a larger
scale have turned into the characteristic of their order. It is
especially remarkable when it breaks the bonds of silence, and takes the
form of what in vulgar language is called "nagging." No form of torture
which has as yet been invented, save, perhaps, the slow dropping of
water on some highly sensitive part of the frame, can afford a parallel
to this ingenious application of the principle of persistence.

The absolute certainty that, when snub or scolding or refusal have died
into silence, the word will be said again; the certainty that it will be
said year after year, month after month, week after week; the
irritation of expecting it, the irritation of hearing it, the irritation
of expecting it again, tell on the firmest will in the world. In the
long run the wife wins. The son goes to Harrow, though reason has proved
a dozen times over that we can only afford the expense of Marlborough;
the family gets its Alpine tour, though logic and unpaid bills
imperatively dictate the choice of a quiet watering place. You yield,
and you see that every one in the house knew that you would yield. There
wasn't a servant who didn't know every turn of the domestic screw, or
who took your resistance for more than the usual routine of the
operation. "Time and I," said Philip of Spain, "against any two." It is
no wonder if, fighting alone for prudence and economy, one is beaten by
time and one's wife.

We have no wish to dispute the enormous benefits to man of woman's
supremacy, but we may fairly leave the statement of them to the numerous
troup of poets who dispute with Mr. Tupper the theme of the affections.
For ourselves, we may undertake, perhaps, the humbler task of pointing
out very briefly some of the disadvantages which, as in all human
things, counterbalance these benefits. In the first place, feminine rule
is certainly not favorable to anything like largeness of mind or breadth
of view. It creates, as we have seen, an excessive self-conceit and
opinionativeness, and then it directs these qualities to very small ends
indeed. Woman lives from her childhood in a world of petty details, of
minute household and other cares, of bargains where the price of every
yard ends in some fraction of a penny. The habit of mind which is formed
by these and similar influences becomes the spirit of the house, a
spirit admirable no doubt in many ways, but excessively small.

The quarrels of a woman's life, her social warfare, her b