recent campaign
for suffrage, for example. Does any one suppose that, had she been
anything but woman, a sacrosanct being, immune from clubs and bullets,
that she would have been allowed to carry matters with such high
victorious hand as in England--and more power to her!--she has of late
been doing. Let men attempt such tactics, and their shrift is
uncomplimentarily short. It may be said that woman enjoys this immunity
with children and curates, but, even so, it may be held that these
latter participate in a less degree in that divine nature with which
woman is so completely armoured.

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

exclaims Shakespeare.

But there is indeed the mystery, for, though its "action is no stronger
than a flower," the power wielded by beauty in this world, and therefore
by woman as its most dynamic embodiment, is as undeniable as it is
irresistible. "Terrible as an army with banners" was no mere figure of
lovesick speech. It is as plain a truth as the properties of radium,
and belongs to the same order of marvel. Such scientific discoveries are
particularly welcome as demonstrating the power of the finer, as
contrasted with the more brutally obvious, manifestations of force; for
they thus illustrate the probable nature of those spiritual forces whose
operations we can plainly see, without being able to account for them. A
foolish phrase has it that "a woman's strength is in her helplessness."
"Helplessness" is a curious term to use for a mysteriously concentrated
or super-refined form of strength. "Whose action is no stronger than a
flower." But is the action of a flower any less strong because it is not
the action of a fist? As a motive force a flower may be, and indeed has
time and again been, stronger than a thousand fists. And what then shall
we say of the action of that flower of flowers that is woman--that
flower that not only once or twice in history has

... launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Ilium.

Woman's helplessness, forsooth! On the contrary, woman is the best
equipped fighting machine that ever went to battle. And she is this, not
from any sufferance on the part of man, not from any consideration on
his part toward her "weakness," but merely because he cannot help
himself, because nature has so made her.

No simple reasoning will account for her influence over man. I