In no age of the world has the reasoning power of man been in better working order than at present. With all due respect to the statistics which show that the female is beginning to outstrip the male in academic competitive examinations, one has only to keep his ears and eyes open in the workaday world in order to be convinced that man’s purely mental processes suggest a razor and woman’s a corkscrew. The manager of corporate interests, the lawyer, the historian, the physician, the chemist, and the banker seek to-day to probe to the bottom that which they touch, and to expose to the acid of truth every rosy theory and seductive prospectus. This is in the line of progress; but to be satisfied with this alone would speedily reduce human society to the status of a highly organized racing stable. If man is to be merely a jockey, who is to ride as light as he can, there is nothing to be said; but even on that theory is it not possible to train too fine? With eloquence tabooed as savoring of insincerity, with conversation as a fine art starved to death, with melody in music sniffed at as sensational, and fancy in literature condemned as unscientific, with the loosening of all the bonds of conventionality which held civilization to the mark in matters of taste and elegance, and with a general doing away with color and emotion in all the practical affairs of life out of regard to the gospel of common-sense and machine-made utility, the jockey now is riding practically in his own skin. One has to go back but a little way in order to encounter among the moving spirits of society a radically different attitude. Unquestionably the temper of the present day is the result of a vigorous reaction against false or maudlin sentiment, florid drivel, and hypocritical posturing; but certainly a Welsh-rarebit at midnight, with easy-going companions, is a far remove as a spiritual stimulus from bread eaten in tears at the same hour. As has been intimated, this exaggeration of commonplaceness will probably right itself in time, but man’s lack of susceptibility to influences and impressions which cannot be weighed, fingered, smelt, looked at, or tasted, seems to justify at present the strictures of the modern woman, who, with all her bumptiousness, would fain continue to reverence him. Some in the van of feminine progress would be glad to see the inspiration and direction of all matters--spiritual, artistic, and social--apportioned to woman as her sole rightful prerogative, and consequently to see man become veritably a superior chore-man. Fortunately the world of men and women is likely to agree with Barbara that mutual sympathy and co-operation in these matters between the sexes are indispensable to the healthy development of human society.