We believe that the magnificent health which distinguishes our
women from those of your day, who seem to have been so generally sickly, is
owing largely to the fact that all alike are furnished with healthful and
inspiriting occupation.«
    »I understood you,« I said, »that the women workers belong to the army of
industry, but how can they be under the same system of ranking and discipline
with the men, when the conditions of their labor are so different.«
    »They are under an entirely different discipline,« replied Dr. Leete, »and
constitute rather an allied force than an integral part of the army of the men.
They have a woman general-in-chief and are under exclusively feminine régime.
This general, as also the higher officers, is chosen by the body of women who
have passed the time of service, in correspondence with the manner in which the
chiefs of the masculine army and the President of the nation are elected. The
general of the women's army sits in the cabinet of the President and has a veto
on measures respecting women's work, pending appeals to Congress. I should have
said, in speaking of the judiciary, that we have women on the bench, appointed
by the general of the women, as well as men. Causes in which both parties are
women are determined by women judges, and where a man and a woman are parties to
a case, a judge of either sex must consent to the verdict.«
    »Womanhood seems to be organized as a sort of imperium in imperio in your
system,« I said.
    »To some extent,« Dr. Leete replied; »but the inner imperium is one from
which you will admit there is not likely to be much danger to the nation. The
lack of some such recognition of the distinct individuality of the sexes was one
of the innumerable defects of your society. The passional attraction between men
and women has too often prevented a perception of the profound differences which
make the members of each sex in many things strange to the other, and capable of
sympathy only with their own. It is in giving full play to the differences of
sex rather than in seeking to obliterate them, as was apparently the effort of
some reformers in your day, that the enjoyment of each by itself and the
piquancy which each has for the other, are alike enhanced. In your day there was
no career for women except in an unnatural rivalry with men. We have given them
a world of their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure