e easy for them. It seems, indeed, probable that
under the new era our great elections shall become a sort of grand
national gift concerns, of which the most active demagogues of all
parties will be the managers. Not that women are more mercenary, or
more unprincipled than men. God forbid! That would be saying too much.
We entirely believe the reverse to be true. But the great mass of women
can never be made to take a deep, a sincere, a discriminating, a
lasting interest in the thousand political questions ever arising to be
settled by the vote. They very soon weary of such questions. On great
occasions they can work themselves up to a state of frenzied excitement
over some one political question. At such times they can parade a
degree of unreasoning prejudice, of passionate hatred, of blind fury,
even beyond what man can boast of. But, in their natural condition, in
everyday life, they do not take instinctively to politics as men do.
Men are born politicians; just as they are born masons, and carpenters,
and soldiers, and sailors. Not so women. Their thoughts and feelings
are given to other matters. The current of their chosen avocations runs
in another channel than that of politics--a channel generally quite out
of sight of politics; it is an effort for them to turn from one to the
other. With men, on the contrary, politics, either directly or
indirectly, are closely, palpably, inevitably blended with their
regular work in life. They give their attention unconsciously,
spontaneously; to politics. Look at a family of children, half boys,
half girls; the boys take instinctively to whips and guns and balls and
bats and horses, to fighting and wrestling and riding; the girls fondle
their dolls, beg for a needle and thread, play at housekeeping, at
giving tea-parties, at nursing the sick baby, at teaching school. That
difference lasts through life. Give your son, as he grows up, a gun and
a vote; he will delight in both. Give your daughter, as she grows up, a
gun and a vote, and, unless she be an exceptional woman, she will make
a really good use of neither. Your son may be dull; but he will make a
good soldier, and a very tolerable voter. Your daughter may be very
clever; but she would certainly run away on the battle-held, and very
probably draw a caricature on the election ticket. There is the making
of an admirable wife and mother, and a valuable member of society, in
that clever young woman. She is highly intelligent, t