playful or otherwise; or possibly meets some merry puppy which induces her to move rapidly up the nearest tree with an agility which you never would believe the mother of a family could boast if you had not been an eye-witness to the interesting scene.  Such an encounter will not induce her to want to stay up a tree.  It only makes the safety of the hearth-rug more inviting.  Now, if she always remained on the hearth-rug, how could we tell, should the hearth-rug be invaded in the absence of her natural protectors, that she could defend herself?  For my part, I am glad to know, when I leave her, that she is not so helpless or so sleepy as she looks.  It is a great thing to know that a cat’s tree-climbing abilities are not hopelessly dormant.  It does not make her purr the less when she is stroked.  Her fur is as soft, her ways are as gentle as they ever were, and as she lies there so quietly upon the hearth-rug she looks as though she never had left it.  Only once in a while she regards you out of one eye in a companionable way, as who should say, “That’s all right.  You know I can climb a tree when occasion requires.”

The dear new woman!  I like her.  Perhaps she is crude in her newness.  Give her time.  Perhaps she makes a little too much of her freedom.  How do you know what she suffered before she became new?  Perhaps she has her faults.  Are you perfect?

Of course there is the woman who shrieks on political platforms and neglects her husband, and lets her children grow up like little ruffians; the woman who wears bloomers and bends over her handle-bar like a monkey on a stick; the woman who wants to hold office with men and smoke and talk like men—­alas, that there is that variety of woman—­but she is not new.  Pray did you never see her before she wore bloomers?  Bloomers are no worse than the sort of clothes she used to wear.  Her swagger is no more pronounced now than it used to be in skirts.  She has always had bloomer instincts.  You don’t pretend to declare, do you, that there never were unconventional women, ill-dressed and rowdy women, before the new woman was heard of?  That is the great mistake you make.  These women are not new women.  We’ve always had them.  We never, unfortunately, have been without them.

The real new woman is a creature quite different.  She is one whom you would wish to know.  She is one whom you would invite to your most select dinners.  You would be better men if you had more friends like her, and broader-minded women if you dropped a few of those who hand you doughnut recipes over the back fence, and who entertain you with the history of the baby’s measles, and how they are managing to meet the payments on their little house.  I am not unsympathetic, either, with the measles or the payments, but I prefer the subjects of conversation which a new woman selects.  There is more ozone in them.