But I
replied gently: "I am no tyrant; I am a simple, peaceful citizen, and it
is as much as I can do to earn my bread and the bread of some of thy sex.
Life is hard enough for both sexes, without setting one against the
other. We are both the outcome of the same great forces, and both of us
have our special selfishnesses, advantages, and drawbacks. If there is
any cruelty, it is Nature's handiwork, not man's. So far from trampling
on womanhood, we have let a woman reign over us for more than half a
century. We worship womanhood, we have celebrated woman in song, picture,
and poem, and half civilisation has adored the Madonna. Let us have
woman's point of view and the truth about her psychology, by all means.
But beware lest she provoke us too far. The _Ewigweibliche_ has become
too literal a fact, and in our reaction against this everlasting woman
question we shall develop in unexpected directions. Her cry for equal
purity will but end in the formal institution of the polygamy of the
Orient--"
As I spoke the figure before me appeared to be undergoing a
transformation, and, ere I had finished, I perceived I was talking to an
angry, seedy man in a red muffler.
"Thee keeps down the proletariat," he interrupted venomously.
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