one."

I could only cough. The lady was more or less right. I am very fond of
sugar, though one lump is my allowance, and I never exceed it, whatever
the temptation. Xanthippe continued.

"You criticise her because she doesn't understand you and your needs,
forgetting that out of twenty-four hours of your daily existence your
wife enjoys personally about twelve hours of your society, during eight
of which you are lying flat on your back, snoring as though your
life depended on it; but when she asks to be allowed to share your
responsibilities as well as what, in her poor little soul, she thinks
are your joys, you flare up and call her 'new' and 'advanced,' as if
advancement were a crime. You ride off on your wheel for forty miles on
your days of rest, and she is glad to have you do it, but when she wants
a bicycle to ride, you think it's all wrong, immoral, and conducive to a
weak heart. Bah!"

"I--ah--" I began.

"Yes you do," she interrupted. "You ah and you hem and you haw, but in
the end you're a poor miserable social mugwump, conscious of your own
magnificence and virtue, but nobody else ever can attain to your lofty
plane. Now what I want to see among women is more good fellows. Suppose
you regarded your wife as good a fellow as you think your friend Jones.
Do you think you'd be running off to the club every night to play
billiards with Jones, leaving your wife to enjoy her own society?"

"Perhaps not," I replied, "but that's just the point. My wife isn't a
good fellow."

"Exactly, and for that reason you seek out Jones. You have a right to
the companionship of the good fellow--that's what I'm going to advocate.
I've advanced far enough to see that on the average in the present state
of woman she is not a suitable companion for man--she has none of the
qualities of a chum to which he is entitled. I'm not so blind but that I
can see the faults of my own sex, particularly now that I have become so
very masculine myself. Both sexes should have their rights, and that
is the great policy I'm going to hammer at as long as I have Boswell's
paper in charge. I wish you might see my editorial page for to-morrow;
it is simply fine. I urge upon woman the necessity of joining in with
her husband in all his pleasures whether she enjoys them or not. When he
lights a cigar, let her do the same; when he calls for a cocktail,
let her call for another. In time she will begin to understand him.
He understands her pleasures, a