John Coxon (pirate)

As agents provocateurs women have never been surpassed by men. Cornelia trained up her two brilliant sons, with a view to hurl them against and overturn the Roman Oligarchs; a city harlot led the Sans-Cullotes of the French Revolution. Queen Boadicea led her own army of painted Britons against the, then all-conquering Legions of Rome. A female epileptoid (since canonized) dressed herself in iron armor, mounted a war-horse, and urged her demoralized countrymen — to the forcible expulsion of an alien army. In American wars the feminine has also played her part with eclat; and she delights (above all other women) in tracing her own and her family’s pedigree to Revolutionary Soldiers, Pirates, Filibusters; and through them to the mailclad knights and heroes of long ago. No Public Library in this Republic is without its complete set of Stud-Books, and none are deeper students thereof then — woman. Instinctively comprehending the determinant power of heredity, these students are vaguely endeavoring (in their own peculiar way), to solve the renowned Spencerian Synthetic: — “Having seen that matter is indestructible, motion continuous, and Force persistent — having seen that Forces are everywhere undergoing transformation; that motion always follows the line of least resistance; is invariably rhythmic; it remains to discover the similarly invariable formula, expressing the combined consequences of actions, thus separately formulated.” Herod’s wife and daughter, and their secret alliance for getting John the Baptizer’s head chopped off, must not be overlooked; nor the calculated ‘brutality’ with which Jael drove that tent-peg into General Sisera’s cranium, when he slept ...»