her bargain she will _think her way out of the whole
thing_. In the meantime the harder the burdens grow the more quickly she
will revolt and make of herself something besides a burden bearer.

It is all nonsense to talk about the men being "willfully blind or
wholly and utterly selfish." No man _wants_ a burden-bearing, round-
shouldered, wrinkled and fagged-out wife. No man respects or loves a
woman who will "submit" to bearing unlimited burdens or babies either.
And if a woman "submits" and yet keeps up a continual grumbling and
nagging about it, a man simply despises her.

What every man _hopes_ for when he marries a woman, is that she will be
a bright, trim, _reasonable comrade._ If she is even half-way that she
will get all the love and consideration she can long for. But in three-
quarters of the cases of marriage the woman degenerates into a whining
bundle of _thought-less_ FEELINGS done up in a slattern's dress and
smelling like a drug-shop. Her husband in despair gives up trying to
understand her, or to love her either.

The woman in such a case is apt to suffer most. Why not? _She makes it
the business of her life to "suffer."_ She _prides_ herself on how much
she has had to "suffer," and "bear." She cultivates her "feelings" to
the limit. A man thinks it "unmanly" to _give way_ to "feelings." So he
uses all his wits to keep from doing so, and to enable him to hide his
own disappointment and make the best of life as he finds it.

A man uses his best _judgment_ when he meets disappointment. A woman
trots out her "feelings" and her best pocket-handkerchief, and calls in
the neighbors. So the woman gets the lion's share of "sympathy"--which
means that all the other women get out _their_ best handkerchiefs and
try to imagine just how _they_ would "feel" if in her place.

Of course there _are_ exceptions. I _have_ heard of men who wept and
retailed their woes; and I have heard of women with gumption.

The woman who wrote the letter at the head of this chapter is a feel-er,
not a thinker. She looks at the forlorn, bedraggled specimens of her own
sex and "_feels_" with them, never THINKING that the women themselves
have anything to do with making their conditions. She "feels" with the
woman because _she_ is a woman. Being an unthinking creature she cannot
"feel" for the man at all.

Woman is the weaker creature for no other reason than that she lives in
her "feelings."

Man is the stronger for no other reaso