ir husbands and fathers, or the brothers of one another, toward the
state. We should make them observe that the actual citizen was not
immediately concerned with the pomps and glories of public life; that
parties and constituencies were not made up of one's fellow-aristocrats,
but were mostly composed of plebeians very jealous of any show of
distinction, and that, in spite of the displeasures of political
association with them, there was no present disposition in American men
to escape to monarchy from them. We cannot, we should remind them, all
be of good family; that takes time, or has taken it; and without good
family the chances of social eminence, or even prominence, are small at
courts. Distinction is more evenly distributed in a democracy like ours;
everybody has a chance at it. To be sure, it is not the shining honor
bestowed by kings, but when we remember how often the royal hand needs
washing we must feel that the honor from it may have the shimmer of
putrescence. This is, of course, the extreme view of the case; and the
condition of the royal hand is seldom scrutinized by those who receive
or those who witness the honor bestowed. But the honor won from one's
fellow-citizens is something worth having, though it is not expressed in
a ribbon or a title. Such honor, it seems probable, will soon be the
reward of civic virtue in women as well as men, and we hope women will
not misprize it. The great end to be achieved for them by the suffrage
is self-government, but with this goes the government of others, and
that is very pleasant. The head of our state may be a woman, chosen at
no far-distant election; and though it now seems droll to think of a
woman being president, it will come in due time to seem no more so than
for a woman to be a queen or an empress. At any rate, we must habituate
our minds to the idea; we must realize it with the hope it implies that
no woman will then care socially to outshine her sister; at the most she
will be emulous of her in civic virtue, the peculiar grace and glory of
republics. We understand that this is already the case in New Zealand
and Colorado and Wyoming. It is too soon, perhaps, to look for the
effect of suffrage on the female character in Denmark; it may be mixed,
because there the case is complicated by the existence of a king, which
may contaminate that civic virtue by the honor which is the moving
principle in a monarchy. And now," we turned lightly to our visitor,
"what