"The arguments for and against woman suffrage," said Harding, "seem to me very evenly balanced. I agree with Dr. Biddle of the Society for the Promotion of Beautiful Manners, that it is unseemly for a woman to climb a truck and demand the ballot. Dr. Biddle maintains that if woman wants the ballot she should wait until every one is asleep and then go through somebody's pockets for it. Woman, Dr. Biddle thinks, has her own peculiar sphere, which, as the latest Census figures show, includes the nursery, the kitchen, the vaudeville stage, college teaching, stenography, the law, medicine, the ministry, as well as the manufacture of agricultural implements, ammunition, artificial feathers and limbs, automobiles, axle-grease, boots and shoes, bread-knives, brooms, brushes, buttons, carriages and wagons, charcoal, cheese, cigars, clocks, clothing and so on to x, y, and z.

"Can anything be more fatal to our ideals of true womanliness, Dr. Biddle asks, than a suffragette who throws stones? In reply to this, Miss Annabelle Bloodthurst asserts that if we count the number of successful suffragette hits woman is never so true to her sex as when she is heaving bricks at a British prime minister.

"Professor Tumbler lays particular stress on the outrageous conduct of the English suffragettes. He recalls how the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, while eating a charlotte russe, felt his teeth strike against a hard object, which turned out to be a cardboard cylinder inscribed 'Votes for Women.' The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was about to light his after-dinner cigar the other day when the cigar suddenly expanded into a paper fan bearing the legend, 'Tyrants, beware!' The newest Dreadnought with the First Lord of the Admiralty on board was preparing to set out on her trial trip when it was discovered that the boilers were not making steam. When the furnace doors were opened two dozen suffragettes, concealed within, began to shout, 'We want votes!' The leader of the Opposition is known to have walked all the way down Piccadilly with a tag tied to his coattails inscribed: 'I see no reason for bestowing the suffrage on women.'

"But perhaps the most dastardly outrage occurred at the baptism of the youngest child of a prominent treasury official. It seems that the nurse, who was a suffragette in disguise, had removed the child, a girl, and substituted a mechanical doll, with a phonographic attachment. The clergyman was in the middle of his discourse when the doll began to scream, 'Votes for women.' The father gasped, 'What! So early?' and fainted.

"The more you weigh the reasons pro and con," continued Harding, as he lit one of my cigars, "the harder it is to decide. Mrs. Cadgers has pointed out that under our present system the wife of a college professor is not allowed to vote, whereas an illiterate Greek fruit peddler may. But Mr. Rattler replies that the college professor, too, seldom votes, and if he does he spoils his ballot by trying to split his ticket. Why, demands Mrs. Cadgers, should women who pay taxes be refused a voice in the management of public affairs? Because, replies Mr. Rattler, the suffrage and taxes do not necessarily go together. In our country at the present day many millionaires who regularly cast their votes never pay their taxes.

"Mr. Rattler is particularly afraid that woman suffrage will break up the family. 'Imagine,' he says, 'a family in which the husband is a Democrat and the wife a Cannon Republican. Imagine them constantly fighting out the subject of tariff revision over the supper-table, and conceive the dreadful effect on the children, who at present are accustomed to see father light his cigar after supper and fall asleep. Or suppose the wife develops a passion for political meetings. That means that the husband will have to stay at home with the baby.' 'Well,' replies Mrs. Cadgers, 'such an arrangement has its advantages. It would not only give the wife a chance to learn the meaning of citizenship, but it would give the husband a chance to get acquainted with the baby.' And besides, Mrs. Cadgers goes on to argue, a woman's political duties need not take up more than a small fraction of her time. That, retorts Mr. Rattler, with a sneer, is because woman derives her ideas on the subject from seeing her husband fulfil his duties as a citizen once every two years when he forgets to register.

"An excellent debate on the subject was the one between Mrs. Excelsior, who spoke in favour of the ballot for women, and Professor Van Doodle, who upheld the negative. Professor Van Doodle maintained that women are incapable of taking a genuine interest in public affairs. What is it that appeals to a woman when she reads a newspaper? A Presidential election may be impending, a great war is raging in the Far East, an explorer has just returned from the South Pole, and, woman, picking up the Sunday paper, plunges straight into the fashion columns! She hardly finds time to answer her husband's petulant inquiry as to what she has done with the comic supplement. Can woman take an impersonal view of things? No, says Professor Van Doodle. In a critical Presidential election, one in which the fate of the country is at stake, she will vote for the candidate from whom she thinks she can get most for her husband and her children, whereas, her husband under the same circumstances will cast aside all personal interests and vote the same ticket his father voted for. Woman, concluded the professor, is constitutionally incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood.

"Mrs. Excelsior made a spirited defence. She showed that woman's undeveloped sense of what truth and honesty are, would not handicap her in the pursuit of practical politics. She argued that the complicated problems of municipal finance are no easier for the man who sets out to raise a family on fifteen dollars a week than for the woman who succeeds in doing so. She declared that a person who can travel thirty miles by subway and surface car, price $500 worth of dressgoods, and buy her lunch, all on fifteen cents in cash and a transfer ticket, would make a good comptroller for New York City.

"Professor Van Doodle claimed that under woman suffrage only a good-looking candidate would stand a chance of being elected. Mrs. Excelsior replied that there was no reason for believing that women would be more particular in choosing a State Senator than in selecting a husband. The professor was foolish when he asserted that if women went to the polls they would vote for the aldermen and the sheriffs, and would forget to vote for the President of the United States, and would insist on doing so in a postscript. This was of a piece with the other ancient jest that women are sure to vote for a Democrat when at heart they prefer a Republican, and vice versa.

"The whole case," concluded Harding, "was summed up by the Rev. Dr. Hollow when he said that in theory there is no objection to the present arrangement by which man rules the earth through his reason, and woman rules man through his stomach; but unfortunately, the human reason and the average man's stomach are apt to get out of order."