d any
more think of performing the drudgery which he imposes upon his wife
and daughters than a German or Norwegian. What is the use of having
wives and children if they don't relieve us of our heavy work? In that
respect we Americans are very much behind the times. We pay such
absurd devotion to the weakness of woman that they rule us with a
despotism unknown in any other country. Their smiles are threats, and
their tears are despotic manifestoes, against which the bravest of us
dare not rebel. It is absolutely horrible to think of the condition of
servitude in which we are placed by the extraordinary powers vested
in, and so relentlessly exercised by, the women of America. I, for
one, am in favor of a revival of the old laws of Nuremberg, by which
female tyranny was punished. By a decree of the famous Council of
Eight, any woman convicted of beating her husband or otherwise
maltreating him was forced to wear a dragon's head for the period of
three days; and if she did not, at the expiration of that date, ask
his pardon, she was compelled to undergo a regimen of bread and water
for the space of three weeks, or until effectually reduced to
submission. Something must be done, or we shall be compelled sooner or
later to adopt a clause in the Constitution prohibiting from admission
the State of Matrimony. What would the ladies do then? I think that
would bring them to their senses.

Not only in the matter of domestic discipline, but of business and
pleasure, are the people of Europe infinitely ahead of us. In France
many of the railway stations are attended by female clerks, and in
Germany the beer-saloons are ornamented by pretty girls, who carry
around the foaming schoppens, having a spare smile and a joke for
every customer. Of opera-singers, dancers, and female fiddlers, the
most famous are produced in Europe. The wheeling girls of Hamburg, who
roll after the omnibuses in circus fashion, are the only specimens in
the line of popular attractions that I have not yet seen in the
streets or public resorts of New York.

[Illustration: WHEELING GIRLS.]

What would be thought of half a dozen of these street acrobats
rolling down Broadway or the Fifth Avenue? Doubtless they would
attract considerable attention, and probably turn many a good penny. I
fancy the Bowery boys would enjoy this sort of thing. A pretty girl of
sixteen or seventeen, with her crinoline securely bundled up between
her ankles, wheeling merrily along