and feelings are given to other matters. The current of their chosen
avocations runs in another channel than that of politics--a channel
generally quite out of sight of politics; it is an effort for them to turn
from one to the other. With men, on the contrary, politics, either
directly or indirectly, are closely, palpably, inevitably blended with
their regular work in life. They give their attention unconsciously,
spontaneously; to politics. Look at a family of children, half boys,
half girls; the boys take instinctively to whips and guns and balls
and bats and horses, to fighting and wrestling and riding; the girls
fondle their dolls, beg for a needle and thread, play at housekeeping,
at giving tea-parties, at nursing the sick baby, at teaching school.
That difference lasts through life. Give your son, as he grows up, a
gun and a vote; he will delight in both. Give your daughter, as she
grows up, a gun and a vote, and, unless she be an exceptional
woman, she will make a really good use of neither. Your son may be
dull; but he will make a good soldier, and a very tolerable voter.
Your daughter may be very clever; but she would certainly run away
on the battle-held, and very probably draw a caricature on the
election ticket. There is the making of an admirable wife and mother,
and a valuable member of society, in that clever young woman. She
is highly intelligent, thoroughly well educated, reads Greek and
Latin, and has a wider range of knowledge and thought than ninety-
nine in a hundred of the voters in the same district; but there is
nothing of the
politician in her nature. She would rather any day read a fine poem
than the best political speech of the hour. What she does know of
politics reaches her through that dull but worthy brother of hers. It is
only occasionally that we meet women with an inherent bias for
politics; and those are not, as a rule, the highest type of the sex--it
is only occasionally that they are so. The interest most women feel