ortant links in such chains
of evidence as they feel called upon to use in binding themselves to
their rights.

"The women of your day were relieved of that dress problem, at any rate,"
laughed Queen Elizabeth.

"The women of my day," retorted Xanthippe, "in matters of dress were the
equals of their husbands--in my family particularly; now they have lost
their rights, and are made to confine themselves still to garments like
those of yore, while man has arrogated to himself the sole and exclusive
use of sane habiliments. However, that is apart from the question. I
was saying that I shall have a man's wheel, and shall wear Socrates' old
dress-clothes to ride it in, if Socrates has to go out and buy an old
dress-suit for the purpose."

The Queen arched her brows and looked inquiringly at Xanthippe for a
moment.

"A magnificent old maid was lost to the world when you married," she
said. "Feeling as you do about men, my dear Xanthippe, I don't see why
you ever took a husband."

"Humph!" retorted Xanthippe. "Of course you don't. You didn't need a
husband. You were born with something to govern. I wasn't."

"How about your temper?" suggested Ophelia, meekly.

Xanthippe sniffed frigidly at this remark.

"I never should have gone crazy over a man if I'd remained unmarried
forty thousand years," she retorted, severely. "I married Socrates
because I loved him and admired his sculpture; but when he gave up
sculpture and became a thinker he simply tried me beyond all endurance,
he was so thoughtless, with the result that, having ventured once or
twice to show my natural resentment, I have been handed down to posterity
as a shrew. I've never complained, and I don't complain now; but when a
woman is married to a philosopher who is so taken up with his studies
that when he rises in the morning he doesn't look what he is doing, and
goes off to his business in his wife's clothes, I think she is entitled
to a certain amount of sympathy."

"And yet you wish to wear his," persisted Ophelia.

"Turn about is fair-play," said Xanthippe. "I've suffered so much on his
account that on the principle of averages he deserves to have a little
drop of bitters in his nectar."

"You are simply the victim of man's deceit," said Elizabeth, wishing to
mollify the now angry Xanthippe, who was on the verge of tears. "I
understood men, fortunately, and so never married. I knew my father, and
even if I hadn't been a wise enough child