on. I also like the woman who does not smoke. I have
met in my time some very charming women who do not smoke. It may be a
sign of degeneracy, but I am prepared to abdicate my position of woman's
god, leaving her free to lead her own life.

Woman's God.

Candidly, the responsibility of feeling myself answerable for all a woman
does or does not do would weigh upon me. There are men who are willing
to take this burden upon themselves, and a large number of women are
still anxious that they should continue to bear it. I spoke quite
seriously to a young lady not long ago on the subject of tight lacing;
undoubtedly she was injuring her health. She admitted it herself.

"I know all you can say," she wailed; "I daresay a lot of it is true.
Those awful pictures where one sees--well, all the things one does not
want to think about. If they are correct, it must be bad, squeezing it
all up together."

"Then why continue to do so?" I argued.

"Oh, it's easy enough to talk," she explained; "a few old fogies like
you"--I had been speaking very plainly to her, and she was cross with
me--"may pretend you don't like small waists, but _the average man
does_."

Poor girl! She was quite prepared to injure herself for life, to damage
her children's future, to be uncomfortable for fifteen hours a day, all
to oblige the average man.

It is a compliment to our sex. What man would suffer injury and torture
to please the average woman? This frenzied desire of woman to conform to
our ideals is touching. A few daring spirits of late years have
exhibited a tendency to seek for other gods--for ideals of their own. We
call them the unsexed women. The womanly women lift up their hands in
horror of such blasphemy.

When I was a boy no womanly woman rode a bicycle--tricycles were
permitted. On three wheels you could still be womanly, but on two you
were "a creature"! The womanly woman, seeing her approach, would draw
down the parlour blind with a jerk, lest the children looking out might
catch a glimpse of her, and their young souls be smirched for all
eternity.

No womanly woman rode inside a hansom or outside a 'bus. I remember the
day my own dear mother climbed outside a 'bus for the first time in her
life. She was excited, and cried a little; but nobody--heaven be
praised!--saw us--that is, nobody of importance. And afterwards she
confessed the air was pleasant.

"Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor ye