of the kindly usage that was hers before she became man’s competitor; and if she fails in market overt, where chivalry has no place, why, she has no just cause of complaint. If the time is past when women were regarded as a cross between an angel and an idiot it is quite by her own doing, and if she no longer receives the deference that is the due of an angel, nor the compassionate consideration usually accorded an idiot, no one is to blame but herself. If she would be content to earn her wages in those manly employments she has poached, and to refrain from the cry of triumph she cannot forbear, she would be a much more gracious figure, and, indeed, entitled to some sympathy; but foolish women are clamorously greedy of self-glorification, and still instant, in and out of season, in reviling the strength and mental agility of men which surpass their own and forbid for ever the possibility of female domination. And yet women, one might reasonably suppose, have no just cause of complaint in the matter of their mental and physical inferiority. The feminine quality of cunning has ever stood them in good stead, and by its aid they have grasped advantages that could not have been theirs by right of their muscles or their reason. Cunning has taught them to use their shortcomings as claims for consideration, and to urge courtesy as their due in order to handicap men in the race. In the same manner Mr. Gladstone was wont, when all reasonable arguments had failed him, to urge his age as a claim to attention and a compliance with his policy; and, whenever a cricket match is played between an eleven of gentlemen and a corresponding number of ladies, the men must fain tie one hand behind their backs and fend as best they may with the other, and use a stump in place of a bat. Again, when gloves are wagered on a race, who ever heard of pretty Fanny paying when her wager was lost? You shall see an instance of feminine unreasonableness in competition with man in this tale of a race:--Mrs. Thornton, the wife of a Colonel Thornton, rode on horseback, in 1804, a match with a Mr. Frost, on the York racecourse. The course was four miles, and the stakes were 500 guineas, even. The race was run before an immense concourse, and eventually the lady lost! She could not, of course, considering her sex, contain herself for indignation, and her letter to the _York Herald_ which followed made complaint against Mr. Frost for having been lacking in courtesy in ‘distancing her as much as he could.’ She challenged that discourteous sportsman to another match, but he very rightly considered that sport is masculine, and did not accept.