he writers who are comic about
mothers-in-law, the very boot-blacks have your solicitude, but you
ignore their complements in the softer sex.

"Yet you call yourselves a society for suppressing excrescences! Your
president tells me you are at present inquiring for the address of the
man who signs himself 'Paterfamilias' in the 'Times'; but the letters
from 'A British Matron' are of no account.

"I do not need to be told how Dr. Smith, the fashionable physician, was
precipitated down that area the other day; but what I do ask is, why
should he be taken and all the lady doctors left?

"Their degrees are as good as his. You are too 'manly,' you say, to
arrest their course. Is injustice manliness? We have another name for
it. We say you want the pluck.

"I suppose every one of you has been reading a very able address
recently delivered at the meeting of the Social Science Congress. I
refer to my friend Mrs. Kendal's paper on the moral aspect of the drama
in this country.

"It is a powerful indictment of the rank and file other professional
brothers and sisters, and nowhere sadder, more impressive, or more
unanswerable than where she speaks of the involuntary fall of the actor
into social snobbishness and professional clap-trap.

"I do not know how the paper affected you. But since reading it I have
asked in despair, how can this gifted lady continue to pick her way
between the snares with which the stage is beset?

"Is it possible that the time may come when she will advertise by
photographs and beg from reporters the 'pars' she now so scathingly
criticises? Nay, when I look upon the drop scene at the St. James's
Theatre, I ask myself if the deterioration has not already set in.

"Gentlemen, is this a matter of indifference to you? But why do I ask?
Has not Mrs. Lynn Linton another article in the new 'Nineteenth
Century' that makes her worthy your attention? They are women, and the
sex is outside your sphere."

It was nearly twelve o'clock when Mrs. Fawcett finished her address,
and the society had adopted the good old rule of getting to bed
betimes. Thus it was afterwards that Andrew learned how long and
carefully the society had already considered the advisability of giving
women equal rights with men.

As he was leaving the chambers the president slipped something into his
hand. He held it there until he reached his room.

On the way a man struck against him, scanned him piercingly, and then
shu