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66 "Next I shall deal with the tall, meagre female near the fire-hearth, in abbreviated hair and a nose-pinch, who set up the claim that her sex were in all essentials the equals, if not the superiors, of man. Now, without any gairish of words, I will proceed baldly to enumerate various important physical differentiations which(Intervention by Hon'ble Chairwoman, reminding me that these were not in disputation.) I bow to correction, and kiss the rod by summing up the gist of my argument, viz., that it is nonsensical idiotcy to suppose that a woman can be the equivalent of a man either in intellectual gripe, in bodily robustiousness, or in physical courage. Of the last, I shall afford an unanswerable proof from my own person. It is notorious, urbi et orbi, that every feminine person will flee in panicstricken dismay from the approach of the smallest mouse.

"I am a Bengali, and, as such, profusely endowed with the fugacious instinct, and yet, shall I quake in appalling consternation if a mouse is to invade my vicinity?

"Certainly I shall not; and why? Because, though not racially a temerarious, I nevertheless appertain to the masculine sex, and consequentially my heart is not capable of contracting at the mere aspect of a rodent. This is not to blow the triumphant trumpet of sexual superiority, but to prove a simple undenied fact by dint of an a fortiori.