Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/135

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THE TRANSITIONAL WOMAN.
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added grace and piquant deportment; and the Western woman is minus the Southern charm and the New England self-consciousness and morbid conscientiousness, plus an active self-reliance that has already resulted in successful individual and concerted measures. In all these women, however, the wish for progress has made such havoc that the woman of today differs from the woman of the past.

As justification of this new departure it must be remembered that we are no longer living in an age marked by a dominant cause. Work, government, society, knowledge, philanthropy, yearly grow more specialized, whilst our foremothers had above them their faith in the special providences of God, and around and below them a daily struggle for material needs. Life was grave and tender in these women, who felt that they were the founders of a new race. And just as they were beginning to realize that less praying and less manual labor would obtain their daily

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