In point of fact, when a man is in love, and a girl does not yet know her own mind; when she is weighing out their adaptability, and balancing his love for football against her passion for Browning; during the delicate, tentative period, when the most affectionate solicitude from friends is an irritation, there ought to be a law banishing the interested couple to an island peopled with strangers, who would not discover the delicacy of the situation until it was too late to spoil it.

“Woman’s rights.”  I certainly agree with the men who think that those words have a masculine, assertive, belligerent sound.  “Equal suffrage” is much more lady-like, and we are by way of getting all we wish of the men on any subject, under the gentlest title by which it may be called.  Strange, how, with strong men, force never avails, but the softest methods are the surest and swiftest.

However, equal suffrage, wide as it is, is not all that I wish.  It does well enough, but it does not cover the entire ground.  I never clamored very much for women to be recognized as the equals of men, either in politics or in love, because, if I had clamored at all, I should have clamored for infinitely more than that. I should have clamored for men to recognize us as their superiors, and not for equal rights with themselves, but for more, many more rights than they ever dreamed of possessing.  ’Tis not justice I crave, but mercy.  ’Tis not equality, but chivalry.

In the whole history of the world, from nineteenth-century Public Opinion clear back to the age of chivalry, men never have been inclined to deal out justice to women.  It is their watchword with each other, but with women it always is either injustice or mercy.  And in spite of all wrongs and all abuses, I say, Heaven bless the men that this is so.  Human nature is more fundamental than customs, and what would become of women if we only got our exact deserts, or had absolute justice dealt to us, either by men or other women or on the Judgment Day?

In these latter days of this progressive, woman’s century, however, the most thoughtful men are valiant enough to re-adjust themselves to the idea of woman’s development, and allow her equality in progressive thought; at the same time maintaining the old-time chivalry of their attitude towards her.  If she asks for justice at the hands of these glorious men, she will get it, and they will uncover in her presence and throw away their cigars while they are dispensing it.  Equality to them does not mean either rudeness or insolence.  They are always gentlemen.

It requires bravery on their part to take this ground, because the sentiment has not as yet grown popular.  But a New Man has been created by the development of the New Woman, and he is the highest type we have.

 “Courtesy wins woman as well
  As valor may, but he that closes both
  Is perfect.”