l one in one respect. We may admit that in the future woman can
take care of herself, but how will it be with man, who has had little
disciplinary experience of adversity, simply because he has been
permitted to have his own way? Heretofore his life has had a stimulus.
When he proposes to a woman, he in fact says: "I am able to support you;
I am able to protect you from the rough usage of the world; I am strong
and ambitious, and eager to take upon myself the lovely bondage of this
responsibility. I offer you this love because I feel the courage and
responsibility of my position." That is the manly part of it. What effect
will it have upon his character to be waiting round, unselected and
undecided, until some woman comes to him, and fixes her fascinating eyes
upon him, and says, in effect: "I can support you; I can defend you. Have
no fear of the future; I will be at once your shield and your backbone. I
take the responsibility of my choice." There are a great many men now,
who have sneaked into their positions by a show of courage, who are
supported one way and another by women. It might be humiliating to know
just how many men live by the labors of their wives. And what would be
the effect upon the character of man if the choice, and the
responsibility of it, and the support implied by it in marriage, were
generally transferred to woman?

FROCKS AND THE STAGE

The condescension to literature and to the stage is one of the notable
characteristics of this agreeable time. We have to admit that literature
is rather the fashion, without the violent presumption that the author
and the writer have the same social position that is conferred by money,
or by the mysterious virtue there is in pedigree. A person does not lose
caste by using the pen, or even by taking the not-needed pay for using
it. To publish a book or to have an article accepted by a magazine may
give a sort of social distinction, either as an exhibition of a certain
unexpected capacity or a social eccentricity. It is hardly too much to
say that it has become the fashion to write, as it used to be to dance
the minuet well, or to use the broadsword, or to stand a gentlemanly mill
with a renowned bruiser. Of course one ought not to do this
professionally exactly, ought not to prepare for doing it by study and
severe discipline, by training for it as for a trade, but simply to toss
it off easily, as one makes a call, or pays a compliment, or drives
four-in