things which would have filled me with indignation
twenty years ago, but only remind me how far we are from the goal of
our ambition now.

"The first is a sin of omission, the second one of commission, and the
latter is the more to be deprecated in that you made it with your eyes
open, after full discussion, while the other came about as a matter of
course.

"I believe I am right in saying that the membership of this society is
exclusively male, and also that no absolute veto has been placed on
female candidature.

"As a matter of fact, it never struck the founders that such a veto in
black and white was necessary. When they drew up the rules of
membership the other sex never fell like a black shadow on the paper;
it was forgotten. We owe our eligibility to many other offices
(generally disputed at law) to the same accident. In short, the
unwritten law of the _argumentum ad crinolinam_ puts us to the side."

Having paid the society the compliment of believing that, however much
it differed from her views, it would not dismiss them with a laugh,
Mrs. Fawcett turned to the question of woman's alleged physical
limitations.

She said much on this point that Andrew saw could not be easily
refuted, but, interesting though she made it, we need not follow her
over beaten ground.

So far the members had given her the courteous non-attention which
thoughtful introductory remarks can always claim. It was when she
reached her second head that they fastened upon her words.

Then Andrew had seen no sharper audience since he was one of a Scotch
congregation on the scent of a heretic.

"At a full meeting of committee," said Mrs. Fawcett, with a ring of
bitterness in her voice, "you passed a law that women should not enjoy
the advantages of the association. Be they ever so eminent, their sex
deprives them of your care. You take up the case of a petty maker of
books because his tea-leaf solutions weary you, and you put a stop to
him with an enthusiasm worthy of a nobler object.

"But the woman is left to decay.

"This society at its noblest was instituted for taking strong means to
prevent men's slipping down the ladder it has been such a toil to them
to mount, but the women who have climbed as high as they can fall from
rung to rung.

"There are female nuisances as well as male; I presume no one here will
gainsay me that. But you do not know them officially. The politicians
who joke about three acres and a cow, t