your human being is at present. Your exception to this rule, I think, is easily accounted for. Let us see if we can find the _cause_. “According to your courting and marriage custom, your suitor goes to see his sweetheart _whenever_ he wishes and _wherever_ he wishes; but your sweetheart is not permitted to seek her choice by going to see _him_. She can only _attract_ her suitors principally by her personal appearance, by her attire when she goes to church, to the theater, on the street or when she looks out of the window and is gazed upon by the passer-by, etc. She is not free to go and display her winsome characteristics before the man she may love most, like the man does before the woman he loves most. Hence she is at a great disadvantage in showing her intrinsic worth, so she has to rely mainly on outward appearance, and this outward appearance is often very deceptive, very shallow, so that your men, who dictate to your women, are often caught in their own traps. Your men, either consciously or unconsciously, enslave your women by robbing them of their freedom; and by this act of robbery the man indirectly enslaves himself. If your women, like ours, were free in every sense of the word--free financially, socially, industrially and sexually they would rely on the natural attractiveness of a healthy, handsome face and body, on a graceful form and intrinsic worth; instead of relying, as they now do, on gaudy outward attire, twisted hair, small, uncomfortable shoes, tightly laced corsets, and a long, trailing dress. All this display of unnatural costumes and continuous change of fashion requires an immense amount of labor, which has to be performed by the man as well as by the woman. In this manner, by uncomfortable costumes, by sexual intemperance and by the burdens of labor resulting from them, your men, as well as your women, enslave themselves. “You must not infer from what I have said that the Marsites do not appreciate fine clothes; on the contrary, we are always richly dressed, but comfort and cleanliness have great precedence over anything else. Under the head of education, I will tell you more about our clothing and our manner of dress. “I am well aware that many of your people will believe that what I have told you is a dangerous doctrine, that it is not in accord with an orderly society and is detrimental to progress; but this false belief of the masses is nothing new or nothing strange, as I have hinted at before. In the first place, I have given you just what we already have on Mars, an older planet than the earth is; and, in the second place, the masses of mankind have always at first mistrusted and condemned every measure of progress. A few illustrations will make this plain.