A great many men, who are sane and reasonable in other matters, allow themselves, on the slightest provocation, to be worked up into a fever over the aspirations of woman. They decline to listen to argument, grow red in the face, and saw the air with their hands, if they do not pound on the table, to express their views on the subject--which, by the way, are as out of date and old-fashioned as a pine-tree shilling. They remind one of the ostrich in that they seem to imagine, because they have buried their heads in the sand, nothing has happened or is happening around them. They confront the problem of woman’s emancipation as though it were only just being broached instead of in the throes of delivery. For instance, my friend, Mr. Julius Cæsar, who though a conservative, cautious man by nature, is agreeably and commendably liberal in other matters, seems to be able to see only one side of this question. And one side seems to be all he wishes to see. “Take my wife,” he said to me the other day; “as women go she is a very clever and sensible woman. She was given the best advantages in the way of school-training open to young ladies of her day; she has accomplishments, domestic virtues, and fine religious instincts, and I adore her. But what does she know of politics? She couldn’t tell you the difference between a senator and an alderman, and her mind is practically a blank on the tariff or the silver question. I tell you, my dear fellow, that if woman is allowed to leave the domestic hearth and play ducks and drakes with the right of suffrage, every political caucus will become a retail drygoods store. If there is one thing which makes a philosopher despair of the future of the race, it is to stand in a crowded drygoods store and watch the jam of women perk and push and sidle and grab and covet and go well-nigh crazy over things to wear. The average woman knows about clothes, the next world, children, and her domestic duties. Let her stick to her sphere. A woman at a caucus? Who would see that my dinner was properly cooked, eh?” One would suppose from these remarks that the male American citizen spends his days chiefly at caucuses; whereas, as we all know when we reflect, he goes perhaps twice a year, if he be a punctilious patriot like Julius Cæsar, and if not, probably does not go at all. If the consciousness that his wife could vote at a caucus would act as a spur to the masculine political conscience, the male American citizen could well afford to dine at a restaurant on election-days, or to cook his own food now and then.