There have been notable personages, all along the line of the centuries, who have added grace or disgrace to their sex by vigorous assertion of new-womanhood. From the Hebrew woman who drove the nail into her enemy’s head, along down by way of the Greek philosopher’s wife, to Queen Elizabeth, as thoroughly authentic records seem to establish, an unbroken strain of man-harrying amazons march through history. And side by side with it another procession is composed of the intellectual prodigies of various female types who have assaulted the masculine stronghold of science and art, from the days of Sappho to this good hour. Charles Baudelaire, in one of his “Fleurs du Mal,” longs for the day of giantesses, and tuning his harp to the major key of desire, sings with superb gallantry to the beat of an enormous plectrum:— “Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux J’eusse aimé vivre auprès d’une jeune géante, Comme aux pieds d’une reine un chat voluptueux.” Of course a poet is sure to use strong language which goes better with some grains of salt; but there is no doubt touching the following sketch of a New Woman:— “J’eusse aimé . . . . . . Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes, Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains, Lasse, la font s’étendre à travers la campagne, Dormir nonchalamment à l’ombre de ses seins, Comme un hameau paisible au pied d’une montagne.” To be a very large woman’s little cat might not satisfy the highest aspiration of a manly man, even among _fin de siècle_ poets; and to be as a mere village in her bosom’s mountain shadow is not open to consideration in the most degenerate masculine mind of our epoch. Still Baudelaire’s verses, being neither humor nor satire, adumbrate a possible outcome of civilization, were the New Woman to take a giantesque turn. She might be supremely pleased with having man purring at her toes, or hopelessly asleep in her shadow. Some uneasiness on the subject undoubtedly exists in certain male imaginations. Not long ago I said to a friend of mine that I was willing for women to vote on equal terms with men; that I considered their enfranchisement a matter for them to settle; if they in committee of the whole should declare for this thing, let them have it as a matter of course. My friend bridled. “Yes, let them have it,” he cried; “let them run the government woman-fashion for a while. There’s no danger in the experiment. When we get tired of them, we can take empty guns and scare them quite out of the country. Indeed it would be fun.”