Thyrsis seldom took human relationships seriously enough to get excited in such arguments; but Corydon, with her intense and personal temperament, made an eager and uncomfortable propagandist. How could anyone fail to see what was so plain to her? And so she would bring books and pamphlets, and lend them about. There was a young man named Harry Stuart, a fine, handsome fellow, who taught drawing at the High School. In him, also, Cordon discovered possibilities; and she repudiated indignantly the idea that his soulful eyes and waving brown hair had anything to do with it. Harry Stuart was a guileless and enthusiastic member of the State militia; but in spite of this sinister fact, Corydon went at him. She soon had her victim burning the midnight oil over Kautsky and Hyndman; and behold, before the autumn had passed, the ill-fated drawing-teacher had resigned from the State militia, and was doing cartoons for the “Appeal to Reason”! Section 8. Corydon’s excitement over these questions was all the greater because she was just then making the discovery of the relationship of Socialism to the problems of her own sex. Some one sent her a copy of Charlotte Gilman’s “Women and Economics”; she read it at a sitting, and brought it to Thyrsis, who thus came to understand the scientific basis of yet another article of his faith. He went on to other books--to Lester Ward’s “Sociology”, and to Bebel’s “Woman”, and to the works of Havelock Ellis. So he realized that women had not always been clinging vines and frail flowers and other uncomfortable things; and the hope that they might some day be interested in other matters than fashion and sentiment and the pursuit of the male, was not a vain fantasy and a Utopian dream, but was rooted in the vital facts of life. Throughout nature, it appeared, the female was often the equal of the male; and even in human history there had been periods when woman had held her own with man--when the bearing of children had not been a cause of degradation. Such had been the case with our racial ancestors, the Germans; as one found them in Tacitus, their women were strong and free, speaking with the men in the council-halls, and even going into battle if the need was great. It was only when they came under the Roman influence, and met slavery and its consequent luxury, that the Teutonic woman had started upon the downward path. Christianity also had had a great deal to do with it; or rather the dogmas which a Roman fanatic had imposed upon the message of Jesus.