e. And, of course, added to that is the woman who
requires three or four men to make her happy, one to marry and support
her, and one to take her to the theater and to luncheon at Delmonico's,
and generally fetch and carry for her, and one to remember her as she
was at nineteen and remain a bachelor and have a selfish, delightful
life, while blaming her. This makes masculine stock still higher, and as
there are always buyers on a rising market, competition among
women--purely unconscious competition--flourishes.

So men hang together, and women don't. And men are the stronger sex
because they are fewer!

Obviously the cure is the elimination of that sixth woman, preferably by
euthanasia. (Look this up, Irvin. It's a good one.) That sixth woman
ought to go. She has made men sought and not seekers. She ruins dinner
parties and is the vampire of the moving pictures. And after living a
respectable life for years she either goes on living a respectable life,
and stays with her sister's children while the family goes on a motor
tour, or takes to serving high-balls instead of afternoon tea, while
wearing a teagown of some passionate shade.

It is just possible that suffrage will bring women together. It is just
possible that male opposition has in it this subconscious fear, that
their superiority is thus threatened. They don't really want equality,
you know. They love to patronize us a bit, bless them; and to tell us
to run along and not bother our little heads about things that don't
concern us. And, of course, politics has been their own private
maneuvering ground, and--I have made it clear, I think, that they don't
always want us--here we are, about to drill on it ourselves, perhaps
drilling a mite better than they do in some formations, and standing
right on their own field and telling them the mistakes they've made, and
not to take themselves too hard and that the whole game is a lot easier
than they have always pretended it was.

They don't like it, really, a lot of them. Their solidarity is
threatened. Their superiority, and another sanctuary, as closed to women
as a monastery, or a club, is invaded. No place to go but home.

Yet I have a sneaking sympathy for them. They were so terribly happy
running things, and fighting wars, and coming back at night to throw
their conversational bones around the table. It is rather awful to think
of them coming home now and having some little woman say:

"Certainly we are not g