Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/236

 222 the strong and good can be ruled by the weak and bad, physical force alone having given to man the mastery. It was reserved for our generation to straighten this tangled web, and to assign to each sex its proper limits and qualifications. The greatest change the world has ever seen is taking place to-day.

"However full the air may be of other sounds," said a recent lecturer on this subject, "the cry that rises highest and swells the loudest comes from the throats of women who in the last years of the nineteenth century of the Christian era are just beginning to live. Men cannot appreciate this as we do. From time out of mind they have used their brains and their instincts as they chose, and they cannot understand the ecstacy we feel as we stretch the limbs which have been cramped so long. What does it matter if they do not? One thing is sure. New wine is not put into old bottles. The village that has become a city does not return to its villageship. The man does not put on the child's garments again. So, whether men hate us or love us, we have outgrown the cage in which we sang. The woman of the past is dead."