d songs of rapine and murder, till
the dark faces about him were moved and trembled. His songs would have
echoed on from father to son, and nerved the heart and arm--for evil.
Do you think if Napoleon had been born a woman that he would have been
contented to give small tea-parties and talk small scandal? He would
have risen; but the world would not have heard of him as it hears of him
now--a man great and kingly with all his sins; he would have left one
of those names that stain the leaf of every history--the names of women,
who, having power, but being denied the right to exercise it openly,
rule in the dark, covertly, and by stealth, through the men whose
passions they feed on and by whom they climb.

"Power!" she said, suddenly, smiting her little hand upon the rail.
"Yes, we have power; and since we are not to expend it in tunnelling
mountains, nor healing diseases, nor making laws, nor money, nor on
any extraneous object, we expend it on you. You are our goods, our
merchandise, our material for operating on; we buy you, we sell you, we
make fools of you, we act the wily old Jew with you, we keep six of you
crawling to our little feet, and praying only for a touch of our little
hand; and they say truly, there was never an ache or pain or broken
heart but a woman was at the bottom of it. We are not to study law, nor
science, nor art, so we study you. There is never a nerve or fibre in a
man's nature but we know it. We keep six of you dancing in the palm of
one little hand," she said, balancing her outstretched arm gracefully,
as though tiny beings disported themselves in its palm. "There, we
throw you away, and you sink to the devil," she said, folding her arms
composedly. "There was never a man who said one word for woman but he
said two for man, and three for the whole human race."

She watched the bird pecking up the last yellow grains; but Waldo looked
only at her.

When she spoke again it was very measuredly.

"They bring weighty arguments against us when we ask for the perfect
freedom of women," she said; "but, when you come to the objections, they
are like pumpkin devils with candles inside, hollow, and can't bite.
They say that women do not wish for the sphere and freedom we ask for
them, and would not use it!

"If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not
leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut? Why not open it,
only a little? Do they know there is many a bird will no