It's so much cheaper to buy things ready made!" And they shake their heads and go their ways, feeling that the world is strangely out of joint when duty seems no more duty.

Such women are, in truth, like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her ducklings to the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is left but baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to it, and walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce them to enter it.

But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far off the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that is growing up beside it; and absolutely refuse to disport themselves on the baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are.

And they leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to seek for new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way ?--perhaps to find them?
To the old mother one is inclined to say, "Ah, good old mother duck, can you not see the world has changed?
You cannot bring the water back into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours swim again, it must be in other waters." New machinery, new duties.) But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women's material domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient field of labour.
Time was, when the woman kept her children about her knees till adult years were reached.

Hers was the training and influence which shaped them.