ther in columns of masterly
abuse on one score or another. Each article is followed by a passionate
correspondence in which 'Disgusted Dad,' 'Hopeless Hubby,' 'Browbeaten
Brother,' and the inevitable 'Cynicus' express high approval of the
writer, whilst 'Happy Mother of Seven Girls' and 'Lover of the Sex'
write to demand his instant execution and public disgrace.

The range of men's fault-finding is endless; one will assert that women
are mere domestic machines, unfit companions for any intelligent man,
and with no soul above conversation about their servants and children;
another that they are mere blue-stockings striving after an unattainable
intellectuality; a third that they are mere frivolous dolls without
brain or heart, engrossed in the pursuit of pleasure, a fourth that they
are sexless, slangy, misclad masculine monsters.

Judged by the assertions of newspaper correspondents, women are at one
and the same time preposterously masculine, contemptibly feminine,
ridiculously intellectual, repulsively athletic, and revoltingly
frivolous. In appearance they are either lank, gaunt, flat-footed
lamp-posts, or else over-dressed, unnaturally-shaped, painted dolls.
Their extravagance exhausts expletive! When they belong to the class of
society generally denoted with a capital S, they invariably smoke,
drink, gamble and swear. They neglect their homes and their children.
They have little principle and less sense, no morals, no heart and
absolutely _no_ sense of humour!

'But,' the observant reader may possibly exclaim, 'there is nothing new
about this. Woman has ever been man's favourite grumble-vent, from the
day when the first man got out of his first scrape by blaming the only
available woman!' True enough, age cannot stale the infinite variety of
women's misdemeanours, as viewed by men; tradition has hallowed the
subject, custom carries it on; and probably when the last trump shall
sound, the last living man will be found grumbling loudly at the
abominable selfishness of woman for leaving him alone, and the last dead
man to rise will awake cursing because his wife did not call him sooner!

But formerly man's fault-finding was more of the nature of genial chaff,
as when we affectionately laugh at those we love. There was nearly
always a certain good humour about his diatribes, which now is lacking.
In its stead can be noted a bitterness, a distinct animus. Men
apparently take with an ill-grace women's rebellion again