Mrs. Nevinsou's Reply to Magistrate "Oh, yow women!" sighed My. dEyncourt, at the Marylebone police-court.
"You have votes, you are made justices of the peace and members of Parliament, yet you cannot answer even simple questions."
This somewhat amusing criticism met with a reply from Mrs. H. W. Nevinson, the woman magistrate, in an interview with a "Pall Mall Gazette."—repre sentative.
"Simple questions, indeed said Mrs. Nevinson.
"To answer questions really simply requires great training. There are very few people whg can do it, and as for women having. a monopoly of muddleheadedness, my experience goes to show that there are plenty of stupid and muddle-headed men—men who think that a plain question demands a ten-minute speech by way of answer.
"It is, indeed, an astonishing thing to observe how limited is the average intelligence, as manifested in a court of law.
"Vocabularies are found to be of the smallest, and one gathers the impression that many witnesses are Jargely incapable even of understanding the questions put to them, let alone of answering them.
"But the question resolves itself ultimately to this: It 1s absurd continually to divide men and women into two groups, concerning their intelligence.
"Tt is an arbitrary distinetion, and 2 false one." ction prohibited without permission.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.