Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/231

 A CURIOUS CONTENTION.

an inexhaustible fund of quarrelsomeness lies at the bottom of the human heart! Since the beginning of the world, men have fought and wrangled with one another; and now women seem to find their keenest pleasure and exhilaration in fighting and wrangling with men. In literature, in journalism, in lectures, in discussions of every kind, they are lifting up their voices with an angry cry which sounds a little like Madame de Sévigné's "respectful protestation against Providence." They are tired, apparently, of being women, and are disposed to lay all the blame of their limitations upon men.

There is nothing very healthful in such an attitude, nothing dignified, nothing morally sustaining. Life is not easy to understand, but it seems tolerably clear that two sexes were put upon the world to exist harmoniously together, and to do, each of them, a share of the world's work. Their relation to