"Power!" she said, suddenly, smiting her little hand upon the rail. "Yes,
we have power; and since we are not to expend it in tunnelling mountains,
nor healing diseases, nor making laws, nor money, nor on any extraneous
object, we expend it on you. You are our goods, our merchandise, our
material for operating on; we buy you, we sell you, we make fools of you,
we act the wily old Jew with you, we keep six of you crawling to our little
feet, and praying only for a touch of our little hand; and they say truly,
there was never an ache or pain or broken heart but a woman was at the
bottom of it. We are not to study law, nor science, nor art, so we study
you. There is never a nerve or fibre in a man's nature but we know it. We
keep six of you dancing in the palm of one little hand," she said,
balancing her outstretched arm gracefully, as though tiny beings disported
themselves in its palm. "There, we throw you away, and you sink to the
devil," she said, folding her arms composedly. "There was never a man who
said one word for woman but he said two for man, and three for the whole
human race."
She watched the bird pecking up the last yellow grains; but Waldo looked
only at her.
When she spoke again it was very measuredly.
"They bring weighty arguments against us when we ask for the perfect
freedom of women," she said; "but, when you come to the objections, they
are like pumpkin devils with candles inside, hollow, and can't bite.
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