refore constantly have man to protect
her--a pious duty, which he avows solemnly it has ever been his special
delight to perform. The preceding pages are a commentary on the manner
in which man has discharged this duty. In Delaware, for instance, the
age of legal consent was until 1889 seven years. The institution of
Chivalry, to take another example, is usually praised for the high
estimation and protection it secured for women; yet any one who has read
its literature knows that, in practice, it did nothing of the sort. The
noble lord who was so gallant to his lady love--who, by the way, was
frequently the wife of another man--had very little scruple about
seducing a maid of low degree. The same gallantry is conspicuous in the
Letters of Lord Chesterfield, beneath whose unctuous courtesy the beast
of sensuality is always leering.

In the past the main function of woman outside of the rearing of
children has been to satisfy the carnal appetite of man, to prepare his
food, to minister to his physical comfort; she was barred from
participation in the intellectual. In order to hold her to these bonds a
Divine Sanction was sought. The Mohammedan found it in the Koran; the
Christian, in the Bible--just as slavery was justified repeatedly from
the story of Ham, just as the Stuarts and the Bourbons believed firmly
that they were the special favourites of God.

Strangely enough, men who are so sensitive about the moral welfare of
women will visit a dance hall where women are degraded nightly, and will
allow their daughters to marry "reformed" rakes. Men will not permit any
mention of sexual matters in their homes, and will let their children
get their information on the street; and all for the very simple reason
that they are afraid the truth will hurt, will make people think. Men
have been remarkably sensitive about having women speak in public for
their rights; but they watch with zest a woman screaming nonsense on the
stage.

It is quite possible that many women are swayed too easily by their
emotions. We must recollect, however, that for some thousands of years
woman has been carefully drilled to believe that she is an emotional
creature. If a dozen people conspire to tell a man that he is looking
badly, it is not unlikely that he will feel ill. Certainly Florence
Nightingale and Clara Barton exhibited no lack of firmness on the
shambles of battlefields; and there are few men living who cannot recall
instances of women w