ou of it, and,
for Heaven's sake! when we have spent years working twelve hours a day,
providing you with all the comforts, and often the luxuries, of life,
reared and settled in the world a large family of boys and girls, do not
come and ask us if we take love seriously. You are adding insult to
injury. Yes, indeed, we take love seriously, and matrimony too.

CHAPTER XXX

ARE MEN FAIR TO WOMEN?

'You are often writing about women,' fair correspondents keep writing to
me, 'sometimes praising them, often criticising them. Couldn't you now
and then tell us something of what you think of men, especially in their
relations with women? We know you to be fair, sometimes generous, always
good-humoured. Now, do have a try.'

The invitation is tempting and intended to be pleasant, and I yield to
it, not only without any reluctance, but with a good deal of pleasure.

To plunge _in medias res_, Are men fair to women? The laws, which are
made by men, the usages--everything is calculated to cause men to reduce
to a minimum the qualities, the intelligence, and the influence of
women.

For instance, let a woman make a reputation in art or literature, and
men begin to smile and shrug their shoulders: they dispute her talent.

I maintain, without much fear of contradiction, that a woman, in order
to succeed in a profession, must have ten times more talent than a man,
inasmuch as a man will have friends and comrades to help him, and a
woman only difficulties put in her way by man to surmount.

Man receives encouragements from all sides. If he is successful, he even
knows that his talent will receive official recognition. In France he
may become a member of the French Academy; in England, of the Royal
Academy. Orders will be given him by rich patrons, and 'orders'
conferred on him by sovereigns and statesmen.

Why should not women get all this? Why, simply because man, being both
'verdict' and 'execution,' has kept everything for himself. Personally,
I have no great liking for female genius--to my prejudiced mind a female
genius is a freak; but what I like or do not like is quite out of the
question. Here I state facts, and why women should not have as much
chance to prove their genius as men I should like to know.

Everybody knows that the famous School of Alexandria, in the fifth
century, had as orators and teachers the greatest philosophers and
theologians of the time, such men as St. Jerome, St. Cyril, etc.

Among