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136 upon, or of resistance to, some cherished conventions of the day.

Take, for example, a thing which has seemed to concern only the male sex, but which has really concerned women just as intimately—the history of our male code of honour in relation to the institution of duelling. There was a time in our history when it would have been very difficult to regard as manly the refusal to fight a duel. But it is not difficult to-day to see in such a refusal a very true manliness. We in this country have got rid of the superstition that honour can in any way be mended by two men standing up to take snap-shots at each other; and now that we are free from the superstition ourselves, we can understand, looking at other countries—Germany, for instance—that it must often require more courage to refuse to fight than to consent. But we have arrived at that stage of enlightenment only because in our own history there have been men courageous enough and manly enough to dare to be thought unmanly and cowardly. And as with our manhood so with our womanhood; you cannot judge of what is womanly merely on the lines of past conventions, produced under circumstances very different from those of our own days. You must give to women as you give to men the right to experiment, the right to make their own successes and their own failures. You cannot with good results lay upon men and women, as they work side by