"No," replied Mrs. Blake, "she does not; but she ought."
"But she certainly does," I insisted.
"De facto, yes; but de jure, no."
"What do you want more?"
"The right to make laws."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The right of voting for candidates for Congress, and even the right to a seat in the House of Representatives."
"This appears to me a little too exacting, and almost unfair," I observed timidly. "You probably already make your husbands vote as you please: if, added to this, you are going to throw your own votes into the electoral urn, it means the extinction of man, neither more nor less; and, as Léon Gozlan said, 'it is perhaps as well that there should be two sexes, for some time longer at all events.' My dear lady, you are spoilt children, and spoilt children are never satisfied."
I felt a little out of place in this energetic lady's drawing-room, almost like a wolf in the fold. Nevertheless, I learned very interesting things that evening.
A lady, who enjoyed that most esteemed of woman's rights, the right to be pretty, gave me some very curious details on the subject of New York life. We were speaking of the security of women in the large towns, and of the risk they ran in going out alone after nightfall.