o whether of the human
or animal kingdom, will die for her young. Yet, after all, hers, too, is
a kind of selfishness.

The woman is becoming over much a professional female. It is of
importance that we begin to consider her as a new species, having
enjoyed her beauty long enough. Is the world on the way to organic
revolution? If I were a young man I should not care to be the lover of a
professional female. As an old man I have affectionate relations with
a number of suffragettes, as they dare not deny; that is to say, I long
ago accepted woman suffrage as inevitable, whether for good or evil,
depending upon whether the woman's movement is going to stop with
suffrage or run into feminism, changing the character of woman and her
relations to men and with man.

II

I have never made party differences the occasion of personal quarrel
or estrangement. On the contrary, though I have been always called
a Democrat, I have many near and dear friends among the Republicans.
Politics is not war. Politics would not be war even if the politicians
were consistent and honest. But there are among them so many
changelings, cheats and rogues.

Then, in politics as elsewhere, circumstances alter cases. I have as a
rule thought very little of parties as parties, professional politicians
and party leaders, and I think less of them as I grow older. The
politician and the auctioneer might be described like the lunatic,
the lover and the poet, as "of imagination all compact." One sees more
mares' nests than would fill a book; the other pure gold in pinchbeck
wares; and both are out for gudgeons.

It is the habit--nay, the business--of the party speaker when he mounts
the raging stump to roar his platitudes into the ears of those who have
the simplicity to listen, though neither edified nor enlightened; to
aver that the horse he rides is sixteen feet high; that the candidate he
supports is a giant; and that he himself is no small figure of a man.

Thus he resembles the auctioneer. But it is the mock auctioneer whom
he resembles; his stock in trade being largely, if not altogether,
fraudulent. The success which at the outset of party welfare attended
this legalized confidence game drew into it more and more players. For
a long time they deceived themselves almost as much as the voters. They
had not become professional. They were amateur. Many of them played for
sheer love of the gamble. There were rules to regulate the play. But as