their four or five dollars a week they were to stand up when their
'mistress' and her 'company' entered the room? Why, in fine, should any
human being respect another, seeing what human beings generally are? We
may love one another, but _respect_! No, those maids might, and probably
did, love their mistress; but they felt that they could show their love
as well sitting down as standing up. They would not stand up to show
their love for one another."

"Then you think there is some love lost between the master and man or
mistress and maid nowadays," our beaten antagonist feebly sneered.

"The masters and mistresses may not, but the men and maids may, have
whole treasures of affection ready to lavish at the first sign of a
desire for it; they do not say so, for they are not very articulate. In
the mean time the masters and mistresses want more than they have paid
for. They want honor as well as obedience, respect as well as love, the
sort of thing that money used to buy when it was worth more than it is
now. Well, they won't get it. They will get it less and less as time
goes on. Whatever the good new times may bring, they won't bring back
the hypocritical servility of the good old times. They--"

We looked round for our visiting reader, but he had faded back into the
millions of readers whom we are always addressing in print.

VII

UNIMPORTANCE OF WOMEN IN REPUBLICS

A visitor of the Easy Chair who seemed to have no conception of his
frequency, and who was able to supply from his imagination the welcome
which his host did not always hurry to offer him, found a place for
himself on the window-sill among the mistaken MSS. sent in the delusion
that the editor of the Chair was the editor of the magazine.

"I have got a subject for you," he said.

"Have you ever heard," we retorted, "of carrying coals to Newcastle?
What made you think we wanted a subject?"

"Merely that perfunctory air of so many of your disquisitions. I should
think you would feel the want yourself. Your readers all feel it for
you."

"Well, we can tell you," we said, "that there could be no greater
mistake. We are turning away subjects from these premises every day.
They come here, hat in hand, from morning till night, asking to be
treated; and after dark they form a Topic Line at our door, begging for
the merest pittance of a notice, for the slightest allusion, for the
most cursory mention. Do you know that there are at least two hundred