So, as I was saying, I sat on the coach-top twisting my gloves, and I wished in my heart that men would not do such things as that very agreeable gentleman was doing. I do not design to enter on a crusade against tobacco. It is a mooted point in minor morals, in which every one must judge for himself; but I do wish men would not smoke so much. In fact, I should be pleased if they did not smoke at all. I do not believe there is any necessity for it. I believe it is a mere habit of self-indulgence. Women connive at it, because--well, because, in a way, they must. Men are childish, and, as I have said before, animal. I don't think they have nearly the self-restraint, self-denial, high dignity and purity and conscience that women have,--take them in the mass. They give over to habits and pleasures like great boys. People talk about the extravagance of women. But men are equally so, only their extravagance takes a different turn. A woman's is aesthetic; a man's is gross. She buys fine clothes and furniture. He panders to his bodily appetites. Which is worse? Women love men, and wish to be loved by them, and are miserable if they are not. So the wife lets her husband do twenty things which he ought not to do, which it is rude and selfish and wicked for him to do, rather than run the risk of loosening the cords which bind him to her. One can see every day how women manage,--the very word tells the whole story,--MANAGE men, by cunning strategy, cajolery, and all manner of indirections, just as if they were elephants. But if men were what they ought to be, there would be no such humiliating necessity. They ought to be so upright, so candid, so just, that it is only necessary to show this is right, this is reasonable, this is wrong, for them to do it, or to refrain from the doing. As it is, men smoke by the hour together, and their wives are thankful it is nothing worse. They would not dare to make a serious attempt to annihilate the pipe. They feel that they hold their own by a tenure so uncertain, that they are forced to ignore minor transgressions for the sake of retaining their throne. I do not say that women are entirely just and upright, but I do think that the womanly nature is GOOD-er than the manly nature; I think a very large proportion of female faults are the result of the indirect, but effective wrong training they receive from men; and I think, thirdly, that, take women just as they are, wrong training and all, there is not one in ten thousand million who, if she had a faithful and loving husband, would not be a faithful and loving wife. Men know this, and act upon it. They know that they can commit minor immoralities, and major ones too, and be forgiven. They know it is not necessary for them to keep themselves pure in body and soul lest they alienate their wives. So they yield to their fleshly lusts. What an ado would be made if a woman should form the habit of smoking, or any habit whose