to her:
'That's all right; come on.' She jumped on my knees, settled herself
comfortably and asked me to tell her stories. I started at once. Now,
you understand, I was not allowed to stop; but I took breath, and I
said to her:

'Does not your papa tell you long stories on Sundays?'

That lovely little round face grew sad and quite long.

'Oh no,' she said; 'papa is too tired on Sundays.'

A few weeks after I left Chicago that man was taken ill with a disease
not uncommon in America, a disease that starts at the top of your head
and takes two or three years to kill you in a lunatic asylum, among
drivelling idiots and imbeciles.

A couple of years later, being in Chicago again, I made inquiries and
learned that the poor fellow was expected to exist a few weeks, perhaps
a few months longer.

What a pity, I thought, that beautiful woman had not enough influence
over that good man to stop him!

Do not offer me twenty millions at that price. No twenty millions can
cure the disease which afflicted that American.

Put a little girl of three on my knees on Sundays, and I will tell her
stories from sunrise and go on till sunset, even if I thus run the risk
of being prosecuted by the Lord's Day Observance Society.

CHAPTER XXVII

PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT

Description of all the Anglo-Saxon fads.

I loathe the domination of woman, but I ever crave for her influence,
and I believe that any man of refinement and thinking, that any lover
and admirer of woman, will echo this sentiment.

I know of one country only where the government by woman was given a
real trial, and that is New Zealand. The law was passed and the
experiment was made. The law, I believe, had to be repealed after six
months. The Government had taken such a tyrannical form that that
loveliest of spots on the earth was on the eve of a revolution, of a
desperate struggle for liberty.

Things were pretty badly managed in a small Ohio city when I was
visiting it four years ago. The following year women put up their names
as candidates for the City Council in every ward, and were all
returned. They did manage the city. The following year the experiment
had been made, and not one woman was returned again.

The American men are so busy, so long absent from home, that many of
their womankind have to find out a way of using the leisure time left
at their disposal, with results that are not always altogether
satisfactory. Some devote that time to li