rare gift of public speaking, and enjoyed her
triumphs. She was temperate, reasonable; persuasive rather than
aggressive; feeling her audience as she went, never losing touch with
them. She had the magnetism that comes of sympathy. Medical students
who came intending to tell her to go home and mind the baby, remained to
wonder if man really was the undoubted sovereign of the world, born to
look upon woman as his willing subject; to wonder whether under some
unwritten whispered law it might not be the other way about. Perhaps she
had the right--with or without the baby--to move about the kingdom,
express her wishes for its care and management. Possibly his doubts may
not have been brought about solely by the force and logic of her
arguments. Possibly the voice of Nature is not altogether out of place
in discussions upon Humanity's affairs.

She wanted votes for women. But she wanted them clean--won without
dishonour. These "monkey tricks"--this apish fury and impatience!
Suppose it did hasten by a few months, more or less, the coming of the
inevitable. Suppose, by unlawful methods, one could succeed in dragging
a reform a little prematurely from the womb of time, did not one endanger
the child's health? Of what value was woman's influence on public
affairs going to be, if she was to boast that she had won the right to
exercise it by unscrupulousness and brutality?

They were to be found at every corner: the reformers who could not reform
themselves. The believers in universal brotherhood who hated half the
people. The denouncers of tyranny demanding lamp-posts for their
opponents. The bloodthirsty preachers of peace. The moralists who had
persuaded themselves that every wrong was justified provided one were
fighting for the right. The deaf shouters for justice. The excellent
intentioned men and women labouring for reforms that could only be hoped
for when greed and prejudice had yielded place to reason, and who sought
to bring about their ends by appeals to passion and self-interest.

And the insincere, the self-seekers, the self-advertisers! Those who
were in the business for even coarser profit! The lime-light lovers who
would always say and do the clever, the unexpected thing rather than the
useful and the helpful thing: to whom paradox was more than principle.

Ought there not to be a school for reformers, a training college where
could be inculcated self-examination, patience, temperance, subord