I wish to concentrate on one heroic example of Irish Womanhood that
should serve as a model to this generation; and I do not mean to dwell
on much that would require detailed examination. But some points should
be indicated. For example, the awakening consciousness of our womanhood
is troubling itself rightly over the woman's place in the community, is
concentrating on the type delineated in "The Doll's House," and is
agitating for a more honourable and dignified place. We applaud the
pioneers thus fighting for their honour and dignity: but let them not
make the mistake of assuming the men are wholly responsible for "The
Doll's House," and the women would come out if they could. We have
noticed the man who prefers his ease to any troubling duty: he has his
mate in the woman who prefers to be wooed with trinkets, chocolates, and
the theatre to a more beautiful way of life, that would give her a
nobler place but more strenuous conditions. Again, the man is not always
the lord of the house. He is as often, if not more frequently, its
slave. Then there are the conventions of life. In place of a fine sense
of courtesy prevailing between man and woman, which would recognise with
the woman's finer sensibility a fine self-reliance, and with the man's
greater strength a fine gentleness, we have a false code of manners, by
which the woman is to be taken about, petted and treated generally as
the useless being she often is; while the man becomes an effeminate
creature that but cumbers the earth. Fine courtesy and fine comradeship
go together. But we have allowed a standard to gain recognition that is
a danger alike to the dignity of our womanhood and the virility of our
manhood. It is for us who are men to labour for a finer spirit in our
manhood: we cannot throw the blame for any weakness over on external
conditions. The woman is in the same position. She must understand that
greater than the need of the suffrage is the more urgent need of making
her fellow-woman spirited and self-reliant, ready rather to anticipate a
danger than to evade it. When she is thus trained, not all the men of