earnings. Perhaps many Englishwomen would deny what I really believe to be the truth — namely, that passion is the great moving power of life, the root of all that is highest and noblest in us, the developer of all that is artistic, intellectual, affectionate, and even religious in ourselves. Some people may accuse me of inconsistency in saying this. Of that I should be proud, for can anything ever approach the inconsistency of life — especially, perhaps, the life of women? Women — Englishwomen, at all events — imagine that there is but one danger in having strong feeling, and that, if that is sufficiently suppressed in the direction which is natural and ordinary, it ceases to cause any alarm at all. I do not agree with this. It is a platitude to talk of the dual nature which we all have within us. The contrast between these two natures is much more marked, and causes a fiercer struggle, in passionate natures than in cold ones.