Now, men seem to think that if they allowed woman equal suffrage, the bright white light of our honesty would be too strong a glare for their weak eyes—­so long accustomed to darkness—­to bear.  Um—­possibly in politics.  Hardly in love.

For myself, I consider absolute honesty most unpleasant.  I never knew any really nice, lovable women who were unflinchingly honest.  But I have known a few iron-visaged, square-jawed women who were so brutally honest that I have most ingloriously fled at the mention of their approach, and solaced myself with a congenial spirit who is in the habit of skirting delicately around painful truth, and a cozy corner in which to abuse the aforesaid iron-visaged carver of helpless humanity, who loves to draw blood with her truth.  Such an one will get a vote in politics long before she gets it in love.

No; men need not fear to give us equal suffrage in love.  Our honesty will not be disconcerting. (I would even address a private query, at just this point, to the women, begging that the men will skip it, asking women where in the world we would find ourselves if we were unflinchingly honest with the men who love us?) No one will deny that we would even countenance a certain amount of corruption.  We fully agree with those men who tell us weakly questioning women that campaign funds are a necessity.  We never have been able to discover just where the money in politics went to, but the expenses of a campaign in our line are more in evidence.  I doubt if the most straitlaced Puritan will gainsay me when I declare that bribery from the candidates, in the form of theatres, opera-boxes, flowers, bonbons, and books, would not only be tolerated, but even, in a modest manner, encouraged—­having, of course, a keen eye as to the elasticity of the campaign fund.  But, of course, just as vulgar bribery, per se, only catches the easy and unthinking voter in politics, so, in like manner, would these evidences of generosity only capture the less desirable voter in love.  When you men are trying for a woman’s vote you need give yourselves no uneasiness.  If she is worth having, character wins every time.  You don’t believe that.  That is why you trust to bribery to do it all.  And it is also why so many of you get the girl you try for—­which is about the richest punishment you could receive.

I adore Hamlet.  Not because he was so noble as to give up his life to avenge his father’s most foul murder.  Not because he was a chivalrous King Arthur, to protect Ophelia’s womanly pride from the jeers of a coarse court by openly declaring that he had loved her when he hadn’t.  Not for any of Shakespeare’s reasons for painting him a hero.  But for two much more reasonable reasons.  One that he said, “I myself am indifferent honest”—­oh, the humanity of Hamlet!—­and the other that, when under the spell of her beauty and in the tentative, interested stage when he cared for her all but enough to ask her to marry him, he had the wit to discover that she was a fool.  Imagine the calamity of Hamlet married to Ophelia!  That would have been a tragedy.  Think of a man clever enough to discover that his idol was made of putty—­that his sweetheart was a Rosamond Vincy!  Hamlet was a wise man.  He withdrew in time.  Most men have to be married ten years to discover that they have married an Ophelia or a Rosamond.