public opinion, who is not her friend.

The newspapers have ridiculed the new woman to such an extent, and
their ridicule is so popular, that it requires an act of physical
courage to stand up in her defence and to tell the public that the
bloomer girl is not new; that they have had the newspaper
creation--like the poor--with them always; that they have passed over
the real new woman without a second glance. In other words, to assure
them as delicately as possible that they have been barking up the
wrong tree.

The first thing which endears the new woman to me personally, more
even than her cleverness, is that she has a sense of humor. You may
deny that, if you want to. I firmly believe it, but I am not
infallible. Thank Heaven that I am not. I abominate those people who
are always right. You can't amuse yourself by picking flaws in them.
They are so irritatingly conclusive. Now I am never conclusive, and
you ought to be glad of it. It makes it so much pleasanter for you to
be able to disagree with me logically.

Why have men always possessed an exclusive right to the sense of
humor? I believe it is because they live out-of-doors more. Humor is
an out-of-door virtue. It requires ozone and the light of the sun. And
when the new woman came out-of-doors to live, and mingled with men and
newer women, she saw funny things, and her sense of humor began to
grow and thrive. The fun of the situation is entirely lost if you stay
at home too much.

Now don't let the supersensitive men--who always want women to pursue
the perfectly lady-like employment of knitting gray socks--don't let
them have a fit right here for fear women have come out-of-doors to
stay and are never going in-doors again. Even women, my dear sirs,
know enough to go in when it rains. They love a hearth-rug quite as
well as a cat does. A cat and a woman always come home to the
hearth-rug. But there is very little mental exhilaration in a
hearth-rug. Lots of comfort, but little humor. The real excitement of
life, at least to a cat, is when in a morning stroll abroad she goes
out of her sphere--the hearth-rug--and meets some feline friend to
whom she extends a claw, playful or otherwise; or possibly meets some
merry puppy which induces her to move rapidly up the nearest tree with
an agility which you never would believe the mother of a family could
boast if you had not been an eye-witness to the interesting scene.
Such an encounter will not induce her to want