e,
Chicago, in the evening and within a half hour count twenty young
women, dressed in bloomers, riding bicycles. Now one may go to
Chicago, spend a year and not see one. Woman is safe enough.

Some are uneasy lest woman will go beyond her sphere, but I am not so
much disturbed about the future of woman as I am of man. Upon virtue
and intelligence depends the future of this republic. Have men all the
virtue? Go to the saloons; are they frequented by women? No; _men_. Go
to the gambling halls; are they crowded with women? No; _men_. Go to
the jails and penitentiaries; are they full of women? No; _men_. Go to
the churches; are they crowded with men? No; mostly by women. What
about intelligence? Have men all the intelligence? Two girls graduate
from high schools to one boy. I am glad to be living now; one hundred
years hence, if I were to be born again, I would want to be a girl.
Woman goes to the door of death to give life to man and man should be
willing to let her seek out her own sphere for usefulness.

Not long since I read a book called "The New Woman." It was a novel by
an Englishman. In it the author takes a beautiful young girl, about
eighteen years of age, through a "Gretna-Green" experience with a
young man of twenty. She is the daughter of a widow; he, the only son
of a wealthy London merchant. They run away and after a month's search
are found by the father of the young man in southern France. The girl
is sent home to her mother; the young man sent to India in order to
get him far away from his wife. The novelist makes the young man a
noble character, who is determined to prove himself worthy of his
wife, and he toils to send her means for support. The young wife
becomes a mother, and the young husband toils the harder to care for
his wife and babe. When time hangs heavy on the hands of the young
mother, she is invited to join a woman's club. Here she imbibes the
spirit of the new woman. She soon neglects her child and appears
before the public for a lecture. She wears a low neck dress, paints
her cheeks, blondines her hair, smokes cigarettes and drinks wine. A
millionaire in India, who loses his own son, adopts the hero of the
novel, dies and leaves him the great estate. Then the young man
hurries back to his wife. He arrives in the evening, but finds she is
not at home; she is delivering a lecture in the opera-house. He awaits
her return; a storm rages outside; at a late hour she enters the door,
throws of