ivity for women. For women
as men say they are, wish them to be, and try to think them, it is unfit
altogether--as unfit as anything else that "mixes them up" with us,
compelling a communication and association that are not social. If
we wish to have women who are different from ourselves in knowledge,
character, accomplishments, manners; as different mentally as
physically--and in these and in all odier expressible differences reside
all the charms that they have for us--we must keep them, or they must
keep themselves, in an environment unlike our own. One would think that
obvious to the meanest capacity, and might even hope that it would
be understood by the Daughters of Thunder. Possibly the Advanced One,
hospitably accepting her karma, is not concerned to be charming to
"the likes o' we'"--would prefer the companionship of her blue gingham
umbrella, her corkscrew curls, her epicene audiences and her name in
the newspapers. Perhaps she is content with the comfort of her raucous
voice. Therein she is unwise, for self-interest is the first law. When
we no longer find woman charming we may find a way to make them more
useful--more truly useful, even, than the speech-ladies would have them
make themselves by competition. Really, there is nothing in the world
between them and slavery but their power of interesting us; and that has
its origin in the very differences which the Colonels are striving to
abolish. God has made no law of miracles and none of His laws are going
to be suspended in deference to woman's desire to achieve familiarity
without contempt. If she wants to please she must retain some scrap of
novelty; if she desires our respect she must not be always in evidence,
disclosing the baser side of her character, as in competition with us
she must do (as we do to one another) or lamentably fail. Mrs. Edmund
Gosse, like "Ouida," Mrs. Atherton, and all other women of
brains, declares that the taking of unfair advantages--the lack of
magnanimity--is a leading characteristic of her sex. Mrs. Gosse adds,
with reference to men's passive acquiescence in this monstrous folly
of "emancipation," that possibly our quiet may be the calm before the
storm; and she utters this warning, which, also, more strongly, "Ouida"
has uttered: "How would it be with us if the men should suddenly rise
_en masse_ and throw the whole surging lot of us into convents and
harems?"

It is not likely that men will "rise _en masse_" to undo the mi