es vainqueurs de la terre in any sense they choose; but the pity of it is t

or care to use their strength. I would have every woman feel herself a power for good in the land-and if only half of them did, what a world of difference it would make to everybody's health and happiness! But women should, as a rule, be silent powers. There are, of course, occasions when they must speak-and all honour to those who do so when the need arises-but our influence is most felt when it is quietly persistent and unobtrusive. There is no social reform that we might not accomplish if we agreed among ourselves to do it, and then worked, each of u

hardly fair,

feeding and

e consp

anything but repent. At the time, I own, I thought of nothing but th

t only, as per usual, when you are eag

but most of it is lost for want of knowledge and means to apply it. It works like the sails of a windmill not attached to the machinery, which

ion of women in our own da

actly distinct: they dovetail into each other so nicely that it is hard to say where the influence of the one set ends and the other begins. There are, first of all, the women who in their struggles for political power have done so much to unsex us. They have tried to force themselves into unnatural positions, and the consequence has been about as pleasing and edifying as an attempt to make a goose sing. They clamour for change, mistaking change for progress. But don't let the puzzling dovetail confuse you. The people I speak of are not those who have so nobly devoted themselves to the removal of the wrongs of women, though they work together. But the object of all this class is good. They wish to raise us, and what they want, for the most part, is a little more common sense-as is shown in their system of education, for instance, which cultiva

for change of any kind, regardless of the consequences. Their ideas, shorn of all good intention, have resulted in the production of a new creature; and have made it possible for women who have the faults of both sexes and the virtues of neither to mix in society. The bad work done by the influen

rrupt tendency. Their works are a special feature of the age, and are doubly dangerous because they have the art of ma

and therefore their dissatisfaction takes no positive shape. They also want something, and go this way and that as if in search of it, but they are not really trying for anything in particular. They do good

ction?" I asked. "Why don't you go to your hus

e counsels of those whose own lives, we know, have rendered them contemptible. They are not fit to guide us, and we are not fit to go alone. I suppose we shall come to an understanding eventually- either they must be raised or we must be lowered. It is for the death of manliness we women

th of manliness? Men have as mu

moral courage that makes a man, and where do you find it now? Are men self-denying? Are they scrupulous to a shadow of t

an, then?" I asked in surpr

ost refining quality. As a child I used to think ladies and gentlemen never told stories; it was only th

ld is worse than it ev

wered with scorn. "Not worse when we have learnt

s ou

chains us to

s in terrorem! We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you will find that every man sees the necessity of it for his neighbour only. Goodness is happiness, and sin is disease. The truism is as old as the hills, and as evident; but if men were in earnest, do you suppose they would go on for ever choosing sin and its ghastly companion as they do? Do you know, there are moments when I think that even their reverence for the purity of women is a s

it such occasions. "When we begin to inculcate morality as a science, we must discard moralising as a method," she declared; and she would also beg us to stop the hysteri

em would have been good for her; she was too diffident, "I have not come across people on whose knowledge I could rely," she told me. "I have been obliged to study alone, and to form my opinions for mys

t a

crying in

crying for

o language

sion, when, after talking long and earnestly of the sin of selfishness, she absently picked up a paper I had just cut with int