power than the male plebeian. But, as matters now stand among us, there is
no aristocracy but of sex: all men are born patrician, all women are
legally plebeian; all men are equal in having political power, and all
women in having none. This is a paradox so evident, and such an anomaly in
human progress, that it cannot last forever, without new discoveries in
logic, or else a deliberate return to M. Maréchal's theory concerning the
alphabet.

Meanwhile, as the newspapers say, we anxiously await further developments.
According to present appearances, the final adjustment lies mainly in the
hands of women themselves. Men can hardly be expected to concede either
rights or privileges more rapidly than they are claimed, or to be truer to
women than women are to each other. In fact, the worst effect of a
condition of inferiority is the weakness it leaves behind; even when we
say, "Hands off!" the sufferer does not rise. In such a case, there is but
one counsel worth giving. More depends on determination than even on
ability. Will, not talent, governs the world. Who believed that a poetess
could ever be more than an Annot Lyle of the harp, to soothe with sweet
melodies the leisure of her lord, until in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
hands the thing became a trumpet? Where are gone the sneers with which
army surgeons and parliamentary orators opposed Mr. Sidney Herbert's first
proposition to send Florence Nightingale to the Crimea? In how many towns
was the current of popular prejudice against female orators reversed by
one winning speech from Lucy Stone! Where no logic can prevail, success
silences. First give woman, if you dare, the alphabet, then summon her to
her career: and though men, ignorant and prejudiced, may oppose its
beginnings, they will at last fling around her conquering footsteps more
lavish praises than ever greeted the opera's idol,--more perfumed flowers
than ever wooed, with intoxicating fragrance, the fairest butterfly of the
ball-room.