(for lovers never want somebody to go
ahead and baste the problem for them; they want to blind-stitch it for
themselves as they go along), or else, by critical nagging, and
balancing the eligibility of one suitor against another, these friends
so harass and upset the poor girl that she doesn't know which man she
wants, and so turns her back upon all.

In point of fact, when a man is in love, and a girl does not yet know
her own mind; when she is weighing out their adaptability, and
balancing his love for football against her passion for Browning;
during the delicate, tentative period, when the most affectionate
solicitude from friends is an irritation, there ought to be a law
banishing the interested couple to an island peopled with strangers,
who would not discover the delicacy of the situation until it was too
late to spoil it.

"Woman's rights." I certainly agree with the men who think that those
words have a masculine, assertive, belligerent sound. "Equal suffrage"
is much more lady-like, and we are by way of getting all we wish of
the men on any subject, under the gentlest title by which it may be
called. Strange, how, with strong men, force never avails, but the
softest methods are the surest and swiftest.

However, equal suffrage, wide as it is, is not all that I wish. It
does well enough, but it does not cover the entire ground. I never
clamored very much for women to be recognized as the equals of men,
either in politics or in love, because, if I had clamored at all, I
should have clamored for infinitely more than that. _I_ should have
clamored for men to recognize us as their superiors, and not for equal
rights with themselves, but for more, many more rights than they ever
dreamed of possessing. 'Tis not justice I crave, but mercy. 'Tis not
equality, but chivalry.

In the whole history of the world, from nineteenth-century Public
Opinion clear back to the age of chivalry, men never have been
inclined to deal out justice to women. It is their watchword with each
other, but with women it always is either injustice or mercy. And in
spite of all wrongs and all abuses, I say, Heaven bless the men that
this is so. Human nature is more fundamental than customs, and what
would become of women if we only got our exact deserts, or had
absolute justice dealt to us, either by men or other women or on the
Judgment Day?

In these latter days of this progressive, woman's century, however,
the most thoughtful men are