“Is it possible that you are not aware of the Great Woman’s Strike which has now been in progress here for more than three months? The women of this country have combined as a sex to utterly refuse to perform any longer those duties and functions which have hitherto been magnanimously marked out for them by man as being the sole tasks predestined for them by the Creator. They say that the chains which have bound them for unnumbered ages, although artfully garlanded with flowers and called by sentimental and endearing names, are older and more galling than those of any bondspeople on the globe. They have decided that the time has come to throw off those chains.” “Do you really mean,” I gasped, “that the women have struck for what they suppose to be their rights, _as a sex_?” “That is exactly what I mean,” replied the man, “They have struck for their rights as a sex;” and he fumbled for the end of his collar. My surprise at this statement was so overwhelming, the idea of woman ever combining and striking as a sex had been so utterly undreamed of in my philosophy that I could not speak for several moments, seeing which the man said, while for the first time a sickly and self-conscious smile appeared upon his features: “I must be off. I left my clothes boiling on the parlour stove this morning, and as it is now past noon, I fear that the water has all boiled away.” And he turned away. “But for God’s sake,” I cried after him, “where have the women gone, and their innocent children? Tell me that before I flee from this accursed place and shake its dust from off my feet forever. Surely the women have not made away with themselves?” “Oh, no,” said the man, “it is not quite so bad as that. The women have simply wholly withdrawn from their habitations with men. They have taken possession of the commodious buildings of a large institute on the hill overlooking the town. There they confer with delegations from the masculine authorities. They left not a single female of any class in the town, taking with them even the poor, the sick, and the aged. The grandmothers, the matrons, the blooming girls of sixteen, and the little girls of four or five are all together there. All male children who were so young as to be dependent on their mothers for care they also took. There is not a woman young or old in the town. Woman’s abandonment of man has been complete, and,” he added with a shudder, “final, unless the guarantee they ask is given them.” Having said this the man hastened down a side street, cutting, as I afterwards remembered, a very grotesque figure, the tails of his buttonless coat flying loosely behind him.