Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/124

 home and, like a meadow spider, spreads a pretty web of rose and gold, spangled with diamond dew. Flies—or men—tumble in by scores, and she holds them all prisoners at her pleasure with a silken strand as fine as a hair. But," she adds, "her weaving must not be to hold the flies solely for her own amusement—she must learn to use her powers for the betterment of the world."

The woman making webs, the man tumbling in and being inspired in a trap—is an old, old picture. It was conceived first of all in a warm climate, where unwholesome moisture rose from the teeming earth and made a dimness about the paths of men. It was developed in lands where women, become spinners indeed, were yet confined in close and shadowy chambers, and lost in unwholesome reveries the mere remembrance of the nature and source of inspiration. The very notion of an inspiring spider is alien, however, after all to the average Western—above all to the Saxon. "I will look up unto the hills from whence cometh my aid," sang even an Eastern poet, who, we were told, had nevertheless a large harem, and this desire to look not into an intriguing face, however fair, but into the light filled spaces of the Eternal, lives and will live anew in the hearts of our countrymen. This Suffragist—who is accused of having no beauty—will not, at least, prevent them. She is not here to make webs, but for other purposes. All the graces of the daughters of slave-women, even when shown forth, as they are to-day in the work of some of our leading women writers, and even their virtues, wholesome enough though a little confined,