They have brought along with them into their public
work the habit of self-sacrifice, and that overconscientiousness
in detail which their foremothers acquired during the countless
generations when obedience, self-immolation and self-obliteration were
considered women's chief duties. Personally these good sisters are
blameless. But that does not in the least alter the hard fact that
such overdevotion is an uneconomical expenditure of nervous energy.
When a wiser onlooker, wise with the onlooker's wisdom, urges
moderation even in overwork, there is put forward the pathetic plea,
variously worded:
"So much to do, so little time to do it."
I have never heard that hard-to-be-met argument so well answered as by
a woman physician, who gave these reasons to her patient, one of the
overdevoted ilk.
"Agreed," she said, "there is so much to do that you cannot possibly
do it all, nor the half, nor the tenth, nor the fiftieth part of it.
Furthermore, the struggle is going on for a long, long time, and there
are occasions ahead when your aid will be needed as badly or more
badly than today.
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