The feet of the little Chinese girl are bound by her mother and her
nurse--but it is not for woman's pleasure that this crippling torture
was invented. The Oriental veil is worn by women, but it is not for any
need of theirs that veils were decreed them.

When we look at society in its earlier form we find that the public
house has always been with us. It is as old almost as the private
house; the need for association is as human as the need for privacy.
But the public house was--and is--for men only. The woman was kept as
far as possible at home. Her female nature was supposed to delimit her
life satisfactorily, and her human stature was completely ignored.

Under the pressure of that human nature she has always rebelled at the
social restrictions which surrounded her; and from the women of older
lands gathered at the well, or in the market place, to our own women on
the church steps or in the sewing circle, they have ceaselessly
struggled for the social intercourse which was as much a law of their
being as of man's.

When we come to the modern special field that we call "society," we find
it to consist of a carefully arranged set of processes and places
wherein women may meet one another and meet men. These vary, of course,
with race, country, class, and period; from the clean licence of our
western customs to the strict chaperonage of older lands; but free as it
is in America, even here there are bounds.

Men associate without any limit but that of inclination and financial
capacity. Even class distinction only works one way--the low-class man
may not mingle with high-class women; but the high-class man may--and
does--mingle with low-class women. It is his society--may not a man do