Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WOMAN'S WORK IN RUMANIA POSSIBLY a better title for this chapter would be the work of the Rumanian women; because Rumanian women are to be found not only in the kingdom of Rumania, but also in vast regions all around Rumania, in Transylvania, in Bessarabia, in Bukovina and the Banat, in the Macedonian mountains, and also in the Western part of the Ukrainian Republic. I must, however, ask you not to fear that my remarks will be made longer on account of this fact. The Rumanian nation in all the manifestations of its life has this characteristic, that, although it has suffered many vicissitudes and has been subject to much oppression from foreign powers, it has kept in generafr lines the same language and the same customs. Therefore, to speak of the women of the kingdom of Rumania means to speak of all the Rumanian women of all countries inhabited by Rumanians. In all times and with all peoples the women have had their part in martyrdom. Professor Graham Wallace, in "The Great Society," quotes from the Medea of Euripides: "Of all beings born to life and intelligence, women are the most unhappy." This psychological fact, profoundly true even with happy nations, has a deeper meaning in the case of oppressed peoples. In their case the martyrdom is intensified, and as in all other similar cases, it produces heroic characters, —whether the heroes and heroines bear famous names or remain unknown among the great mass of the people who daily work and suffer. Let us see now what is the special character, the physiognomy, and the leading interests and occupations of the Rumanian woman. Let us go together on a Sunday afternoon to a Rumanian village. On open ground under the shade of an old oak, to the accompaniment of a violin and a "cobza" (a kind of guitar), the weekly dance of t...