Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/89

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STRIVING.
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and ability to bear the joy or sorrow of life, and thus freedom. Men and women alike need it, for the more that one sees of life the less perceptible are differences of sex, and the more prominence do varying types of character assume. Every one should have it, he who commands, and she who endures; the narrow life and the broad one, the prisoner and the traveller, the clerk and the merchant, the belle of society and the unknown worker in her attic. Yet, certainly, the semi-public life (may it never be the publicity of political life,) on which women are entering more and more; fairs and clubs, sanitary and charitable work of all kinds, are teaching self-control. Women, now, dare not snap at each other, as they might like, if they want to gain their end; they are learning to compromise honestly, to allow others their way, and in social judgments to separate opinion from practice. It will soon be a proverb: Never think you know a woman till you serve on a committee with her.

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