"Her husband was a mild man, reputed a faithful husband and a devoted father, but the female comet he was yoked with indignantly spurned such slavish role as wifehood and maternity involved, and she ranted around clubdom and through the press, striving to enlighten the world, until, finally, she determined to break her domestic chains and shake off all impedimenta of marriage obligations. Having deliberately selected as successor a friend whose opinions proved quite as lax as her own, she promoted an intimacy that resulted in accordance with her scheme. Then she suggested divorce to Hall, who very naturally assented with alacrity. When he promptly married the woman chosen, Mrs. Helen Phaedra Swan gladly abandoned all care of her own children to the new wife, washed her hands of maternal responsibility, and proclaimed herself free to work for the rights of woman and the enlightenment of the world. Soaring eagles scorn to perch at one man's hearthstone, and behold the comical climax of her flight above the laws of decency and good taste. She has swooped down on a new husband, and, for a season at least will call herself Mrs. Helen Phaedra Swan Butler. Such, Miss Roberts, is your 'prophetess.' Having heard that the pet theme of her present lucubrations is the 'ideal education of children,' I suggested to my own connubial serf, my 'true love,' that the study of the views of this experienced seeress might assist us in the training of our one ewe lamb, our old-fashioned little maid, and the reception of my proposition was of a nature conjugal loyalty forbids me to describe. Mrs. Helen Phaedra Swan Butler is merely a degenerate imitation of the Amazons, who changed their husbands annually and deserted their children. A survival of polyandry, if you please. Formerly women looked sternly and sorrowfully from their lofty pure plateau upon polygamy and bigamy as the horrible heinous luxury of wicked, despotic men; now they are stepping down into the mire, claiming equal rights in sin, and the emancipated new female clamors for easy divorce and the freedom of polyandry. In other days, before 'higher education, club-culture, and female rights' had abolished home life, domestic sanctity, and fireside _lararium_, all good women held Clytemnestra the infamous archetype of feminine depravity, but the doctrine of 'equality' lowers the old high standard, and the new code reads: 'She had as good a right to Aegisthus as Agamemnon to Chryseis.' As if the gods failed to overtake both in their sins." Miss Manning rang a silver bell, and, rising, tapped the professor's arm with her lorgnette.