ature as the society girl and
the average working girl of the factory, the shop and the office, would
speak out (under assurance of immunity from prosecution) his testimony
would be a surprise to the cartilaginous virgins, blowsy matrons, acrid
relicts and hairy males of Emancipation. It would pain, too, some very
worthy but unobservant persons not in sympathy with "the cause."

Certain significant facts are within the purview of all but the very
young and the comfortably blind. To the woman of to-day the man of
to-day is imperfectly polite. In place of reverence lie gives her
"deference"; to the language of compliment has succeeded the language of
raillery. Men have almost forgotten how to bow. Doubtless the advanced
female prefers the new manner, as may some of her less forward sisters,
thinking it more sincere. It is not; our giddy grandfather talked
high-flown nonsense because his heart had tangled his tongue. He treated
his woman more civilly than we ours because he loved her better. He
never had seen her on the "rostrum" and in the lobby, never had heard
her in advocacy of herself, never had read her confessions of his sins,
never had felt the stress of her competition, nor himself assisted by
daily personal contact in rubbing the bloom off her. He did not know
that her virtues were due to her secluded life, but thought, dear old
boy, that they were a gift of God.

A MAD WORLD

Let us suppose that in tracing its cycloidal curves through the
unthinkable reaches of space traversed by the solar system our planet
should pass through a "belt" of attenuated matter having the property of
dementing us! It is a conception easily enough entertained. That space
is full of malign conditions incontinuously distributed; that we are at
one time traversing a zone comparatively innocuous and at another
spinning through a region of infection; that away behind us in the wake
of our swirling flight are fields of plague and pain still agitated by
our passage through them,--all this is as good as known. It is almost as
certain as it is that in our little annual circle round the sun are
points at which we are stoned and brick-batted like a pig in a
potato-patch--pelted with little nodules of meteoric metal flung like
gravel, and bombarded with gigantic masses hurled by God knows what?
What strange adventures await us in those yet untraveled regions toward
which we speed?--into what malign conditions may we not at any time
plu