in our time. He was a _habitue_ of a club situated next door to his
house. His wife was always upbraiding him for coming home too late at
night. Fortunately, when they made this change of time, they placed one
of those meridians from which our time is calculated right between the
club and his house. Every time he stept across that imaginary line it
set him back a whole hour in time. He found that he could then leave his
club at one o'clock and get home to his wife at twelve; and for the
first time in twenty years peace reigned around the hearthstone.

Woman now revels even in the more complicated problems of mathematical
astronomy. Give a woman ten minutes and she will describe a
heliocentric parallax of the heavens. Give her twenty minutes and she
will find astronomically the longitude of a place by means of lunar
culminations. Give that same woman an hour and a half with the present
fashions, and she can not find the pocket in her dress.

And yet man's admiration for woman never flags. He will give her half
his fortune; he will give her his whole heart; he seems always willing
to give her everything that he possesses, except his seat in a
horse-car.

Every nation has had its heroines as well as its heroes. England, in her
wars, had a Florence Nightingale; and the soldiers in the expression of
their adoration, used to stoop and kiss the hem of her garment as she
passed. America, in her war, had a Dr. Mary Walker. Nobody ever stooped
to kiss the hem of her garment--because that was not exactly the kind
of a garment she wore. But why should man stand here and attempt to
speak for woman, when she is so abundantly equipped to speak for
herself. I know that is the case in New England; and I am reminded, by
seeing General Grant here to-night, of an incident in proof of it which
occurred when he was making that marvelous tour through New England,
just after the war. The train stopt at a station in the State of Maine.
The General was standing on the rear platform of the last car. At that
time, as you know, he had a great reputation for silence--for it was
before he had made his series of brilliant speeches before the New
England Society. They spoke of his reticence--a quality which New
Englanders admire so much--in others. Suddenly there was a commotion in
the crowd, and as it opened a large, tall, gaunt-looking woman came
rushing toward the car, out of breath. Taking her spectacles off from
the top of her head and putting