Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[34] and interminable. Be that as it may, they all dropped from her; and she danced about the halls of her girlhood, the gayest of the gay. How indignantly she declined the offer of a ticket to a certain very instructive historical lecture! “Do not offer me anything intellectual,” she indignantly said, “on a week like this. If you have a ticket to anything improper, bring me that. I think I should like to see the ‘Black Crook!’ ” It appeared, upon inquiry, that she had never witnessed that performance, and had only a general impression that it was a little naughty. But the proposal certainly indicated a kind of “Saints' rest” which would greatly have amazed Mr. Richard Baxter.

The present writer, never having been a saint, cannot speak from personal experience; but his sympathies are often thoroughly aroused for those who belong to this neglected class. It is a shame not to recognize needs like theirs. Why do we all spend our strength on organizing Country Weeks in summer for people who need to get out of the city, and not also undertake City Weeks in winter for people who need to get into the city? Why forever preach “plain living and high thinking,” when so many persons would be benefited by any kind of living, if it could only be combined with no thinking at all? These clergymen's wives, with all the needs and hopes and fears and cares and woes of a hundred