It has often been the pathetic fate of single women to live alone.

To minister to themselves becomes their occupation.

The force of their natures turns to their belongings.

If in straitened circumstances they give their souls to spotless floors; if rich, to flawless mahogany and china, to perfect household machinery.

Wherever you find in woman this perversion--old maidish is perhaps the most accurate word for her--it is a sacrifice of the human to the material.
A house without sweet human litter, without the trace of many varying tastes and occupations, without the trail of friends who perhaps have no sense of beauty but who love to give, without the scars of use, and the dust of running feet--what is it but a meatless shell! This devotion to "things" may easily become a ghoulish passion.