ts. The chosen sister was taught to read, to embroider, and to
dwell indoors; if she went out it was only under escort, and with her face
buried in a hood of almost incredible size, affording only a glimpse of
the poor pale cheeks, quite unlike the rosy vigor of the damsels on the
mountain-side. The girls, I was told, did not covet this privilege of
seclusion; but let us be genteel, or die.

Now all that is left of the Invisible Lady among ourselves is only the
remnant of this absurd tradition. In the seaside town where I write, ladies
of fashion usually go veiled in the streets, and so general is the practice
that little girls often veil their dolls. They all suppose it to be done
for complexion or for ornament; just as people still hang straps on the
backs of their carriages, not knowing that it is a relic of the days when
footmen stood there and held on. But the veil represents a tradition of
seclusion, whether we know it or not; and the dread of hearing a woman
speak in public, or of seeing a woman vote, represents precisely the same
tradition. It is entitled to no less respect, and no more.

Like all traditions, it finds something in human nature to which to attach
itself. Early girlhood, like early boyhood, needs to be guarded and
sheltered, that it may mature unharmed. It is monstrous to make this an
excuse for keeping a woman, any more than a man, in a condition of
perpetual subordination and seclusion. The young lover wishes to lock up
his angel in a little world of her own, where none may intrude. The harem
and the seraglio are simply the embodiment of this desire. But the maturer
man and the maturer race have found that the beloved being should be
something more.

After this discovery is made, the theory of the Invisible Lady disappears.
It is less of a shock for an American to hear a woman speak in public than
it is for an Oriental to see her show her face in public at all. Once open
the door of the harem, and she has the freedom of the house: the house
includes the front door, and the street is but a prolonged doorstep. With
the freedom of the street comes inevitably a free access to the platform,
the tribunal, and the pulpit. You might as well try to stop the air in its
escape from a punctured balloon, as to try, when woman is once out of the
harem, to put her back there. Ceasing to be an Invisible Lady, she must
become a visible force: there is no middle ground. There is no danger that
she will not be an