Equality

t Qui Ma

d the house th

ns raised in our talks frequently suggest the necessity of refreshing my general knowledge of the contrasts between your day and this by looking up

fully fledged citizenship. She did not seem at all surprised on lear

new you would. It is the only way to get in touch with the people and feel really

forty-five years of age in some useful occupation; but so far as I have seen, although you are the picture of health and vigor, you have no employment, but are quite like young ladies of elegant leisure in my day, who spent

bably be such things as vacations or furloughs in the industrial service, and that the rather unusual and int

e your vacation

we please, always subject, of co

china, keep books for the Government, stand behind a counter i

the number of women's

bers, the washers, the servants of all work. The most repulsive and humiliating kinds of drudgery we

d, we have long ago arranged affairs so that there is very little such work to do. But, tell me, were there no women in your day

such occupations. They w

lk with a man of the nineteenth century who is so much like a man of to-day and

ss they are physically much stronger. Most of these occupations you have just mentioned were too heavy for

avy work is done directly now; machines do all, and we only need to guide them, and the lighter the hand that guides, the better the work done. So you see that nowadays physical qualities have much less to do than mental with the choice of occupations. The mind is constantly getting nearer to the work, and father says some day we may be able to work by sheer will power directly and have no need of

you were alr

ation we are three years in the unclassified or miscellaneo

do y

s, but really I have learned more since I have been at work than in twice the time spent in school. You can not imagine how perfectly delightful this grade of work is. I don't wonder some people prefer to stay in it all their lives for the sake of the constant change in tasks, rather than elect a

of farm work have greatly changed since my day I can n

e. Then her glance fell to her dress, and when she again looked up her expression had chang

ss of the women you see on the streets is different

enerally wear no skirts, but you and yo

nder why our dress was not like their

one I was accustomed to, naturally struck me as the normal type, and this other style as a variation for some special or local reason which I should later learn about. You must not think me altogether stupid. To tell the truth, these other women have as yet scarcely impressed me as being very real. You were at first the only person about wh

ering days for the assurance even of my own identity the quick tears rushed to my compani

. I have been guilty toward you all this time of a sort of fraud, or at least of a flagrant suppression of the truth, whic

t w

oo much s

aid. "What is this mystery? I t

rsal, and we reflected that to see mother and me in the modern dress would no doubt strike you very strangely. Now, you see, although skirtless costumes are the general--indeed, almost universal--wear for most occasions, all possible costumes, ancient and modern, of all races, ages, and civilizations, are either provided or to be obtained on the sh

e we did not know how to get rid of them, without, however, having a bit better opinion of them than you h

ese horrible bags, and will not wear them a moment longer

me in modern dress. I have seen her in a hundred varieties of that costume since then, and have grown familiar with the exhaustless diversity of its adaptations, but I defy the imaginatio

eanwhile no doubt testifying eloquently enough how adorable I found her. She seeme

g down in the bottom of your mind! It must be somet

accustomed to use this sort of costume, would have seemed embarrassed and ill at ease, at least for a time, under a gaze so intent as mine, even though it were a brother's or a father's. I, it seems, had been prepared for at least some slight appearance of discomposure on Edith's part, and was consciously surprised at a manner which simply expressed an ingenuous gratification at my admiration. I refer to this momentary experience because it has always seemed to me to illustrate in a particularly vivid way the change that has

t to be greatly obliged to twentieth-century women for revealing fo

d, as if not quite comprehending m

a man's dress I s

me stupid not to catch your idea more quickly, but I told you I was dull at history. It is now two full generations since women as well as men have worn this dress, and the idea of associating it with men more than women would occur