Tea-table Talk

re is, may it not be the result of Civilisation rather than of Nature, of training rather than of instinct?"

"Deny the contest between male and female, and you deprive life of half its poetry," urged the Minor Poet.

"Poetry," returned the Philosopher, "was made for man, not man for poetry. I am inclined to think that the contest you speak of is somewhat in the nature of a 'put-up job' on the part of you poets. In the same way newspapers will always advocate war; it gives them something to write about, and is not altogether unconnected with sales. To test Nature's original intentions, it is always safe to study our cousins the animals. There we see no sign of this fundamental variation; the difference is merely one of degree."

"I quite agree with you," said the Girton Girl. "Man, acquiring cunning, saw the advantage of using his one superiority, brute strength, to make woman his slave. In all other respects she is undoubtedly his superior."

"In a woman's argument," I observed, "equa