tting the scene with dear old Dickie as we stood against the
rail of the ship and watched the waves fling back silvery radiance at
the full moon, and I also wondered how I was to render in serviceable
written data his husky:

"A woman is the flame that lights the spark--"

Also, what would that interview with Polk Hayes look like reproduced
with high lights?

"Now," she answered encouragingly, "don't fear the men, dear. They are
sensible and business-like creatures, and they will soon see how much to
their advantage it is to be married to women who have had an equal
privilege with themselves of showing their preferences. Then only can
they be sure that their unions are from real preferences and not
compromises, on the part of their wives, from lack of other choice. Of
course, a woman's pride will make her refrain from courtship, as does
her brother man, until she is financially independent, and
self-supporting, lest she be put in the position of a mendicant." Jane
has thought the whole thing out from Genesis to Revelation.

Still, that last clause about the mendicant leaves hope for the
benighted man who still wants the cling of the vine. A true vine would
never want--or be able--to hustle enough to flower sordid dollars
instead of curls and blushes.

"A woman would have to be--to be a good deal of a woman, not any less
one, to put such a thing across, Jane," I said, with a preflash of some
of the things that might happen in such a cruel crusade of reformation
and deprivation of rights.

"That is the reason I have chosen you to collect the data, Evelina,"
answered Jane, with another of those glorious tonic looks, issuing from
my backbone in her back. "The ultimate woman must be superb in body,
brain, and heart. You are that now more nearly than any one I have ever
seen. You are the woman!"

I was silenced with awe.

"Jane plans to choose five girls who would otherwise have to spend their
lives teaching in crowded cities after leaving college and to start them
in any profession they choose, with every chance of happiness, in the
smaller cities of the South and Middle West," said Mary Elizabeth
gently, and somehow the tears rose in my eyes, as I thought how the poor
dear had been teaching in the high school in Chicago the two glorious
years I had been frolicking abroad. No time, and no men to have good
times with.

And there were hundreds like her, I knew, in all the crowded parts of
the United States. And as