all their soldiers being deserters from both armies.) What are
women but men's playthings! Shall there be no more cakes and ale
for me because thou art virtuous! What are men but hungry dogs,
contending each against each for a limited supply of bones! Do
others lest thou be done. What is the Truth but an unexploded lie!

I am a lover of all living things. You, my poor sister, struggling
with your heavy burden on your lonely way, I would kiss the tears
from your worn cheeks, lighten with my love the darkness around your
feet. You, my patient brother, breathing hard as round and round
you tramp the trodden path, like some poor half-blind gin-horse,
stripes your only encouragement, scanty store of dry chaff in your
manger! I would jog beside you, taking the strain a little from
your aching shoulders; and we would walk nodding, our heads side by
side, and you, remembering, should tell me of the fields where long
ago you played, of the gallant races that you ran and won. And you,
little pinched brats, with wondering eyes, looking from
dirt-encrusted faces, I would take you in my arms and tell you fairy
stories. Into the sweet land of make-believe we would wander,
leaving the sad old world behind us for a time, and you should be
Princes and Princesses, and know Love.

But again, a selfish, greedy man comes often, and sits in my
clothes. A man who frets away his life, planning how to get more
money--more food, more clothes, more pleasures for himself; a man so
busy thinking of the many things he needs he has no time to dwell
upon the needs of others. He deems himself the centre of the
universe. You would imagine, hearing him grumbling, that the world
had been created and got ready against the time when he should come
to take his pleasure in it. He would push and trample, heedless,