uncomfortable in consequence of my consciousness that all the sensible
people of my acquaintance are laughing at her also, I am inclined to
watch her progress with a sympathy which includes the hope that she
will work out of her present state of lunacy into a more practical
field, rather than that she will relapse into the stereotyped woman
whom we all know. When, however, Josephine asked me the other day to
specify the field, I was obliged to admit that my ideas were a trifle
hazy. My state of mind doubtless proceeds from a rooted conviction
that the emancipation of woman has only just begun, and a certain
sympathetic curiosity with her each and every effort to advance. To
realize her progress, I have only to glance up at my ancestor with the
mended eye and consider what a doll and a toy she was to him. Then I
look at my wife, who was brought up on the old system, and say to
myself that, unless indeed, man is to be utterly snuffed out and
extinguished, there are certain feminine characteristics in the
preservation of which he is deeply interested, even when, like myself,
he is at heart an aider and abettor of emancipation. No more
gingerbread education, no more treatment as dolls and nincompoops, no
more discrimination between one sex and the other as to knowledge of
this world's wickedness, no more curtailment of personal liberty on the
score of that bugaboo, propriety--all these, if you like, ladies; but
we men, we fathers and philosophers, ask that you retain, for our
sakes, beauty of face and form, beauty of raiment, low, modulated
voices, and a graceful carriage, faith, hope, and charity, even though
you continue to reveal these last-named as at present with sweet,
illogical inconsequence. More than this, we cannot do without the
tender devotion, the unselfish forethought, the aspiring faith, which,
even though we seem to mock and to be blind, saves us from the world
and from ourselves. If you are to become merely men in petticoats,
what will become of us? We shall go down, down, down, like the leaden
plummet cast into the depths of the sea. We shall be snuffed out and
extinguished in sober truth. Hence, certain that the work of
emancipation is to continue, my philosophical glance follows fondly and
almost proudly the course of my second daughter, who is making a fool
of herself at the moment by practising Christian Science, because she
has beauty and grace and a knowledge of the value of colors, purity a