er remarked that
she had just been back to the house and had a baby.

"Poor, poor woman!" I cried, as we rode on, feeling for some occult
reason very angry with the Man of Wrath. "And her wretched husband
doesn't care a rap, and will probably beat her to-night if his supper
isn't right. What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes
when the women have the babies!"

"Quite so, my dear," replied the Man of Wrath, smiling condescendingly.
"You have got to the very root of the matter. Nature, while imposing
this agreeable duty on the woman, weakens her and disables her for any
serious competition with man. How can a person who is constantly losing
a year of the best part of her life compete with a young man who never
loses any time at all? He has the brute force, and his last word on any
subject could always be his fist."

I said nothing. It was a dull, gray afternoon in the beginning of
November, and the leaves dropped slowly and silently at our horses' feet
as we rode towards the Hirschwald.

"It is a universal custom," proceeded the Man of Wrath, "amongst these
Russians, and I believe amongst the lower classes everywhere, and
certainly commendable on the score of simplicity, to silence a woman's
objections and aspirations by knocking her down. I have heard it said
that this apparently brutal action has anything but the maddening effect
tenderly nurtured persons might suppose, and that the patient is soothed
and satisfied with a rapidity and completeness unattainable by other and
more polite methods. Do you suppose," he went on, flicking a twig off
a tree with his whip as we passed, "that the intellectual husband,
wrestling intellectually with the chaotic yearnings of his intellectual
wife, ever achieves the result aimed at? He may and does go on wrestling
till he is tired, but never does he in the very least convince her of
her folly; while his brother in the ragged coat has got through the
whole business in less time than it takes me to speak about it. There is
no doubt that these poor women fulfil their vocation far more thoroughly
than the women in our class, and, as the truest: happiness consists in
finding one's vocation quickly and continuing in it all one's days, I
consider they are to be envied rather than not, since they are early
taught, by the impossibility of argument with marital muscle, the
impotence of female endeavour and the blessings of content."

"Pray go on," I said politely.

"Th