men connives at this, and is thus largely responsible for it. Before
the average puella, apprenticed in the kitchen, can pick up a fourth
of the culinary subtleties that are commonplace even to the chefs on
dining cars, she has caught aman and need concern herself about
them no more, for he has to eat, in the last analysis, whatever
she sets before him, and his lack of intelligence makes it easy for her
to shut off his academic criticisms by bald appeals to his emotions.
By an easy process he finally attaches a positive value to her
indolence. It is a proof, he concludes, of her fineness of soul. In
the presence of her lofty incompetence he is abashed.



But as women, gaining economic autonomy, meet men in
progressively bitterer competition, the rising masculine distrust and
fear of them will be reflected even in the enchanted domain of
marriage, and the husband, having yielded up most of his old rights,
will begin to reveal anew jealousy of those that remain, and
particularly of the right to a fair quid pro quo for his own docile
industry. In brief, as women shake off their ancient disabilities they
will also shake off some of their ancient immunities, and their
doings will come to be regarded with a soberer and more exigent
scrutiny than now prevails. The extension of the suffrage, I believe,
will encourage this awakening; in wresting it from the reluctant male
the women of the western world have planted dragons' teeth, the
which will presently leap up and gnaw them. Now that women
have the political power to obtain their just rights, they will begin to
lose their old power to obtain special privileges by sentimental
appeals. Men, facing them squarely, will consider them anew, not
as romantic political and social invalids, to be coddled and caressed,