nventional purposes or ambitions or comforts of
society, was the general characteristic of the women of that family.
None of them took to mere art or literature or woman's suffrage. Mrs.
Sarrasin fell in love with her husband, and devoted herself to his wild,
wandering, highly eccentric career.

Mrs. Sarrasin was a tall and stately woman, with an appearance decidedly
aristocratic. She had rather square shoulders, and that sort of
repression or suppression of the bust which conies of a woman's
occupying herself much in the more vigorous pursuits and occupations
which habitually belong to a man. Mrs. Sarrasin could ride like a man as
well as like a woman, and in many a foreign enterprise she had adopted
man's clothing regularly. Yet there was nothing actually masculine about
her appearance or her manners, and she had a very sweet and musical
voice, which much pleased the ears of the Dictator.

Oisin mentioned the fact of his wife's frequent appearance in man's
dress with an air of pride in her versatility.

'Oh, but I haven't done that for a long time,' she said, with a light
blush rising to her pale cheek. 'I haven't been out of my petticoats for
ever so long. But I confess I did sometimes enjoy a regular good gallop
on a bare-backed horse, and riding-habits won't do for that.'

'Few men can handle a rifle as that woman can,' Sarrasin remarked, with
another gleam of pride in his face.

The Dictator expressed his compliments on the lady's skill in so many
manly exercises, but he had himself a good deal of the old-fashioned
prejudice against ladies who could manage a rifle and ride astride.

'All I have done,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'was to take the commands of my
husband and be as useful as I could in the way he thought best. I am not
for Woman's Rights, Mr. Ericson--I am for wives obeying their husbands,
and as much as possible effacing themselves.'

The Dictator did not quite see that following one's husband to the wars
in man's clothes was exactly an act of complete self-effacement on the
part of a woman. But he could see at a glance that Mrs. Sarrasin was
absolutely serious and sincere in her description of her own condition
and conduct. There was not the slightest hint of the jocular about her.

'You must have had many most interesting and extraordinary experiences,'
the Dictator said. 'I hope you will give an account of them to the world
some day.'

'I am already working hard,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'putting tog