the equal rights of men were proclaimed. New
England people worth less than one thousand dollars were prohibited by law
from wearing the garb of a gentleman, gold or silver lace, buttons on the
knees, or to walk in great boots, or their women to wear silk or scarfs,
while the Quakers, Maryland Catholics, Baptists, and Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians were everywhere in the South the heralds of man's equality
before the law."

"But barring our ancestors, I have some things against the men of this
generation."

"Have I, too, sinned and come short?" he asked with mock gravity.

"Our ideals of life are far apart," she firmly declared.

"What ails my ideal?"

"Your egotism, for one thing. The air with which you calmly select what
pleases your fancy. Northern men are bad enough--the insolence of a
Southerner is beyond words!"

[Illustration: LILLIAN GISH AS ELSIE, AND THE SENTINEL.]

"You don't say so!" cried Ben, bursting into a hearty laugh. "Isn't your
aunt, Mrs. Farnham, the president of a club?"

"Yes, and she is a very brilliant woman."

"Enlighten me further."

"I deny your heaven-born male kingship. The lord of creation is after all
a very inferior animal--nearer the brute creation, weaker in infancy,
shorter lived, more imperfectly developed, given to fighting, and addicted
to idiocy. I never saw a female idiot in my life--did you?"

"Come to think of it, I never did," acknowledged Ben with comic gravity.
"What else?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"It's nothing. I agree with everything you say, but it is irrelevant. I'm
studying law, you know."

"I have a personality of my own. You and your kind assume the right to
absorb all lesser lights."

"Certainly, I'm a man."

"I don't care to be absorbed by a mere man."

"Don't wish to be protected, sheltered, and cared for?"

"I dream of a life that shall be larger than the four walls of a home. I
have never gone into hysterics over the idea of becoming a cook and
housekeeper without wages, and snuffing my life out while another grows,
expands, and claims the lordship of the world. I can sing. My voice is to
me what eloquence is to man. My ideal is an intellectual companion who
will inspire and lead me to develop all that I feel within to its highest
reach."

She paused a moment and looked defiantly into Ben's brown eyes, about
which a smile was constantly playing. He looked away, and again the river
echoed with his contagious laughter. She had to join in spite