"The women return, and get home as quickly as they can to change their costume so that the trick by which the passing of this new decree has been secured may not be detected. Praxagora succeeds in persuading her husband that she had {247} been sent for in a hurry to attend a sick neighbor, and only borrowed his coat to put on 'because the night was so cold' and his strong shoes and staff, in order that any evil-disposed person might take her for a man as she tramped along, and so not interfere with her. She at first affects not to have heard of the reform which has been just carried, but when her husband explains it, declares it will make Athens a paradise. Then she confesses to him that she has herself been chosen, in full assembly, 'Generalissima of the state.' She puts the question, however, just as we have all seen it put by a modern actress,--'will this house agree to it?' And if Praxagora was at all attractively got up, we may be sure it was carried by acclamation in the affirmative. _Then, in the first place, there shall be no more poverty; there shall be community of goods, and so there shall be no law suits, and no gambling and no informers._ (They promised more even than our suffragettes--if possible.) Moreover, there shall be community of wives,--and all the ugly wives shall have the first choice of husbands. So she goes off to her public duties, to see that these resolutions are carried out forthwith; the good citizen begging leave to follow close at her side, so that all who see him may say, 'What a fine fellow is our Generalissima's husband!' "The scene changes to another street in Athens, where the citizens are bringing out all their property, to be carried into the market-place {248} and inventoried for the common stock. Citizen 'A' dances with delight as he marshals his dilapidated chattels into a mock procession--from the meal sieve, which he kisses, it looks so pretty with its powdered hair, to the iron pot which looks as black 'as if Lysimachus' (some well-known fop of the day, possibly present among the audience) 'had been boiling his hair dye in it.' This patriot, at least, has not much to lose, and hopes he may have something to gain, under these female communists. "But his neighbor, who is better off, is in no such hurry. The Athenians, as he remarks, are always making new laws and abrogating them; what has been passed to-day very likely will be repealed to-morrow. Besides it is a good old national habit to take, not to give. He will wait a while before he gives in an inventory of his possessions. (One might think of an income tax law in the United States in the twentieth century.)