"Now women are intelligent, experienced, well-trained citizens, fully our equals in any line of work they take up, and with us everywhere. It's made the world over!" "Made it 'feminist' through and through, I suppose!" I groaned. "Not a bit! It used to be 'masculist' through and through; now it's just _human_. And, see here--women are more attractive, as women, than they used to be." I stared at this, unbelieving. "That's true! You see, they are healthy; there's a new standard of physical beauty--very Greek--you must have noticed already the big, vigorous, fresh-colored, free-stepping girls." I had, even in my brief hours of observation. "They are far more perfect physically, better developed mentally, with a higher moral sense--yes, you needn't look like that! We used to call them our 'moral superiors,' just because they had the one virtue we insisted on--and we never noticed the lack in other lines. Women to-day are truthful, brave, honest, generous, self-controlled; they are--jollier, more reasonable, more companionable." "Well, I'm glad to hear that," I rather grudgingly admitted. "I was afraid they would have lost all--charm." "Yes, we used to feel that way, I remember. Funny! We were convinced on the one hand that there was nothing to a woman but her eternal womanliness, and on the other we were desperately afraid her womanliness would disappear the moment she turned her mind to anything else. I assure you that men love women, in general and in particular, much more than they used to." I pondered. "But--what sort of home life do you have?" "Think for a moment of what we used to have--even in a 'happy home.' The man had the whole responsibility of keeping it up--his business life and interests all foreign to her. She had the whole labor of running it--the direct manual labor in the great majority of cases--the management in any case. They were strangers in an industrial sense. "When he came home he had to drop all his line of thought--and she hers, except that she generally unloaded on him the burden of inadequacy in housekeeping. Sometimes he unloaded, too. They could sympathize and condole, but neither could help the other. "The whole thing cost like sin, too. It was a living nightmare to lots of men--and women! The only things they had in common were their children and 'social interests.' "Well--nowadays, in the first place every body is easy about money. (I'll go into that later.) No woman marries except for love--and good judgment, too; all women are more desirable--more men want to marry them--and that improves the men! You see, a man naturally cares more for women than for anything else in life--and they know it! It's the handle they lift by. That's what has eliminated tobacco." "Do you mean to say that these women have arbitrarily prevented smoking?" I do not smoke myself, but I was angry nevertheless. "Not a bit of it, John--not a bit of it. Anybody can smoke who wants to." "Then why don't they?"