In our days chivalry includes compassion for animals too. I have never read of a more gallant soldier than that colonel who, as related in _Our Animal Friends_ (May, 1899), while riding in a Western desert at the head of five hundred horsemen, suddenly made a slight detour--which all the men had to follow--because in the direct path a meadow lark was sitting on her nest, her soft brown eyes turned upward, watching, wondering, fearing. It was a nobler deed than many of the most gallant actions in battle, for these are often done from selfish motives--ambition, the hope of promotion--while this deed was the outcome of pure unselfish sympathy. "Five hundred horses had been turned aside, and five hundred men, as they bent over the defenceless mother and her brood, received a lesson in that broad humanity which is the essence of higher life." To this day there are plenty of ruffians--many of them in fine clothes--who are strangers to chivalrous feelings toward defenceless women or animals--men who behave as gentlemen only under compulsion of public opinion. The encouraging thing is that public opinion has taken so strong a stand in favor of women; that it has written _Place aux Dames_ on its shield in such large letters. While the red American squaw shared with the dogs the bones left by her contemptuous ungallant husband, the white American woman is served first at table and gets the choicest morsels; she receives the window-seat in the cars, the lower berth in the sleeper; she has precedence in society and wherever she is in her proper place; and when a ship is about to sink, the captain, if necessary (which is seldom the case), stands with drawn revolver prepared to shoot any man who would ungallantly get into a boat before all the women are saved. "AN INSULT TO WOMAN"