n; among the superior
advantages enjoyed by the man-about-town of today is that of the
companionship, at his dinner _in camera_, of ladies having an honorable
vocation. In the corridors of the "French restaurant" the swish of
Pseudonyma's skirt is no longer heard; she has been superseded by the
Princess Tap-tap (with Truckle & Cinch), by my lady Snip-snip (from the
"emporium" of Boltwhack & Co.), by Miss Chink-chink, who sits at the
receipt of customs in that severely un-French restaurant, the Maison
Hash. That the man-about-town has been morally elevated by this
Emancipation of Girl from the seclusion of home to that of the "private
room" is too obvious for denial. Nothing so uplifts Tyrant Man as the
table talk of good young women who earn their own living.

I do not wish to be altogether ironical about this rather serious
matter--not so much so as to forfeit anything of lucidity. Let me state,
then, in all earnestness and sobriety and simplicity of speech, what is
known to every worldly-wise male dweller in the cities, to every scamp
and scapegrace of the clubs, to every reformed sentimentalist and every
observer with a straight eye--namely, that in all the various classes of
young women in our cities who support, or partly support, themselves
in vocations which bring them into personal contact with men, female
chastity is a vanishing tradition. In the lives of the "main and
general" of these, all those _considerate_ which have their origin in
personal purity, and cluster about it, and are its signs and safeguards,
have almost ceased to cut a figure. It is needless to remind me that
there are exceptions--I know that. With some of them I have personal
acquaintance, or think I have, and for them a respect withheld from
any woman of the rostrum who points to their misfortune and calls it
emancipation--to their need and calls it a spirit of independence. It
is not from these good girls that you will hear the flippant boast of an
unfettered life, with "freedom to develop;" nor is it they who will be
foremost and furious in denial and resentment of my statements regarding
the morals of their class. They do not know the whole truth, thank
Heaven, but they know enough for a deprecation too deep to find relief
in a cheap affirmation of woman's purity, which is, and always has been,
the creature of seclusion.

The fitness of women for political activity is not in present question;
I am considering the fitness of political act