needs mending.

Besides, one may well be a little incredulous of these vast claims.
Granting some average advantage to woman, it is not of such completeness as
to base much argument upon it. The minister, looking on his congregation,
rarely sees an unmixed angel, either at the head or at the foot of any pew.
The domestic servant rarely has the felicity of waiting on an absolute
saint at either end of the dinner-table. The lady's-maid has to compare her
little observations of human infirmity with those of the valet de chambre.
The lover worships the beloved, whether man or woman; but marriage bears
rather hard on the ideal in either case; and those who pray out of the same
book, "Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners," are not supposed to be
offering up petitions for each other only.

We all know many women whose lives are made wretched by the sins and
follies of their husbands. There are also many men whose lives are turned
to long wretchedness by the selfishness, the worldliness, or the bad temper
of their wives. Domestic tyranny belongs to neither sex by monopoly. If man
tortures or depresses woman, she also has a fearful power to corrupt and
deprave man. On the other hand, to quote old Antisthenes once more, "the
virtues of the man and woman are the same." A refined man is more refined
than a coarse woman. A child-loving man is infinitely tenderer and sweeter
toward children than a hard and unsympathetic woman. The very qualities
that are claimed as distinctively feminine are possessed more abundantly by
many men than by many of what is called the softer sex.

Why is it necessary to say all this? Because there is always danger that we
who believe in the equality of the sexes should be led into
over-statements, which will react against ourselves. It is not safe to say
that the ballot-box would be reformed if intrusted to feminine votes