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Rh been to the Assembly; but even he was too late to get the threepence which was allowed out of the public treasury to all who took their seat in good time, and which all Athenian citizens, if we may trust their satirist, were so ludicrously eager to secure. The place was quite full already, and of strange faces too. And a handsome fair-faced youth (Praxagora in disguise, we are to understand) had got up, and amid the loud cheers of those unknown voters had proposed and carried a resolution, that the government of the state should be placed in the hands of a committee of ladies,—an experiment which had found favour also with others, chiefly because it was "the only change which had not as yet been tried at Athens." His two neighbours are somewhat confounded at his news, but congratulate themselves on the fact that the wives will now, at all events, have to see to the maintenance of the children, and that "the gods sometimes bring good out of evil."

The women return, and get home as quickly as they can to change their costume, so that the trick by which the passing of this new decree has been secured may not be detected. Praxagora succeeds in persuading her husband that she had been sent for in a hurry to attend a sick neighbour, and only borrowed his coat to put on "because the night was so cold," and his strong shoes and staff, in order that any evil-disposed person might take her for a man as she tramped along, and so not interfere with her. She at first affects not to have heard of the reform which has been just carried, but when her husband explains it, declares it will make Athens a paradise. Then she confesses to him that