had hoped to get a few minutes Sunday afternoon to myself so I could
go up into the garret and look through one of the trunks I brought from
Paris with me to see how many sets of things I have got left. I am going
to need a trousseau pretty soon, and I might need it more suddenly than
I expect. I don't see any reason for people's not marrying immediately
when they make up their minds, and my half of ours is made up strong
enough to decidedly influence rapidity in his. But then I really don't
believe that the Crag would care very much about the high lights of a
trousseau, and it was just as well that Nell came in to get me to help
her write a letter to National Headquarters to know if she could have
any kind of assignment in the Campaign for the Convention to alter the
Constitution in Tennessee when it meets next winter.

"Have you made up your mind fully to go in for public life, Nell?" I
asked mildly. "Some of your friends might not like it very much
and--and--"

"If you mean Polk Hayes, Evelina," Nell answered with the positiveness
that only a very young person can get up the courage to use, "I have
forgot that I was ever influenced by his narrow-minded, primitive
personality at all. If I ever love and marry it will be a man who can
appreciate and further my real woman's destiny."

"Well, then, that's all right," I answered with such relief in my heart
that it must have showed in my voice and face. I had worried about Nell
since I could see plainly, though she hasn't told me yet, and I am sure
he doesn't realize it, that Jane had decided Folk's destiny. Nell is not
twenty-one yet and she will find lots of men in the world that will be
fully capable of making her believe they feel that way about her
destiny, until they succeed in tying her up to using it for the real
utilitarian purposes they are sure such a pretty woman is created for.

It will take men in general another hundred years yet, and lots of
suffering, to realize that a woman's destiny is anything but himself,
and get to housekeeping with her on that basis.

Of course, I see the justice and need of perfect equality in all things
between the sexes, emotional equality especially, but I hope the time
will never come when men get as hungry to see their women folks as said
feminists get to see them, after they have been away about four days out
in the Harpeth Valley. It takes a woman's patience to stand the tug.

The Crag didn't jog into Glendale on his ra