ge peculiarly valued by woman. For
one reason or another all women will vote, even those who now view the
"right" widi aversion. The observer who has marked the strength and
activity of the forces pent in the dark drink of politics and given off
in the act of bibation will not expect inaction to the victim of the
"habit," be he male or she female. In the partisan, conviction is
compulsion---opinions bear fruit in conduct. The partisan thinks in
deeds, and woman is by nature a partisan--a blessing for which the Lord
has never made her male relatives and friends sufficiently thankful. Not
a mere man of them would have the effrontery to ask her toleration if
she were not Depend upon it, the full strength of the female vote will
eventually be cast at every election. And it would be well indeed for
civilization and the interests of the race if woman suffrage meant no
more than going to the polling-place and polling--which clearly is all
that it has been thought out to mean by the headless horsemen spurring
their new hobbies bravely at the tail of the procession. That would be
a very simple matter; the opposition based upon the impropriety of the
female rubbing shoulders at the polls with such scurvy blackguards
as ourselves may with advantage be retired from service. Nor is it
particularly important what men and measures the women will vote for. By
one means or another Tyrant Man will have his way; the Opposing Sex can
merely obstruct him in his way of having it. And should that obstruction
ever be too pronounced, the party line and the sex line coinciding,
woman suffrage will then and henceforth be no more.

In the politics of this bad world majorities are of several kinds. One
of the most "overwhelming" is made up of these simple elements: (1) a
numerical minority; (2) a military superiority. If not a single election
were ever in any degree affected by it, the introduction of woman
suffrage into our scheme of manners and morals would nevertheless be the
most momentous and mischievous event of modern history. Compared with
the action of this destructive solvent, that of all other disintegrating
agencies concerned in our decivilization is as the languorous
indiligence of rosewater to the mordant fury of nitric acid.

Lively Woman is indeed, as Carlyle would put it, "hellbent" on
purification of politics by adding herself as an ingredient. It is
unlikely that the injection of her personality into the contention
(and politics