It was particularly annoying to me that this paper, with all its coarseness and grossness, set itself up to be the head leader of Woman's Rights; and to give its harsh clamors as the voice of woman. Neither was I at all satisfied with the manner in which I had been dragooned into taking it, and thus giving my name and money to its circulation. I had actually been bullied into it; because, never having contemplated the possibility of such an existence as a female bully, I had marked out in my mind no suitable course of conduct adequate to the treatment of one. "What _should_ I have done?" I said to myself. "What _is_ a man to do under such circumstances? Shall he engage in a personal scuffle? Shall he himself vacate his apartment, or shall he call in a policeman?" The question assumed importance in my eyes, because it was quite possible that, having come once, she might come again; that the same course of conduct might be used to enforce any kind of exaction which she should choose to lay on me. But, most of all was I sensitive, lest by any means some report of it might get to the Van Arsdels. My trepidation may then be guessed, on having the subject at once proposed to me by Mr. Van Arsdel that evening as I was sitting with him and Ida in her study. "I want to know, Mr. Henderson," he said, "if you are a subscriber for the _Emancipated Woman_, the new organ of the Woman's Rights party?" "Now, papa," said Ida, "that is a little unjust! It only _professes_ to be an organ of the party, but it is not recognized by us." "Have you seen the paper?" said Mr. Van Arsdel to me. Like a true Yankee I avoided the question by asking another. "Have _you_ subscribed to it, Mr. Van Arsdel?" "Well, yes," said he laughing, "I confess I have; and a pretty mess I have made of it. It is not a paper that any decent man ought to have in his house. But the woman came herself into my counting-room and, actually, she badgered me into it; I couldn't get her out. I didn't know what to do with her. I never had a woman go on so with me before. I was flustered, and gave her my five dollars to get rid of her. If she had been a man I'd have knocked her down." "Oh, papa," said Ida, "I'll tell you what you should have done; you should have called _me_. She'd have got no money and no subscriptions out of me, nor you either if I'd been there." "Now, Mr. Henderson, misery loves company; has she been to your room?" said Mr. Van Arsdel. "I confess she has," said I, "and that I have done just what you did--yielded at once."