essentially woman's prerogative.

In this one respect--I dare not say in any other--we outrank our
brothers. They can build palaces and the furniture that fits them up
in regal state; they can, even better than we, prepare for the royal
tables food convenient for them, and fashion the attire of the
revelers, and make the music and sing the songs and write the books
and paint the pictures of the world. They may make and execute our
laws and sail our seas, and fight our battles, and--after dutiful
consultation with us--cast our votes. There is no magnanimity in
admitting all this. It is the due of that noblest work of God, a
strong, good, gentle man to receive the concession and to know how
frankly we make it. To them as theologians, logicians, impartial
historians, as priests, prophets, and kings--we do cheerful obeisance,
yet with the look of one who but half hides a happy secret in her
heart that compensates for all she resigns. There is not a
true-hearted woman alive who would give up her birthright to
become--we will say Christopher Columbus himself.

It must be a fine thing, though, to be a man on some accounts;--to be
emancipated forever-and-a-day from the thraldom of skirts for
instance, and to push through a crowd to read the interjectional
headlines upon a bulletin board, instead of going meekly and
unenlightened home, to be told by John three hours later that "a
woman's curiosity passes masculine comprehension, and that he is too
tired and hungry to talk." It must be a satisfaction to be able to hit
another nail with a hammer than that attached to one's own thumb, and
to hurl a stone from the shoulder instead of tossing it from the
wrist; there must be sublimity in the thrill with which the stroke-oar
of the 'Varsity's crew bends to his work, and the ecstasy of the