ries of existence fate may have to offer; this is the
supreme meaning of life to woman, and it is here that she finds her true
value in the world. She may read that meaning in divers manners; she may
make of her place in life a curse or a blessing to mankind. It matters
not; all returns to the same cause, the same source of power_. _The
strongest woman is weak if she be not loved, for she lacks her chief
weapon with which to conquer; the weakest is strong if she truly have
won love, for through this she can work miracles. Her strength is more
than doubled; heart and brain and hand are in equal measure, for that
with which the heart inspires the brain will be transmitted by the heart
to the hand, and the message will be too imperative to fear failure.

It is a strange thing--though not inexplicable--that your ambitious
woman is far more ruthless, far more unscrupulous, far more determined
to win at any cost, than is the most ambitious of men. Again comes the
law of extreme to show cause that this should be; but the fact is so
sure that cause is of less interest. Not Machiavelli was so false, not
Caligula was so cruel, not Caesar was so careless of right, as the woman
whose political ambition has taken form and strength. That which bars
her path must be swept aside, be it man or notion or principle. She sees
but the one object, her goal, looming large before her; and she moves on
with her eyes fixed, crushing beneath her feet all that would turn her
steps.

I have spoken of the cruelty of an ambitious woman; and it is worth
while to pause a moment to consider this trait as displayed in
women--not as a means, but as an end. There have been men who loved
cruelty for its own sake; but they are few, and their methods crude,
compared with the woman who have felt this strange passion. In the days
of human sacrifices, it was the women who most thronged to the
spectacles, who most eagerly fastened their eyes upon the expiring
victims. In the gladiatorial combats, it was the women who greeted each
mortal thrust with applause, and whose reversed thumbs won the majority
for the signal of death to the vanquished. In the days of terror in
France, it was the woman who led the mob that threatened the king and
queen, and hanged Foulard to a lamp post after almost tearing him to
pieces; it was the women who sat in rows around the guillotine, day
after day, and placidly knit their terrible records of death; it was the
women who cried for