re

the house, and melt picturesquely away again in the forest, with perhaps a feu de joie in honor of their hosta compliment that he would gladly have dispensed with. Meals were served in the great hall of Vailima, a noble room over fifty feet long and proportionately broad, of which Mr. Stevenson was pardonably proud. At half past two the clapping of hands announced that 'ava was prepared-that peculiar beverage of the South Pacific -and when everyone was assembled it was called and distributed in the Samoan manner, Mr. Stevenson ceiving the first cup according to the dictates of etiquette. There were always visitors living in the house, and the cool of the afternoon often brought callers from the "beach," officers from the men-of-war, missionaries, officials, blue-jackets, local residents, priests, Mormon elders, passing tourists-all the flotsam and jetsam, in fact, of a petty port lying on one of the great thoroughfares of the world. It is hard for an outsider to realize the life and animation there is in Samoa. The American conjures up a picture of a frontier post; the Englishman harks to Kipling and station life in India; and both are wrong. Samoa is very cosmopolitan for all its insignificance on the map, and its white population of four hundred souls; balls, picnics, parties, are of common occurrence; there is a constant flow of news, rumor, and island gossip; and four steamers a month link the group to the outside world and bring an endless procession of strange faces across our little stage.

Mr. Stevenson was fond of amusement and hospitality, and apart from a constant succession of more formal luncheon parties and dinners, there was always room at his mahogany for the unexpected guests that the chef had orders to bear in mind. The first cotillon ever given in Samoa took place at Vailima; the first pony paper-chase was got up under Mr. Stevenson's direction;

he was always eager to bear his part in any scheme for the public entertainment and his support and subscription could always be reckoned on in advance. Nor was he less backward with regard to the natives, whom he often feasted in the Samoan way with great pomp and a rigorous regard to etiquette and custom. His birthday party was a veritable gathering of the clans, beginning at dawn and continuing uninterruptedly till dusk, with a huge feast and troops of dancers to entertain the people. A Christmas-tree rejoiced the household every year, and was the occasion of breathless anticipation and excitement; and the little fiesta was not unenhanced by the good-humored raillery with which the presents were distributed.

Mr. Stevenson could not be seen to better advantage than at the head of his faultless table, sharing and leading the conversation of the guests that various strange fates had brought together beneath his roof. He loved the contrast of evening dress and the half-naked attendants; the rough track that led the visitor through forest and jungle to this glowing house under Vaea, the juxtaposition of original Hogarths, Peranesis's. pictures by Sargent, Lemon, and Will H. Low, the sculptured work of Rodin and Augustus St. Gaudens, with rifleracks, revolvers, and trophies of savage weapons. And the conversation was to match: English literature and copra; Paul Bourget's new book and the rebel loss at Tifitifi; European politics and the best methods of suppressing headtaking!

When he was detained in town at night or by some mischance was late of returning to Vailimą, it was his pleasure that the house should be lit throughout, so that he might see it shining through the forest on his home-coming. As I must now be drawing to an end, where better could I stop than at this picture: the tired man drawing rein in the "Road of the Loving Heart," and gazing up at the lights of home?

THE ART

OF

LIVING

THE CASE OF WOMAN

By Robert Grant

ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. H. HYDE

A

I

GREAT many men, who are sane and reasonable in other matters, allow themselves, on the slightest provocation, to be worked up into a fever over the aspirations of woman. They decline to listen to argument, grow red in the face, and saw the air with their hands, if they do not pound on the table, to express their views on the subject-which, by the way, are as out of date and old-fashioned as a pine-tree shilling. They remind one of the ostrich in that they seem to imagine, because they have buried their heads in the sand, nothing has happened or is happening around them. They confront the problem of woman's emancipation as though it were only just being broached instead of in the throes of delivery.

For instance, my friend, Mr. Julius

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Cæsar, who though a conservative, cautious man by nature, is agreeably and commendably liberal in other matters, seems to be able to see only one side of this question. And one side seems to be all he wishes to see. "Take my wife," he said to me the other day; as women go she is a very clever and sensible woman. She was given the best advantages in the way of schooltraining open to young ladies of her day; she has accomplishments, domestic virtues, and fine religious instincts, and I adore her. But what does she know of politics? She couldn't tell you the difference between a senator and an alderman, and her mind is practically a blank on the tariff or the silver question. I tell you, my dear fellow, that if woman is allowed to leave the domestic hearth and play ducks and drakes with the right of suffrage, every political caucus will become a retail drygoods store. If there is one thing which makes philosopher despair of the future of

a

the race, it is to stand in a crowded drygoods store and watch the jam of women perk and push and sidle and grab and covet and go well-nigh crazy over things to wear. The average woman knows about clothes, the next world, children, and her domestic duties. Let her stick to her sphere. A woman at a caucus? Who would see that my dinner was properly cooked, eh?"

One would suppose from these remarks that the male American citizen spends his days chiefly at caucuses; whereas, as we all know when we reflect, he goes perhaps twice a year, if he be a punctilious patriot like Julius Cæsar, and if not, probably does not go at all. If the consciousness that his wife could vote at a caucus would act as a spur to the masculine political conscience, the male American citizen could well afford to dine at a restaurant on elec

tion-days, or to cook his own food now and then.

Of course, even a man with views like Julius Cæsar would be sorry to have his wife the slavish, dollish, or unenlightened individual which she was apt to be before so-called women's rights were heard of. As he himself has proclaimed, he adores his wife, and he is, moreover, secretly proud of her æsthetic presentability. Without being an advanced woman, Dolly Cæsar has the interests of the day and hour at her fingers' ends, can talk intelligently on any subject, whether she knows anything about it or not, and is decidedly in the van, though she is not a leader. Julius does not take into account, when he anathematizes the sex because of its ambitions, the difference between her and her great-grandmother. He believes his wife to be a very charming specimen of what a woman ought to be,

and that, barring a few differences of costume and hair arrangement, she is practically her great-grandmother over again. Fatuous Julius! There is where he is desperately in error. Dolly Cæ sar's great-grandmother may have been a radiant beauty and a famous house

keeper, but her brain never harbored one-tenth of the ideas and opinions which make her descendant so attractive.

Those who argue on this matter like Julius Cæsar fail to take into account the gradual, silent results of time; and this is true of the results to come as well as those which have accrued. When the suffrage question is mooted. one often hears sober men, more dispassionate men than Julius- Perkins, for instance, the thin, nervous lawyer and father of four girls, and a sober man indeed-ask judicially whether it is possible for female suffrage to be a success when not one woman in a thousand would know what was expected of her, or how to vote. "I tell you," says Perkins, "they are utterly unfitted for it by training and education. Four-fifths of them wouldn't vote if they were allowed to, and everyone knows that ninety-nine women out of every hundred are profoundly ignorant of the matters in regard to which they would cast their ballots. Take my daughters; fine girls, talented, intelligent women-one of them a student of history; but what do they know of parties, and platforms, and political issues in general?"

Perkins is less violently prejudiced than Julius Cæsar. He neither saws the air nor pounds on the table. Indeed, I have no doubt he believes that he entertains liberal, unbiassed views on the subject. I wonder, then, why it

never occurs to him that everything which is new is adopted gradually, and that the world has to get accustomed to all novel situations. I happened to see Mr. Perkins the first time he rode a bicycle on the road, and his perform ance certainly justified the prediction that he would look like a guy to the end of his days, and yet he glides past me now with the ease and nonchalance of a possible "scorcher." Similarly, if women were given universal suffrage, there would be a deal of fluttering in the dove-cotes for the first generation or so. Doubtless four-fifths of womankind would refuse or neglect to vote at all, and at least a quarter of those who went to the polls would cast their ballots as tools or blindly. But just so soon as it was understood that it was no less a woman's duty to vote than it was to attend to her back hair, she would be educated from that point of view, and her present crass ignorance of political matters would be changed into at least a form of enlightenment. Man prides himself on his logic, but there is nothing logical in the argument that because a woman knows nothing about anything now, she can never be taught. If we have been content to have her remain ignorant for so many centuries, does it not savor both of despotism and lack of reasonableness to cast her ignorance in her teeth and to beat her

"The first time he rode a bicycle."

about the head with it now that she is eager to rise? Decidedly it is high time. for the man who orates tempestuously or argues dogmatically in the name of conservatism against the cause of woman on such flimsy pleas as these, to cease his gesticulations and wise saws. The modern woman is a potential reality, who is bound to develop and improve, in another generation or two, as far beyond the present interesting type as Mrs. Julius Cæsar is an advance on her great-grandmother.

On the other hand, why do those who have woman's cause at heart lay such formal stress on the right of the ballot as a factor in her development? There can be no doubt that, if the majority of women wish to vote on questions involving property or political interests, they will be enabled to do so sooner or later. It is chiefly now the conviction in the minds of legislatures that a large number of the intelligent women of their communities do not desire to exercise the right of suffrage which keeps the bars down. Doubtless these bodies will yield one after another to the clamor of even a few, and the experiment will be tried. It may not come this year or the next, but many busy people are so certain that its coming is merely a question of time that they do not allow themselves to be drawn into the fury of the fray. When

it comes, however, it will come as a universal privilege, and not with a social or property qualification. I mention this simply for the enlightenment of those amiable members of the sex to be enfranchised who go about sighing and simpering in the interest of drawing the line. That question was settled a century ago. The action taken may have been an error on the part of those who