destiny is hers! In addition to being the first of human beings, all
that a man can be, to be so much else as well; to be, so to say, the
president of a railroad and yet a priestess of nature's mysteries; a
stenographer at so many dollars a week and yet a nymph of the forest
pools--woman, "and yet a spirit still." Not without meaning has myth
endowed woman with the power of metamorphosis, to change at will like
the maidens in the legend into wild white swans, or like Syrinx, fleeing
from the too ardent pursuit of Pan, into a flowering reed, or like
Lamia, into a jewelled serpent--

Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;
And full of silver moons.

Modern conditions are still more favourable than antique story for the
exhibition of this protean quality of woman, providing her with
opportunities of still more startling contrasts of transformation. Will
it not be a wonderful sight in that near future to watch that woman
judge of the Supreme Court, in the midst of some learned tangle of
inter-state argument, turn aside for a moment, in response to a
plaintive cry, and, unfastening her bodice, give the little clamourer
the silver solace it demands! What a hush will fall upon the assembled
court! To think of such a genius for jurisprudence, such a legal brain,
working in harmony--with such a bosom! So august a pillar of the law,
yet so divine a mother.

As it is, how piquant the contrast between woman inside and outside her
office hours! As you take her out to dinner, and watch her there seated
before you, a perfumed radiance, a dewy dazzling vision, an evening star
swathed in gauzy convolutions of silk and lace--can it be the same
creature who an hour or two ago sat primly with notebook and pencil at