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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tea-table Talk, by Jerome K. Jerome
+(#21 in our series by Jerome K. Jerome)
+
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+
+Title: Tea-table Talk
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Release Date: October, 2000  [EBook #2353]
+[This file was first posted on November 28, 1999]
+[Most recently updated: November 28, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TEA-TABLE TALK ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1903 Hutchinson & Co. edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+TEA-TABLE TALK
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+"They are very pretty, some of them," said the Woman of the World;
+"not the sort of letters I should have written myself."
+
+"I should like to see a love-letter of yours," interrupted the Minor
+Poet.
+
+"It is very kind of you to say so," replied the Woman of the World.
+"It never occurred to me that you would care for one."
+
+"It is what I have always maintained," retorted the Minor Poet; "you
+have never really understood me."
+
+"I believe a volume of assorted love-letters would sell well," said
+the Girton Girl; "written by the same hand, if you like, but to
+different correspondents at different periods.  To the same person
+one is bound, more or less, to repeat oneself."
+
+"Or from different lovers to the same correspondent," suggested the
+Philosopher.  "It would be interesting to observe the response of
+various temperaments exposed to an unvaried influence.  It would
+throw light on the vexed question whether the qualities that adorn
+our beloved are her own, or ours lent to her for the occasion.
+Would the same woman be addressed as 'My Queen!' by one
+correspondent, and as 'Dear Popsy Wopsy!' by another, or would she
+to all her lovers be herself?"
+
+"You might try it," I suggested to the Woman of the World,
+"selecting, of course, only the more interesting."
+
+"It would cause so much unpleasantness, don't you think?" replied
+the Woman of the World.  "Those I left out would never forgive me.
+It is always so with people you forget to invite to a funeral--they
+think it is done with deliberate intention to slight them."
+
+"The first love-letter I ever wrote," said the Minor Poet, "was when
+I was sixteen.  Her name was Monica; she was the left-hand girl in
+the third joint of the crocodile.  I have never known a creature so
+ethereally beautiful.  I wrote the letter and sealed it, but I could
+not make up my mind whether to slip it into her hand when we passed
+them, as we usually did on Thursday afternoons, or to wait for
+Sunday."
+
+"There can be no question," murmured the Girton Girl abstractedly,
+"the best time is just as one is coming out of church.  There is so
+much confusion; besides, one has one's Prayer-book--I beg your
+pardon."
+
+"I was saved the trouble of deciding," continued the Minor Poet.
+"On Thursday her place was occupied by a fat, red-headed girl, who
+replied to my look of inquiry with an idiotic laugh, and on Sunday I
+searched the Hypatia House pews for her in vain.  I learnt
+subsequently that she had been sent home on the previous Wednesday,
+suddenly.  It appeared that I was not the only one.  I left the
+letter where I had placed it, at the bottom of my desk, and in
+course of time forgot it.  Years later I fell in love really.  I sat
+down to write her a love-letter that should imprison her as by some
+subtle spell.  I would weave into it the love of all the ages.  When
+I had finished it, I read it through and was pleased with it.  Then
+by an accident, as I was going to seal it, I overturned my desk, and
+on to the floor fell that other love-letter I had written seven
+years before, when a boy.  Out of idle curiosity I tore it open; I
+thought it would afford me amusement.  I ended by posting it instead
+of the letter I had just completed.  It carried precisely the same
+meaning; but it was better expressed, with greater sincerity, with
+more artistic simplicity."
+
+"After all," said the Philosopher, "what can a man do more than tell
+a woman that he loves her?  All the rest is mere picturesque
+amplification, on a par with the 'Full and descriptive report from
+our Special Correspondent,' elaborated out of a three-line telegram
+of Reuter's."
+
+"Following that argument," said the Minor Poet, "you could reduce
+'Romeo and Juliet' to a two-line tragedy -
+
+Lass and lad, loved like mad;
+
+Silly muddle, very sad."
+
+"To be told that you are loved," said the Girton Girl, "is only the
+beginning of the theorem--its proposition, so to speak."
+
+"Or the argument of the poem," murmured the Old Maid.
+
+"The interest," continued the Girton Girl, "lies in proving it--why
+does he love me?"
+
+"I asked a man that once," said the Woman of the World.  "He said it
+was because he couldn't help it.  It seemed such a foolish answer--
+the sort of thing your housemaid always tells you when she breaks
+your favourite teapot.  And yet, I suppose it was as sensible as any
+other."
+
+"More so," commented the Philosopher.  "It is the only possible
+explanation."
+
+"I wish," said the Minor Poet, "it were a question one could ask of
+people without offence; I so often long to put it.  Why do men marry
+viragoes, pimply girls with incipient moustaches?  Why do beautiful
+heiresses choose thick-lipped, little men who bully them?  Why are
+old bachelors, generally speaking, sympathetic, kind-hearted men;
+and old maids, so many of them, sweet-looking and amiable?"
+
+"I think," said the Old Maid, "that perhaps--"  But there she
+stopped.
+
+"Pray go on," said the Philosopher.  "I shall be so interested to
+have your views."
+
+"It was nothing, really," said the Old Maid; "I have forgotten."
+
+"If only one could obtain truthful answers," the Minor Poet, "what a
+flood of light they might let fall on the hidden half of life!"
+
+"It seems to me," said the Philosopher, "that, if anything, Love is
+being exposed to too much light.  The subject is becoming
+vulgarised.  Every year a thousand problem plays and novels, poems
+and essays, tear the curtain from Love's Temple, drag it naked into
+the market-place for grinning crowds to gape at.  In a million short
+stories, would-be comic, would-be serious, it is handled more or
+less coarsely, more or less unintelligently, gushed over, gibed and
+jeered at.  Not a shred of self-respect is left to it.  It is made
+the central figure of every farce, danced and sung round in every
+music-hall, yelled at by gallery, guffawed at by stalls.  It is the
+stock-in-trade of every comic journal.  Could any god, even a Mumbo
+Jumbo, so treated, hold its place among its votaries?  Every term of
+endearment has become a catchword, every caress mocks us from the
+hoardings.  Every tender speech we make recalls to us even while we
+are uttering it a hundred parodies.  Every possible situation has
+been spoilt for us in advance by the American humorist."
+
+"I have sat out a good many parodies of 'Hamlet,'" said the Minor
+Poet, "but the play still interests me.  I remember a walking tour I
+once took in Bavaria.  In some places the waysides are lined with
+crucifixes that are either comic or repulsive.  There is a firm that
+turns them out by machinery.  Yet, to the peasants who pass by, the
+Christ is still beautiful.  You can belittle only what is already
+contemptible."
+
+"Patriotism is a great virtue," replied the Philosopher:  "the
+Jingoes have made it ridiculous."
+
+"On the contrary," said the Minor Poet, "they have taught us to
+distinguish between the true and the false.  So it is with love.
+The more it is cheapened, ridiculed, employed for market purposes,
+the less the inclination to affect it--to be in love with love, as
+Heine admitted he was, for its own sake."
+
+"Is the necessity to love born in us," said the Girton Girl, "or do
+we practise to acquire it because it is the fashion--make up our
+mind to love, as boys learn to smoke, because every other fellow
+does it, and we do not like to be peculiar?"
+
+"The majority of men and women," said the Minor Poet, "are incapable
+of love.  With most it is a mere animal passion, with others a mild
+affection."
+
+"We talk about love," said the Philosopher, "as though it were a
+known quantity.  After all, to say that a man loves is like saying
+that he paints or plays the violin; it conveys no meaning until we
+have witnessed his performance.  Yet to hear the subject discussed,
+one might imagine the love of a Dante or a society Johnny, of a
+Cleopatra or a Georges Sand, to be precisely the same thing."
+
+"It was always poor Susan's trouble," said the Woman of the World;
+"she could never be persuaded that Jim really loved her.  It was
+very sad, because I am sure he was devoted to her, in his way.  But
+he could not do the sort of things she wanted him to do; she was so
+romantic.  He did try.  He used to go to all the poetical plays and
+study them.  But he hadn't the knack of it and he was naturally
+clumsy.  He would rush into the room and fling himself on his knees
+before her, never noticing the dog, so that, instead of pouring out
+his heart as he had intended, he would have to start off with, 'So
+awfully sorry!  Hope I haven't hurt the little beast?'  Which was
+enough to put anybody out."
+
+"Young girls are so foolish," said the Old Maid; "they run after
+what glitters, and do not see the gold until it is too late.  At
+first they are all eyes and no heart."
+
+"I knew a girl," I said, "or, rather, a young married woman, who was
+cured of folly by the homoeopathic method.  Her great trouble was
+that her husband had ceased to be her lover."
+
+"It seems to me so sad," said the Old Maid.  "Sometimes it is the
+woman's fault, sometimes the man's; more often both.  The little
+courtesies, the fond words, the tender nothings that mean so much to
+those that love--it would cost so little not to forget them, and
+they would make life so much more beautiful."
+
+"There is a line of common sense running through all things," I
+replied; "the secret of life consists in not diverging far from it
+on either side.  He had been the most devoted wooer, never happy out
+of her eyes; but before they had been married a year she found to
+her astonishment that he could be content even away from her skirts,
+that he actually took pains to render himself agreeable to other
+women.  He would spend whole afternoons at his club, slip out for a
+walk occasionally by himself, shut himself up now and again in his
+study.  It went so far that one day he expressed a distinct desire
+to leave her for a week and go a-fishing with some other men.  She
+never complained--at least, not to him."
+
+"That is where she was foolish," said the Girton Girl.  "Silence in
+such cases is a mistake.  The other party does not know what is the
+matter with you, and you yourself--your temper bottled up within--
+become more disagreeable every day."
+
+"She confided her trouble to a friend," I explained.
+
+"I so dislike people who do that," said the Woman of the World.
+"Emily never would speak to George; she would come and complain
+about him to me, as if I were responsible for him:  I wasn't even
+his mother.  When she had finished, George would come along, and I
+had to listen to the whole thing over again from his point of view.
+I got so tired of it at last that I determined to stop it."
+
+"How did you succeed?" asked the Old Maid, who appeared to be
+interested in the recipe.
+
+"I knew George was coming one afternoon," explained the Woman of the
+World, "so I persuaded Emily to wait in the conservatory.  She
+thought I was going to give him good advice; instead of that I
+sympathised with him and encouraged him to speak his mind freely,
+which he did.  It made her so mad that she came out and told him
+what she thought of him.  I left them at it.  They were both of them
+the better for it; and so was I."
+
+"In my case," I said, "it came about differently.  Her friend
+explained to him just what was happening.  She pointed out to him
+how his neglect and indifference were slowly alienating his wife's
+affections from him.  He argued the subject.
+
+"'But a lover and a husband are not the same,' he contended; 'the
+situation is entirely different.  You run after somebody you want to
+overtake; but when you have caught him up, you settle down quietly
+and walk beside him; you don't continue shouting and waving your
+handkerchief after you have gained him.'
+
+"Their mutual friend presented the problem differently."
+
+"'You must hold what you have won,' she said, 'or it will slip away
+from you.  By a certain course of conduct and behaviour you gained a
+sweet girl's regard; show yourself other than you were, how can you
+expect her to think the same of you?'
+
+"'You mean,' he inquired, 'that I should talk and act as her husband
+exactly as I did when her lover?'
+
+"'Precisely,' said the friend 'why not?'
+
+"'It seems to me a mistake,' he grumbled.
+
+"'Try it and see,' said the friend.
+
+"'All right,' he said, 'I will.'  And he went straight home and set
+to work."
+
+"Was it too late," asked the Old Maid, "or did they come together
+again?"
+
+"For the next mouth," I answered, "they were together twenty-four
+hours of the day.  And then it was the wife who suggested, like the
+poet in Gilbert's Patience, the delight with which she would welcome
+an occasional afternoon off."
+
+"He hung about her while she was dressing in the morning.  Just as
+she had got her hair fixed he would kiss it passionately and it
+would come down again.  All meal-time he would hold her hand under
+the table and insist on feeding her with a fork.  Before marriage he
+had behaved once or twice in this sort of way at picnics; and after
+marriage, when at breakfast-time he had sat at the other end of the
+table reading the paper or his letters, she had reminded him of it
+reproachfully.  The entire day he never left her side.  She could
+never read a book; instead, he would read to her aloud, generally
+Browning' poems or translations from Goethe.  Reading aloud was not
+an accomplishment of his, but in their courting days she had
+expressed herself pleased at his attempts, and of this he took care,
+in his turn, to remind her.  It was his idea that if the game were
+played at all, she should take a hand also.  If he was to blither,
+it was only fair that she should bleat back.  As he explained, for
+the future they would both be lovers all their life long; and no
+logical argument in reply could she think of.  If she tried to write
+a letter, he would snatch away the paper her dear hands were
+pressing and fall to kissing it--and, of course, smearing it.  When
+he wasn't giving her pins and needles by sitting on her feet he was
+balancing himself on the arm of her chair and occasionally falling
+over on top of her.  If she went shopping, he went with her and made
+himself ridiculous at the dressmaker's.  In society he took no
+notice of anybody but of her, and was hurt if she spoke to anybody
+but to him.  Not that it was often, during that month, that they did
+see any society; most invitations he refused for them both,
+reminding her how once upon a time she had regarded an evening alone
+with him as an entertainment superior to all others.  He called her
+ridiculous names, talked to her in baby language; while a dozen
+times a day it became necessary for her to take down her back hair
+and do it up afresh.  At the end of a month, as I have said, it was
+she who suggested a slight cessation of affection."
+
+"Had I been in her place," said the Girton Girl, "it would have been
+a separation I should have suggested.  I should have hated him for
+the rest of my life."
+
+"For merely trying to agree with you?" I said.
+
+"For showing me I was a fool for ever having wanted his affection,"
+replied the Girton Girl.
+
+"You can generally," said the Philosopher, "make people ridiculous
+by taking them at their word."
+
+"Especially women," murmured the Minor Poet.
+
+"I wonder," said the Philosopher, "is there really so much
+difference between men and women as we think?  What there 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, "equality of the sexes
+invariably does mean the superiority of woman."
+
+"That is very curious," added the Philosopher.  "As you say, a woman
+never can be logical."
+
+"Are all men logical?" demanded the Girton Girl.
+
+"As a class," replied the Minor Poet, "yes."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+"What woman suffers from," said the Philosopher, "is over-praise.
+It has turned her head."
+
+"You admit, then, that she has a head?" demanded the Girton Girl.
+
+"It has always been a theory of mine," returned the Philosopher,
+"that by Nature she was intended to possess one.  It is her admirers
+who have always represented her as brainless."
+
+"Why is it that the brainy girl invariably has straight hair?" asked
+the Woman of the World.
+
+"Because she doesn't curl it," explained the Girton Girl.  She spoke
+somewhat snappishly, it seemed to me.
+
+"I never thought of that," murmured the Woman of the World.
+
+"It is to be noted in connection with the argument," I ventured to
+remark, "that we hear but little concerning the wives of
+intellectual men.  When we do, as in the case of the Carlyles, it is
+to wish we did not."
+
+"When I was younger even than I am now," said the Minor Poet, "I
+thought a good deal of marriage--very young men do.  My wife, I told
+myself, must be a woman of mind.  Yet, curiously, of all the women I
+have ever loved, no single one has been remarkable for intellect--
+present company, as usual, of course excepted."
+
+"Why is it," sighed the Philosopher, "that in the most serious
+business of our life, marriage, serious considerations count for
+next to nothing?  A dimpled chin can, and often does, secure for a
+girl the best of husbands; while virtue and understanding combined
+cannot be relied upon to obtain her even one of the worst."
+
+"I think the explanation is," replied the Minor Poet, "that as
+regards, let us say, the most natural business of our life,
+marriage, our natural instincts alone are brought into play.
+Marriage--clothe the naked fact in what flowers of rhetoric we will-
+-has to do with the purely animal part of our being.  The man is
+drawn towards it by his primeval desires; the woman by her inborn
+craving towards motherhood."
+
+The thin, white hands of the Old Maid fluttered, troubled, where
+they lay upon her lap.  "Why should we seek to explain away all the
+beautiful things of life?" she said.  She spoke with a heat unusual
+to her.  "The blushing lad, so timid, so devotional, worshipping as
+at the shrine of some mystic saint; the young girl moving spell-
+bound among dreams!  They think of nothing but of one another."
+
+"Tracing a mountain stream to its sombre source need not mar its
+music for us as it murmurs through the valley," expounded the
+Philosopher.  "The hidden law of our being feeds each leaf of our
+life as sap runs through the tree.  The transient blossom, the
+ripened fruit, is but its changing outward form."
+
+"I hate going to the roots of things," said the Woman of the World.
+"Poor, dear papa was so fond of doing that.  He would explain to us
+the genesis of oysters just when we were enjoying them.  Poor mamma
+could never bring herself to touch them after that.  While in the
+middle of dessert he would stop to argue with my Uncle Paul whether
+pig's blood or bullock's was the best for grape vines.  I remember
+the year before Emily came out her favourite pony died; I have never
+known her so cut up about anything before or since.  She asked papa
+if he would mind her having the poor creature buried in the garden.
+Her idea was that she would visit now and then its grave and weep
+awhile.  Papa was awfully nice about it and stroked her hair.
+'Certainly, my dear,' he said, 'we will have him laid to rest in the
+new strawberry bed.'  Just then old Pardoe, the head gardener, came
+up to us and touched his hat.  'Well, I was just going to inquire of
+Miss Emily,' he said, 'if she wouldn't rather have the poor thing
+buried under one of the nectarine-trees.  They ain't been doing very
+well of late.'  He said it was a pretty spot, and that he would put
+up a sort of stone.  Poor Emily didn't seem to care much where the
+animal was buried by that time, so we left them arguing the
+question.  I forget how it was settled; but I know we neither of us
+ate either strawberries or nectarines for the next two years."
+
+"There is a time for everything," agreed the Philosopher.  "With the
+lover, penning poetry to the wondrous red and white upon his
+mistress' cheek, we do not discuss the subject of pigment in the
+blood, its cause and probable duration.  Nevertheless, the subject
+is interesting."
+
+"We men and women," continued the Minor Poet, "we are Nature's
+favourites, her hope, for whom she has made sacrifice, putting aside
+so many of her own convictions, telling herself she is old-
+fashioned.  She has let us go from her to the strange school where
+they laugh at all her notions.  We have learnt new, strange ideas
+that bewilder the good dame.  Yet, returning home it is curious to
+notice how little, in the few essential things of life, we differ
+from her other children, who have never wandered from her side.  Our
+vocabulary has been extended and elaborated, yet face to face with
+the realities of existence it is unavailing.  Clasping the living,
+standing beside the dead, our language still is but a cry.  Our
+wants have grown more complicated; the ten-course banquet, with all
+that it involves, has substituted itself for the handful of fruits
+and nuts gathered without labour; the stalled ox and a world of
+trouble for the dinner of herbs and leisure therewith.  Are we so
+far removed thereby above our little brother, who, having swallowed
+his simple, succulent worm, mounts a neighbouring twig and with easy
+digestion carols thanks to God?  The square brick box about which we
+move, hampered at every step by wooden lumber, decked with many rags
+and strips of coloured paper, cumbered with odds and ends of melted
+flint and moulded clay, has replaced the cheap, convenient cave.  We
+clothe ourselves in the skins of other animals instead of allowing
+our own to develop into a natural protection.  We hang about us bits
+of stone and metal, but underneath it all we are little two-legged
+animals, struggling with the rest to live and breed.  Beneath each
+hedgerow in the springtime we can read our own romances in the
+making--the first faint stirring of the blood, the roving eye, the
+sudden marvellous discovery of the indispensable She, the wooing,
+the denial, hope, coquetry, despair, contention, rivalry, hate,
+jealousy, love, bitterness, victory, and death.  Our comedies, our
+tragedies, are being played upon each blade of grass.  In fur and
+feather we run epitomised."
+
+"I know," said the Woman of the World; "I have heard it all so
+often.  It is nonsense; I can prove it to you."
+
+"That is easy," observed the Philosopher.  "The Sermon on the Mount
+itself has been proved nonsense--among others, by a bishop.
+Nonsense is the reverse side of the pattern--the tangled ends of the
+thread that Wisdom weaves."
+
+"There was a Miss Askew at the College," said the Girton Girl.  "She
+agreed with every one.  With Marx she was a Socialist, with Carlyle
+a believer in benevolent despotism, with Spinoza a materialist, with
+Newman a fanatic.  I had a long talk with her before she left, and
+tried to understand her; she was an interesting girl.  'I think,'
+she said, 'I could choose among them if only they would answer one
+another.  But they don't.  They won't listen to one another.  They
+only repeat their own case.'"
+
+"There never is an answer," explained the Philosopher.  "The kernel
+of every sincere opinion is truth.  This life contains only the
+questions--the solutions to be published in a future issue."
+
+"She was a curious sort of young woman," smiled the Girton Girl; "we
+used to laugh at her."
+
+"I can quite believe it," commented the Philosopher.
+
+"It is so like shopping," said the Old Maid.
+
+"Like shopping!" exclaimed the Girton Girl.
+
+The Old Maid blushed.  "I was merely thinking," she said.  "It
+sounds foolish.  The idea occurred to me."
+
+"You were thinking of the difficulty of choosing?" I suggested.
+
+"Yes," answered the Old Maid.  "They will show you so many different
+things, one is quite unable--at least, I know it is so in my own
+case.  I get quite angry with myself.  It seems so weak-minded, but
+I cannot help it.  This very dress I have on now--"
+
+"It is very charming," said the Woman of the World, "in itself.  I
+have been admiring it.  Though I confess I think you look even
+better in dark colours."
+
+"You are quite right," replied the Old Maid; "myself, I hate it.
+But you know how it is.  I seemed to have been all the morning in
+the shop.  I felt so tired.  If only--"
+
+The Old Maid stopped abruptly.  "I beg your pardon," she said, "I am
+afraid I've interrupted."
+
+"I am so glad you told us," said the Philosopher.  "Do you know that
+seems to me an explanation?"
+
+"Of what?" asked the Girton Girl.
+
+"Of how so many of us choose our views," returned the Philosopher;
+"we don't like to come out of the shop without something."
+
+"But you were about to explain," continued the Philosopher, turning
+to the Woman of the World, "--to prove a point."
+
+"That I had been talking nonsense," reminded her the Minor Poet; "if
+you are sure it will not weary you."
+
+"Not at all," answered the Woman of the World; "it is quite simple.
+The gifts of civilisation cannot be the meaningless rubbish you
+advocates of barbarism would make out.  I remember Uncle Paul's
+bringing us home a young monkey he had caught in Africa.  With the
+aid of a few logs we fitted up a sort of stage-tree for this little
+brother of mine, as I suppose you would call him, in the gun-room.
+It was an admirable imitation of the thing to which he and his
+ancestors must have been for thousands of years accustomed; and for
+the first two nights he slept perched among its branches.  On the
+third the little brute turned the poor cat out of its basket and
+slept on the eiderdown, after which no more tree for him, real or
+imitation.  At the end of the three months, if we offered him
+monkey-nuts, he would snatch them from our hand and throw them at
+our head.  He much preferred gingerbread and weak tea with plenty of
+sugar; and when we wanted him to leave the kitchen fire and enjoy a
+run in the garden, we had to carry him out swearing--I mean he was
+swearing, of course.  I quite agree with him.  I much prefer this
+chair on which I am sitting--this 'wooden lumber,' as you term it--
+to the most comfortable lump of old red sandstone that the best
+furnished cave could possibly afford; and I am degenerate enough to
+fancy that I look very nice in this frock--much nicer than my
+brothers or sisters to whom it originally belonged:  they didn't
+know how to make the best of it."
+
+"You would look charming anyhow," I murmured with conviction, "even-
+-"
+
+"I know what you are going to say," interrupted the Woman of the
+World; "please don't.  It's very shocking, and, besides, I don't
+agree with you.  I should have had a thick, coarse skin, with hair
+all over me and nothing by way of a change."
+
+"I am contending," said the Minor Poet, "that what we choose to call
+civilisation has done little beyond pandering to our animal desires.
+Your argument confirms my theory.  Your evidence in support of
+civilisation comes to this--that it can succeed in tickling the
+appetites of a monkey.  You need not have gone back so far.  The
+noble savage of today flings aside his clear spring water to snatch
+at the missionary's gin.  He will even discard his feathers, which
+at least were picturesque, for a chimney-pot hat innocent of nap.
+Plaid trousers and cheap champagne follow in due course.  Where is
+the advancement?  Civilisation provides us with more luxuries for
+our bodies.  That I grant you.  Has it brought us any real
+improvement that could not have been arrived at sooner by other
+roads?"
+
+"It has given us Art," said the Girton Girl.
+
+"When you say 'us,'" replied the Minor Poet, "I presume you are
+referring to the one person in half a million to whom Art is
+anything more than a name.  Dismissing the countless hordes who have
+absolutely never heard the word, and confining attention to the few
+thousands scattered about Europe and America who prate of it, how
+many of even these do you think it really influences, entering into
+their lives, refining, broadening them?  Watch the faces of the thin
+but conscientious crowd streaming wearily through our miles of
+picture galleries and art museums; gaping, with guide-book in hand,
+at ruined temple or cathedral tower; striving, with the spirit of
+the martyr, to feel enthusiasm for Old Masters at which, left to
+themselves, they would enjoy a good laugh--for chipped statues
+which, uninstructed, they would have mistaken for the damaged stock
+of a suburban tea-garden.  Not more than one in twelve enjoys what
+he is looking at, and he by no means is bound to be the best of the
+dozen.  Nero was a genuine lover of Art; and in modern times August
+the Strong, of Saxony, 'the man of sin,' as Carlyle calls him, has
+left undeniable proof behind him that he was a connoisseur of the
+first water.  One recalls names even still more recent.  Are we so
+sure that Art does elevate?"
+
+"You are talking for the sake of talking," told him the Girton Girl.
+
+"One can talk for the sake of thinking also," reminded her the Minor
+Poet.  "The argument is one that has to be faced.  But admitting
+that Art has been of service to mankind on the whole, that it
+possesses one-tenth of the soul-forming properties claimed for it in
+the advertisement--which I take to be a generous estimate--its
+effect upon the world at large still remains infinitesimal."
+
+"It works down," maintained the Girton Girl.  "From the few it
+spreads to the many."
+
+"The process appears to be somewhat slow," answered the Minor Poet.
+"The result, for whatever it may be worth, we might have obtained
+sooner by doing away with the middleman."
+
+"What middleman?" demanded the Girton Girl.
+
+"The artist," explained the Minor Poet; "the man who has turned the
+whole thing into a business, the shopman who sells emotions over the
+counter.  A Corot, a Turner is, after all, but a poor apology
+compared with a walk in spring through the Black Forest or the view
+from Hampstead Heath on a November afternoon.  Had we been less
+occupied acquiring 'the advantages of civilisation,' working upward
+through the weary centuries to the city slum, the corrugated-iron-
+roofed farm, we might have found time to learn to love the beauty of
+the world.  As it is, we have been so busy 'civilising' ourselves
+that we have forgotten to live.  We are like an old lady I once
+shared a carriage with across the Simplon Pass."
+
+"By the way," I remarked, "one is going to be saved all that bother
+in the future.  They have nearly completed the new railway line.
+One will be able to go from Domo d'Orsola to Brieg in a little over
+the two hours.  They tell me the tunnelling is wonderful."
+
+"It will be very charming," sighed the Minor Poet.  "I am looking
+forward to a future when, thanks to 'civilisation,' travel will be
+done away with altogether.  We shall be sewn up in a sack and shot
+there.  At the time I speak of we still had to be content with the
+road winding through some of the most magnificent scenery in
+Switzerland.  I rather enjoyed the drive myself, but my companion
+was quite unable to appreciate it.  Not because she did not care for
+scenery.  As she explained to me, she was passionately fond of it.
+But her luggage claimed all her attention.  There were seventeen
+pieces of it altogether, and every time the ancient vehicle lurched
+or swayed, which on an average was once every thirty seconds, she
+was in terror lest one or more of them should be jerked out.  Half
+her day was taken up in counting them and re-arranging them, and the
+only view in which she was interested was the cloud of dust behind
+us.  One bonnet-box did contrive during the course of the journey to
+make its escape, after which she sat with her arms round as many of
+the remaining sixteen articles as she could encompass, and sighed."
+
+"I knew an Italian countess," said the Woman of the World; "she had
+been at school with mamma.  She never would go half a mile out of
+her way for scenery.  'Why should I?' she would say.  'What are the
+painters for?  If there is anything good, let them bring it to me
+and I will look at it.  She said she preferred the picture to the
+real thing, it was so much more artistic.  In the landscape itself,
+she complained, there was sure to be a chimney in the distance, or a
+restaurant in the foreground, that spoilt the whole effect.  The
+artist left it out.  If necessary, he could put in a cow or a pretty
+girl to help the thing.  The actual cow, if it happened to be there
+at all, would probably be standing the wrong way round; the girl, in
+all likelihood, would be fat and plain, or be wearing the wrong hat.
+The artist knew precisely the sort of girl that ought to be there,
+and saw to it that she was there, with just the right sort of hat.
+She said she had found it so all through life--the poster was always
+an improvement on the play."
+
+"It is rapidly coming to that," answered the Minor Poet.  "Nature,
+as a well known painter once put it, is not 'creeping up' fast
+enough to keep pace with our ideals.  In advanced Germany they
+improve the waterfalls and ornament the rocks.  In Paris they paint
+the babies' faces."
+
+"You can hardly lay the blame for that upon civilisation," pleaded
+the Girton Girl.  "The ancient Briton had a pretty taste in woads."
+
+"Man's first feeble steps upon the upward path of Art," assented the
+Minor Poet, "culminating in the rouge-pot and the hair-dye."
+
+"Come!" laughed the Old Maid, "you are narrow-minded.  Civilisation
+has given us music.  Surely you will admit that has been of help to
+us?"
+
+"My dear lady," replied the Minor Poet, "you speak of the one
+accomplishment with which Civilisation has had little or nothing to
+do, the one art that Nature has bestowed upon man in common with the
+birds and insects, the one intellectual enjoyment we share with the
+entire animal creation, excepting only the canines; and even the
+howling of the dog--one cannot be sure--may be an honest, however
+unsatisfactory, attempt towards a music of his own.  I had a fox
+terrier once who invariably howled in tune.  Jubal hampered, not
+helped us.  He it was who stifled music with the curse of
+professionalism; so that now, like shivering shop-boys paying gate-
+money to watch games they cannot play, we sit mute in our stalls
+listening to the paid performer.  But for the musician, music might
+have been universal.  The human voice is still the finest instrument
+that we possess.  We have allowed it to rust, the better to hear
+clever manipulators blow through tubes and twang wires.  The musical
+world might have been a literal expression.  Civilisation has
+contracted it to designate a coterie."
+
+"By the way," said the Woman of the World, "talking of music, have
+you heard that last symphony of Grieg's?  It came in the last
+parcel.  I have been practising it."
+
+"Oh! do let us hear it," urged the Old Maid.  "I love Grieg."
+
+The Woman of the World rose and opened the piano.
+
+"Myself, I have always been of opinion--" I remarked.
+
+"Please don't chatter," said the Minor Poet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+"I never liked her," said the Old Maid; "I always knew she was
+heartless."
+
+"To my thinking," said the Minor Poet, "she has shown herself a true
+woman."
+
+"Really," said the Woman of the World, laughing, "I shall have to
+nickname you Dr.  Johnson Redivivus.  I believe, were the subject
+under discussion, you would admire the coiffure of the Furies.  It
+would occur to you that it must have been naturally curly."
+
+"It is the Irish blood flowing in his veins," I told them.  "He must
+always be 'agin the Government.'"
+
+"We ought to be grateful to him," remarked the Philosopher.  "What
+can be more uninteresting than an agreeable conversation I mean, a
+conversation--where everybody is in agreement?  Disagreement, on the
+other hand, is stimulating."
+
+"Maybe that is the reason," I suggested, "why modern society is so
+tiresome an affair.  By tabooing all difference of opinion we have
+eliminated all zest from our intercourse.  Religion, sex, politics--
+any subject on which man really thinks, is scrupulously excluded
+from all polite gatherings.  Conversation has become a chorus; or,
+as a writer wittily expressed it, the pursuit of the obvious to no
+conclusion.  When not occupied with mumbling, 'I quite agree with
+you'--'As you say'--'That is precisely my opinion'--we sit about and
+ask each other riddles:  'What did the Pro-Boer?'  'Why did Julius
+Caesar?'"
+
+"Fashion has succeeded where Force for centuries has failed," added
+the Philosopher.  "One notices the tendency even in public affairs.
+It is bad form nowadays to belong to the Opposition.  The chief aim
+of the Church is to bring itself into line with worldly opinion.
+The Nonconformist Conscience grows every day a still smaller voice."
+
+"I believe," said the Woman of the World, "that was the reason why
+Emily never got on with poor dear George.  He agreed with her in
+everything.  She used to say it made her feel such a fool."
+
+"Man is a fighting animal," explained the Philosopher.  "An officer
+who had been through the South African War was telling me only the
+other day:  he was with a column, and news came in that a small
+commando was moving in the neighbourhood.  The column set off in the
+highest of spirits, and after three days' trying work through a
+difficult country came up with, as they thought, the enemy.  As a
+matter of fact, it was not the enemy, but a troop of Imperial
+Yeomanry that had lost its way.  My friend informs me that the
+language with which his column greeted those unfortunate Yeomen--
+their fellow countrymen, men of their own blood--was most
+unsympathetic."
+
+"Myself, I should hate a man who agreed with me," said the Girton
+Girl.
+
+"My dear," replied the Woman of the World, "I don't think any
+would."
+
+"Why not?" demanded the Girton Girl.
+
+"I was thinking more of you, dear," replied the Woman of the World.
+
+"I am glad you all concur with me," murmured the Minor Poet.  "I
+have always myself regarded the Devil's Advocate as the most useful
+officer in the Court of Truth."
+
+"I remember being present one evening," I observed, "at a dinner-
+party where an eminent judge met an equally eminent K.  C.; whose
+client the judge that very afternoon had condemned to be hanged.
+'It is always a satisfaction,' remarked to him genially the judge,
+'condemning any prisoner defended by you.  One feels so absolutely
+certain he was guilty.'  The K. C. responded that he should always
+remember the judge's words with pride."
+
+"Who was it," asked the Philosopher, "who said:  'Before you can
+attack a lie, you must strip it of its truth'?"
+
+"It sounds like Emerson," I ventured.
+
+"Very possibly," assented the Philosopher; "very possibly not.
+There is much in reputation.  Most poetry gets attributed to
+Shakespeare."
+
+"I entered a certain drawing-room about a week ago," I said.  "'We
+were just speaking about you,' exclaimed my hostess.  'Is not this
+yours?'  She pointed to an article in a certain magazine lying open
+on the table.  'No,' I replied; 'one or two people have asked me
+that same question.  It seems to me rather an absurd article,' I
+added.  'I cannot say I thought very much of it,' agreed my
+hostess."
+
+"I can't help it," said the Old Maid.  "I shall always dislike a
+girl who deliberately sells herself for money."
+
+"But what else is there to sell herself for?" asked the Minor Poet.
+
+"She should not sell herself at all," retorted the Old Maid, with
+warmth.  "She should give herself, for love."
+
+"Are we not in danger of drifting into a difference of opinion
+concerning the meaning of words merely?" replied the Minor Poet.
+"We have all of us, I suppose, heard the story of the Jew clothier
+remonstrated with by the Rabbi for doing business on the Sabbath.
+'Doing bithness!' retorted the accused with indignation; 'you call
+thelling a thuit like that for eighteen shillings doing bithness!
+By, ith's tharity!'  This 'love' for which the maiden gives herself-
+-let us be a little more exact--does it not include, as a matter of
+course, material more tangible?  Would not the adored one look
+somewhat astonished on discovering that, having given herself for
+'love,' love was all that her lover proposed to give for her.  Would
+she not naturally exclaim:  'But where's the house, to say nothing
+of the fittings?  And what are we to live on'?"
+
+"It is you now who are playing with words," asserted the Old Maid.
+"The greater includes the less.  Loving her, he would naturally
+desire--"
+
+"With all his worldly goods her to endow," completed for her the
+Minor Poet.  "In other words, he pays a price for her.  So far as
+love is concerned, they are quits.  In marriage, the man gives
+himself to the woman as the woman gives herself to the man.  Man has
+claimed, I am aware, greater liberty for himself; but the claim has
+always been vehemently repudiated by woman.  She has won her case.
+Legally and morally now husband and wife are bound by the same laws.
+This being so, her contention that she gives herself falls to the
+ground.  She exchanges herself.  Over and above, she alone of the
+twain claims a price."
+
+"Say a living wage," corrected the Philosopher.  "Lazy rubbish lolls
+in petticoats, and idle stupidity struts in trousers.  But, class
+for class, woman does her share of the world's work.  Among the
+poor, of the two it is she who labours the longer.  There is a many-
+versed ballad popular in country districts.  Often I have heard it
+sung in shrill, piping voice at harvest supper or barn dance.  The
+chorus runs -
+
+
+A man's work 'tis till set of sun,
+But a woman's work is never done!
+
+
+"My housekeeper came to me a few months ago," said the Woman of the
+World, "to tell me that my cook had given notice.  'I am sorry to
+hear it,' I answered; 'has she found a better place?'  'I am not so
+sure about that,' answered Markham; 'she's going as general
+servant.'  'As general servant!' I exclaimed.  'To old Hudson, at
+the coal wharf,' answered Markham.  'His wife died last year, if you
+remember.  He's got seven children, poor man, and no one to look
+after them.'  'I suppose you mean,' I said, 'that she's marrying
+him.'  'Well, that's the way she puts it,' laughed Markham.  'What I
+tell her is, she's giving up a good home and fifty pounds a year, to
+be a general servant on nothing a week.  But they never see it.'"
+
+"I recollect her," answered the Minor Poet, "a somewhat depressing
+lady.  Let me take another case.  You possess a remarkably pretty
+housemaid--Edith, if I have it rightly."
+
+"I have noticed her," remarked the Philosopher.  "Her manners strike
+me as really quite exceptional."
+
+"I never could stand any one about me with carroty hair," remarked
+the Girton Girl.
+
+"I should hardly call it carroty," contended the Philosopher.
+"There is a golden tint of much richness underlying, when you look
+closely."
+
+"She is a very good girl," agreed the Woman of the World; "but I am
+afraid I shall have to get rid of her.  The other woman servants
+don't get on with her."
+
+"Do you know whether she is engaged or not?" demanded the Minor
+Poet.
+
+"At the present moment," answered the Woman of the World, "she is
+walking out, I believe, with the eldest son of the 'Blue Lion.'  But
+she is never adverse to a change.  If you are really in earnest
+about the matter--"
+
+"I was not thinking of myself," said the Minor Poet.  "But suppose
+some young gentleman of personal attractions equal to those of the
+'Blue Lion,' or even not quite equal, possessed of two or three
+thousand a year, were to enter the lists, do you think the 'Blue
+Lion' would stand much chance?"
+
+"Among the Upper Classes," continued the Minor Poet, "opportunity
+for observing female instinct hardly exists.  The girl's choice is
+confined to lovers able to pay the price demanded, if not by the
+beloved herself, by those acting on her behalf.  But would a
+daughter of the Working Classes ever hesitate, other things being
+equal, between Mayfair and Seven Dials?"
+
+"Let me ask you one," chimed in the Girton Girl.  "Would a
+bricklayer hesitate any longer between a duchess and a scullery-
+maid?"
+
+"But duchesses don't fall in love with bricklayers," returned the
+Minor Poet.  "Now, why not?  The stockbroker flirts with the
+barmaid--cases have been known; often he marries her.  Does the lady
+out shopping ever fall in love with the waiter at the bun-shop?
+Hardly ever.  Lordlings marry ballet girls, but ladies rarely put
+their heart and fortune at the feet of the Lion Comique.  Manly
+beauty and virtue are not confined to the House of Lords and its
+dependencies.  How do you account for the fact that while it is
+common enough for the man to look beneath him, the woman will almost
+invariably prefer her social superior, and certainly never tolerate
+her inferior?  Why should King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid appear
+to us a beautiful legend, while Queen Cophetua and the Tramp would
+be ridiculous?"
+
+"The simple explanation is," expounded the Girton Girl, "woman is so
+immeasurably man's superior that only by weighting him more or less
+heavily with worldly advantages can any semblance of balance be
+obtained."
+
+"Then," answered the Minor Poet, "you surely agree with me that
+woman is justified in demanding this 'make-weight.'  The woman gives
+her love, if you will.  It is the art treasure, the gilded vase
+thrown in with the pound of tea; but the tea has to be paid for."
+
+"It all sounds very clever," commented the Old Maid; "yet I fail to
+see what good comes of ridiculing a thing one's heart tells one is
+sacred."
+
+"Do not be so sure I am wishful to ridicule," answered the Minor
+Poet.  "Love is a wondrous statue God carved with His own hands and
+placed in the Garden of Life, long ago.  And man, knowing not sin,
+worshipped her, seeing her beautiful.  Till the time came when man
+learnt evil; then saw that the statue was naked, and was ashamed of
+it.  Since when he has been busy, draping it, now in the fashion of
+this age, now in the fashion of that.  We have shod her in dainty
+bottines, regretting the size of her feet.  We employ the best
+artistes to design for her cunning robes that shall disguise her
+shape.  Each season we fix fresh millinery upon her changeless head.
+We hang around her robes of woven words.  Only the promise of her
+ample breasts we cannot altogether hide, shocking us not a little;
+only that remains to tell us that beneath the tawdry tissues still
+stands the changeless statue God carved with His own hands."
+
+"I like you better when you talk like that," said the Old Maid; "but
+I never feel quite sure of you.  All I mean, of course, is that
+money should not be her first consideration.  Marriage for money--it
+is not marriage; one cannot speak of it.  Of course, one must be
+reasonable."
+
+"You mean," persisted the Minor Poet, "you would have her think also
+of her dinner, of her clothes, her necessities, luxuries."
+
+"It is not only for herself," answered the Old Maid.
+
+"For whom?" demanded the Minor Poet.
+
+The white hands of the Old Maid fluttered on her lap, revealing her
+trouble; for of the old school is this sweet friend of mine.
+
+"There are the children to be considered," I explained.  "A woman
+feels it even without knowing.  It is her instinct."
+
+The Old Maid smiled on me her thanks.
+
+"It is where I was leading," said the Minor Poet.  "Woman has been
+appointed by Nature the trustee of the children.  It is her duty to
+think of them, to plan for them.  If in marriage she does not take
+the future into consideration, she is untrue to her trust."
+
+"Before you go further," interrupted the Philosopher, "there is an
+important point to be considered.  Are children better or worse for
+a pampered upbringing?  Is not poverty often the best school?"
+
+"It is what I always tell George," remarked the Woman of the World,
+"when he grumbles at the tradesmen's books.  If Papa could only have
+seen his way to being a poor man, I feel I should have been a better
+wife."
+
+"Please don't suggest the possibility," I begged the Woman of the
+World; "the thought is too bewildering."
+
+"You were never imaginative," replied the Woman of the World.
+
+"Not to that extent," I admitted.
+
+"'The best mothers make the worst children,'" quoted the Girton
+Girl.  "I intend to bear that in mind."
+
+"Your mother was a very beautiful character--one of the most
+beautiful I ever knew," remarked the Old Maid.
+
+"There is some truth in the saying," agreed the Minor Poet, "but
+only because it is the exception; and Nature invariably puts forth
+all her powers to counteract the result of deviation from her laws.
+Were it the rule, then the bad mother would be the good mother and
+the good mother the bad mother.  And--"
+
+"Please don't go on," said the Woman of the World.  "I was up late
+last night."
+
+"I was merely going to show," explained the Minor Poet, "that all
+roads lead to the law that the good mother is the best mother.  Her
+duty is to her children, to guard their infancy, to take thought for
+their equipment."
+
+"Do you seriously ask us to believe," demanded the Old Maid, "that
+the type of woman who does marry for money considers for a single
+moment any human being but herself?"
+
+"Not consciously, perhaps," admitted the Minor Poet.  "Our
+instincts, that they may guide us easily, are purposely made
+selfish.  The flower secretes honey for its own purposes, not with
+any sense of charity towards the bee.  Man works, as he thinks, for
+beer and baccy; in reality, for the benefit of unborn generations.
+The woman, in acting selfishly, is assisting Nature's plans.  In
+olden days she chose her mate for his strength.  She, possibly
+enough, thought only of herself; he could best provide for her then
+simple wants, best guard her from the disagreeable accidents of
+nomadic life.  But Nature, unseen, directing her, was thinking of
+the savage brood needing still more a bold protector.  Wealth now is
+the substitute for strength.  The rich man is the strong man.  The
+woman's heart unconsciously goes out to him."
+
+"Do men never marry for money?" inquired the Girton Girl.  "I ask
+merely for information.  Maybe I have been misinformed, but I have
+heard of countries where the dot is considered of almost more
+importance than the bride."
+
+"The German officer," I ventured to strike in, "is literally on
+sale.  Young lieutenants are most expensive, and even an elderly
+colonel costs a girl a hundred thousand marks."
+
+"You mean," corrected the Minor Poet, "costs her father.  The
+Continental husband demands a dowry with his wife, and sees that he
+gets it.  He in his turn has to save and scrape for years to provide
+each of his daughters with the necessary dot.  It comes to the same
+thing precisely.  Your argument could only apply were woman equally
+with man a wealth producer.  As it is, a woman's wealth is
+invariably the result of a marriage, either her own or that of some
+shrewd ancestress.  And as regards the heiress, the principle of
+sale and purchase, if I may be forgiven the employment of common
+terms, is still more religiously enforced.  It is not often that the
+heiress is given away; stolen she may be occasionally, much to the
+indignation of Lord Chancellors and other guardians of such
+property; the thief is very properly punished--imprisoned, if need
+be.  If handed over legitimately, her price is strictly exacted, not
+always in money--that she possesses herself, maybe in sufficiency;
+it enables her to bargain for other advantages no less serviceable
+to her children--for title, place, position.  In the same way the
+Neolithic woman, herself of exceptional strength and ferocity, may
+have been enabled to bestow a thought upon her savage lover's
+beauty, his prehistoric charm of manner; thus in other directions no
+less necessary assisting the development of the race."
+
+"I cannot argue with you," said the Old Maid.  "I know one case.
+They were both poor; it would have made no difference to her, but it
+did to him.  Maybe I am wrong, but it seems to me that, as you say,
+our instincts are given us to guide us.  I do not know.  The future
+is not in our hands; it does not belong to us.  Perhaps it were
+wiser to listen to the voices that are sent to us."
+
+"I remember a case, also," said the Woman of the World.  She had
+risen to prepare the tea, and was standing with her back to us.
+"Like the woman you speak of, she was poor, but one of the sweetest
+creatures I have ever known.  I cannot help thinking it would have
+been good for the world had she been a mother."
+
+"My dear lady," cried the Minor Poet, "you help me!"
+
+"I always do, according to you," laughed the Woman of the World.  "I
+appear to resemble the bull that tossed the small boy high into the
+apple-tree he had been trying all the afternoon to climb."
+
+"It is very kind of you," answered the Minor Poet.  "My argument is
+that woman is justified in regarding marriage as the end of her
+existence, the particular man as but a means.  The woman you speak
+of acted selfishly, rejecting the crown of womanhood because not
+tendered to her by hands she had chosen."
+
+"You would have us marry without love?" asked the Girton Girl.
+
+"With love, if possible," answered the Minor Poet; "without, rather
+than not at all.  It is the fulfilment of the woman's law."
+
+"You would make of us goods and chattels," cried the Girton Girl.
+
+"I would make of you what you are," returned the Minor Poet, "the
+priestesses of Nature's temple, leading man to the worship of her
+mysteries.  An American humorist has described marriage as the
+craving of some young man to pay for some young woman's board and
+lodging.  There is no escaping from this definition; let us accept
+it.  It is beautiful--so far as the young man is concerned.  He
+sacrifices himself, deprives himself, that he may give.  That is
+love.  But from the woman's point of view?  If she accept thinking
+only of herself, then it is a sordid bargain on her part.  To
+understand her, to be just to her, we must look deeper.  Not sexual,
+but maternal love is her kingdom.  She gives herself not to her
+lover, but through her lover to the great Goddess of the Myriad
+Breasts that shadows ever with her guardian wings Life from the
+outstretched hand of Death."
+
+"She may be a nice enough girl from Nature's point of view," said
+the Old Maid; "personally, I shall never like her."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+"What is the time?" asked the Girton Girl.
+
+I looked at my watch.  "Twenty past four," I answered.
+
+"Exactly?" demanded the Girton Girl.
+
+"Precisely," I replied.
+
+"Strange," murmured the Girton Girl.  "There is no accounting for
+it, yet it always is so."
+
+"What is there no accounting for?" I inquired.  "What is strange?"
+
+"It is a German superstition," explained the Girton Girl, "I learnt
+it at school.  Whenever complete silence falls upon any company, it
+is always twenty minutes past the hour."
+
+"Why do we talk so much?" demanded the Minor Poet.
+
+"As a matter of fact," observed the Woman of the World, "I don't
+think we do--not we, personally, not much.  Most of our time we
+appear to be listening to you."
+
+"Then why do I talk so much, if you prefer to put it that way?"
+continued the Minor Poet.  "If I talked less, one of you others
+would have to talk more."
+
+"There would be that advantage about it," agreed the Philosopher.
+
+"In all probability, you," returned to him the Minor Poet.  "Whether
+as a happy party we should gain or lose by the exchange, it is not
+for me to say, though I have my own opinion.  The essential remains-
+-that the stream of chatter must be kept perpetually flowing.  Why?"
+
+"There is a man I know," I said; "you may have met him, a man named
+Longrush.  He is not exactly a bore.  A bore expects you to listen
+to him.  This man is apparently unaware whether you are listening to
+him or not.  He is not a fool.  A fool is occasionally amusing--
+Longrush never.  No subject comes amiss to him.  Whatever the topic,
+he has something uninteresting to say about it.  He talks as a
+piano-organ grinds out music steadily, strenuously, tirelessly.  The
+moment you stand or sit him down he begins, to continue ceaselessly
+till wheeled away in cab or omnibus to his next halting-place.  As
+in the case of his prototype, his rollers are changed about once a
+month to suit the popular taste.  In January he repeats to you Dan
+Leno's jokes, and gives you other people's opinions concerning the
+Old Masters at the Guild-hall.  In June he recounts at length what
+is generally thought concerning the Academy, and agrees with most
+people on most points connected with the Opera.  If forgetful for a
+moment--as an Englishman may be excused for being--whether it be
+summer or winter, one may assure oneself by waiting to see whether
+Longrush is enthusing over cricket or football.  He is always up-to-
+date.  The last new Shakespeare, the latest scandal, the man of the
+hour, the next nine days' wonder--by the evening Longrush has his
+roller ready.  In my early days of journalism I had to write each
+evening a column for a provincial daily, headed 'What People are
+Saying.'  The editor was precise in his instructions.  'I don't want
+your opinions; I don't want you to be funny; never mind whether the
+thing appears to you to be interesting or not.  I want it to be
+real, the things people ARE saying.'  I tried to be conscientious.
+Each paragraph began with 'That.'  I wrote the column because I
+wanted the thirty shillings.  Why anybody ever read it, I fail to
+understand to this day; but I believe it was one of the popular
+features of the paper.  Longrush invariably brings back to my mind
+the dreary hours I spent penning that fatuous record."
+
+"I think I know the man you mean," said the Philosopher.  "I had
+forgotten his name."
+
+"I thought it possible you might have met him," I replied.  "Well,
+my cousin Edith was arranging a dinner-party the other day, and, as
+usual, she did me the honour to ask my advice.  Generally speaking,
+I do not give advice nowadays.  As a very young man I was generous
+with it.  I have since come to the conclusion that responsibility
+for my own muddles and mistakes is sufficient.  However, I make an
+exception in Edith's case, knowing that never by any chance will she
+follow it."
+
+"Speaking of editors," said the Philosopher, "Bates told me at the
+club the other night that he had given up writing the 'Answers to
+Correspondents' personally, since discovery of the fact that he had
+been discussing at some length the attractive topic, 'Duties of a
+Father,' with his own wife, who is somewhat of a humorist."
+
+"There was the wife of a clergyman my mother used to tell of," said
+the Woman of the World, "who kept copies of her husband's sermons.
+She would read him extracts from them in bed, in place of curtain
+lectures.  She explained it saved her trouble.  Everything she felt
+she wanted to say to him he had said himself so much more forcibly."
+
+"The argument always appears to me weak," said the Philosopher.  "If
+only the perfect may preach, our pulpits would remain empty.  Am I
+to ignore the peace that slips into my soul when perusing the
+Psalms, to deny myself all benefit from the wisdom of the Proverbs,
+because neither David nor Solomon was a worthy casket of the jewels
+that God had placed in them?  Is a temperance lecturer never to
+quote the self-reproaches of poor Cassio because Master Will
+Shakespeare, there is evidence to prove, was a gentleman, alas! much
+too fond of the bottle?  The man that beats the drum may be himself
+a coward.  It is the drum that is the important thing to us, not the
+drummer."
+
+"Of all my friends," said the Woman of the World, "the one who has
+the most trouble with her servants is poor Jane Meredith."
+
+"I am exceedingly sorry to hear it," observed the Philosopher, after
+a slight pause.  "But forgive me, I really do not see--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," answered the Woman of the World.  "I thought
+everybody knew 'Jane Meredith.'  She writes 'The Perfect Home'
+column for The Woman's World."
+
+"It will always remain a riddle, one supposes," said the Minor Poet.
+"Which is the real ego--I, the author of 'The Simple Life,'
+fourteenth edition, three and sixpence net--"
+
+"Don't," pleaded the Old Maid, with a smile; "please don't."
+
+"Don't what?" demanded the Minor Poet.
+
+"Don't ridicule it--make fun of it, even though it may happen to be
+your own.  There are parts of it I know by heart.  I say them over
+to myself when-- Don't spoil it for me."  The Old Maid laughed, but
+nervously.
+
+"My dear lady," reassured her the Minor Poet, "do not be afraid.  No
+one regards that poem with more reverence than do I.  You can have
+but small conception what a help it is to me also.  I, too, so often
+read it to myself; and when-- We understand.  As one who turns his
+back on scenes of riot to drink the moonlight in quiet ways, I go to
+it for sweetness and for peace.  So much do I admire the poem, I
+naturally feel desire and curiosity to meet its author, to know him.
+I should delight, drawing him aside from the crowded room, to grasp
+him by the hand, to say to him:  'My dear--my very dear Mr. Minor
+Poet, I am so glad to meet you!  I would I could tell you how much
+your beautiful work has helped me.  This, my dear sir--this is
+indeed privilege!'  But I can picture so vividly the bored look with
+which he would receive my gush.  I can imagine the contempt with
+which he, the pure liver, would regard me did he know me--me, the
+liver of the fool's hot days."
+
+"A short French story I once read somewhere," I said, "rather
+impressed me.  A poet or dramatist--I am not sure which--had married
+the daughter of a provincial notary.  There was nothing particularly
+attractive about her except her dot.  He had run through his own
+small fortune and was in some need.  She worshipped him and was, as
+he used to boast to his friends, the ideal wife for a poet.  She
+cooked admirably--a useful accomplishment during the first half-
+dozen years of their married life; and afterwards, when fortune came
+to him, managed his affairs to perfection, by her care and economy
+keeping all worldly troubles away from his study door.  An ideal
+Hausfrau, undoubtedly, but of course no companion for our poet.  So
+they went their ways; till, choosing as in all things the right
+moment, when she could best be spared, the good lady died and was
+buried.
+
+"And here begins the interest of the story, somewhat late.  One
+article of furniture, curiously out of place among the rich
+appointments of their fine hotel, the woman had insisted on
+retaining, a heavy, clumsily carved oak desk her father had once
+used in his office, and which he had given to her for her own as a
+birthday present back in the days of her teens.
+
+"You must read the story for yourselves if you would enjoy the
+subtle sadness that surrounds it, the delicate aroma of regret
+through which it moves.  The husband finding after some little
+difficulty the right key, fits it into the lock of the bureau.  As a
+piece of furniture, plain, solid, squat, it has always jarred upon
+his artistic sense.  She too, his good, affectionate Sara, had been
+plain, solid, a trifle squat.  Perhaps that was why the poor woman
+had clung so obstinately to the one thing in the otherwise perfect
+house that was quite out of place there.  Ah, well! she is gone now,
+the good creature.  And the bureau--no, the bureau shall remain.
+Nobody will need to come into this room, no one ever did come there
+but the woman herself.  Perhaps she had not been altogether so happy
+as she might have been.  A husband less intellectual--one from whom
+she would not have lived so far apart--one who could have entered
+into her simple, commonplace life! it might have been better for
+both of them.  He draws down the lid, pulls out the largest drawer.
+It is full of manuscripts, folded and tied neatly with ribbons once
+gay, now faded.  He thinks at first they are his own writings--
+things begun and discarded, reserved by her with fondness.  She
+thought so much of him, the good soul! Really, she could not have
+been so dull as he had deemed her.  The power to appreciate rightly-
+-this, at least, she must have possessed.  He unties the ribbon.
+No, the writing is her own, corrected, altered, underlined.  He
+opens a second, a third.  Then with a smile he sits down to read.
+What can they be like, these poems, these stories?  He laughs,
+smoothing the crumpled paper, foreseeing the trite commonness, the
+shallow sentiment.  The poor child!  So she likewise would have been
+a litterateure.  Even she had her ambition, her dream.
+
+"The sunshine climbs the wall behind him, creeps stealthily across
+the ceiling of the room, slips out softly by the window, leaving him
+alone.  All these years he had been living with a fellow poet.  They
+should have been comrades, and they had never spoken.  Why had she
+hidden herself?  Why had she left him, never revealing herself?
+Years ago, when they were first married--he remembers now--she had
+slipped little blue-bound copy-books into his pocket, laughing,
+blushing, asking him to read them.  How could he have guessed?  Of
+course, he had forgotten them.  Later, they had disappeared again;
+it had never occurred to him to think.  Often in the earlier days
+she had tried to talk to him about his work.  Had he but looked into
+her eyes, he might have understood.  But she had always been so
+homely-seeming, so good.  Who would have suspected?  Then suddenly
+the blood rushes into his face.  What must have been her opinion of
+his work?  All these years he had imagined her the amazed devotee,
+uncomprehending but admiring.  He had read to her at times,
+comparing himself the while with Moliere reading to his cook.  What
+right had she to play this trick upon him?  The folly of it!  The
+pity of it!  He would have been so glad of her."
+
+"What becomes, I wonder," mused the Philosopher, "of the thoughts
+that are never spoken?  We know that in Nature nothing is wasted;
+the very cabbage is immortal, living again in altered form.  A
+thought published or spoken we can trace, but such must only be a
+small percentage.  It often occurs to me walking down the street.
+Each man and woman that I pass by, each silently spinning his silken
+thought, short or long, fine or coarse.  What becomes of it?"
+
+"I heard you say once," remarked the Old Maid to the Minor Poet,
+"that 'thoughts are in the air,' that the poet but gathers them as a
+child plucks wayside blossoms to shape them into nosegays."
+
+"It was in confidence," replied the Minor Poet.  "Please do not let
+it get about, or my publisher will use it as an argument for cutting
+down my royalties."
+
+"I have always remembered it," answered the Old Maid.  "It seemed so
+true.  A thought suddenly comes to you.  I think of them sometimes,
+as of little motherless babes creeping into our brains for shelter."
+
+"It is a pretty idea," mused the Minor Poet.  "I shall see them in
+the twilight:  pathetic little round-eyed things of goblin shape,
+dimly luminous against the darkening air.  Whence come you, little
+tender Thought, tapping at my brain?  From the lonely forest, where
+the peasant mother croons above the cradle while she knits?  Thought
+of Love and Longing:  lies your gallant father with his boyish eyes
+unblinking underneath some tropic sun?  Thought of Life and Thought
+of Death:  are you of patrician birth, cradled by some high-born
+maiden, pacing slowly some sweet garden?  Or did you spring to life
+amid the din of loom or factory?  Poor little nameless foundlings!
+I shall feel myself in future quite a philanthropist, taking them
+in, adopting them."
+
+"You have not yet decided," reminded him the Woman of the World,
+"which you really are:  the gentleman we get for three and sixpence
+net, or the one we are familiar with, the one we get for nothing."
+
+"Please don't think I am suggesting any comparison," continued the
+Woman of the World, "but I have been interested in the question
+since George joined a Bohemian club and has taken to bringing down
+minor celebrities from Saturday to Monday.  I hope I am not narrow-
+minded, but there is one gentleman I have been compelled to put my
+foot down on."
+
+"I really do not think he will complain," I interrupted.  The Woman
+of the World possesses, I should explain, the daintiest of feet.
+
+"It is heavier than you think," replied the Woman of the World.
+"George persists I ought to put up with him because he is a true
+poet.  I cannot admit the argument.  The poet I honestly admire.  I
+like to have him about the place.  He lies on my drawing-room table
+in white vellum, and helps to give tone to the room.  For the poet I
+am quite prepared to pay the four-and-six demanded; the man I don't
+want.  To be candid, he is not worth his own discount."
+
+"It is hardly fair," urged the Minor Poet, "to confine the
+discussion to poets.  A friend of mine some years ago married one of
+the most charming women in New York, and that is saying a good deal.
+Everybody congratulated him, and at the outset he was pleased enough
+with himself.  I met him two years later in Geneva, and we travelled
+together as far as Rome.  He and his wife scarcely spoke to one
+another the whole journey, and before I left him he was good enough
+to give me advice which to another man might be useful.  'Never
+marry a charming woman,' he counselled me.  'Anything more
+unutterably dull than "the charming woman" outside business hours
+you cannot conceive.'"
+
+"I think we must agree to regard the preacher," concluded the
+Philosopher, "merely as a brother artist.  The singer may be a
+heavy, fleshy man with a taste for beer, but his voice stirs our
+souls.  The preacher holds aloft his banner of purity.  He waves it
+over his own head as much as over the heads of those around him.  He
+does not cry with the Master, 'Come to Me,' but 'Come with me, and
+be saved.'  The prayer 'Forgive them' was the prayer not of the
+Priest, but of the God.  The prayer dictated to the Disciples was
+'Forgive us,' 'Deliver us.'  Not that he should be braver, not that
+he should be stronger than they that press behind him, is needed of
+the leader, but that he should know the way.  He, too, may faint,
+he, too, may fall; only he alone must never turn his back."
+
+"It is quite comprehensible, looked at from one point of view,"
+remarked the Minor Poet, "that he who gives most to others should
+himself be weak.  The professional athlete pays, I believe, the
+price of central weakness.  It is a theory of mine that the
+charming, delightful people one meets with in society are people who
+have dishonestly kept to themselves gifts entrusted to them by
+Nature for the benefit of the whole community.  Your conscientious,
+hard-working humorist is in private life a dull dog.  The dishonest
+trustee of laughter, on the other hand, robbing the world of wit
+bestowed upon him for public purposes, becomes a brilliant
+conversationalist."
+
+"But," added the Minor Poet, turning to me, "you were speaking of a
+man named Longrush, a great talker."
+
+"A long talker," I corrected.  "My cousin mentioned him third in her
+list of invitations.  'Longrush,' she said with conviction, 'we must
+have Longrush.'  'Isn't he rather tiresome?' I suggested.  'He is
+tiresome,' she agreed, 'but then he's so useful.  He never lets the
+conversation drop.'"
+
+"Why is it?" asked the Minor Poet.  "Why, when we meet together,
+must we chatter like a mob of sparrows?  Why must every assembly to
+be successful sound like the parrot-house of a zoological garden?"
+
+"I remember a parrot story," I said, "but I forget who told it to
+me."
+
+"Maybe one of us will remember as you go on," suggested the
+Philosopher.
+
+"A man," I said--"an old farmer, if I remember rightly--had read a
+lot of parrot stories, or had heard them at the club.  As a result
+he thought he would like himself to be the owner of a parrot, so
+journeyed to a dealer and, according to his own account, paid rather
+a long price for a choice specimen.  A week later he re-entered the
+shop, the parrot borne behind him by a boy.  'This bird,' said the
+farmer, 'this bird you sold me last week ain't worth a sovereign!'
+'What's the matter with it?' demanded the dealer.  'How do I know
+what's the matter with the bird?' answered the farmer.  'What I tell
+you is that it ain't worth a sovereign--'tain' t worth a half a
+sovereign!'  'Why not?' persisted the dealer; 'it talks all right,
+don't it?'  'Talks!' retorted the indignant farmer, 'the damn thing
+talks all day, but it never says anything funny!'"
+
+"A friend of mine," said the Philosopher, "once had a parrot--"
+
+"Won't you come into the garden?" said the Woman of the World,
+rising and leading the way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+"Myself," said the Minor Poet, "I read the book with the most
+intense enjoyment.  I found it inspiring--so inspiring, I fear I did
+not give it sufficient attention.  I must read it again."
+
+"I understand you," said the Philosopher.  "A book that really
+interests us makes us forget that we are reading.  Just as the most
+delightful conversation is when nobody in particular appears to be
+talking."
+
+"Do you remember meeting that Russian man George brought down here
+about three months ago?" asked the Woman of the World, turning to
+the Minor Poet.  "I forget his name.  As a matter of fact, I never
+knew it.  It was quite unpronounceable and, except that it ended, of
+course, with a double f, equally impossible to spell.  I told him
+frankly at the beginning I should call him by his Christian name,
+which fortunately was Nicholas.  He was very nice about it."
+
+"I remember him distinctly," said the Minor Poet.  "A charming man."
+
+"He was equally charmed with you," replied the Woman of the World.
+
+"I can credit it easily," murmured the Minor Poet.  "One of the most
+intelligent men I ever met."
+
+"You talked together for two hours in a corner," said the Woman of
+the World.  "I asked him when you had gone what he thought of you.
+'Ah! what a talker!' he exclaimed, making a gesture of admiration
+with his hands.  'I thought maybe you would notice it,' I answered
+him.  'Tell me, what did he talk about?'  I was curious to know; you
+had been so absorbed in yourselves and so oblivious to the rest of
+us.  'Upon my word,' he replied, 'I really cannot tell you.  Do you
+know, I am afraid, now I come to think of it, that I must have
+monopolised the conversation.'  I was glad to be able to ease his
+mind on that point.  'I really don't think you did,' I assured him.
+I should have felt equally confident had I not been present."
+
+"You were quite correct," returned the Minor Poet.  "I have a
+distinct recollection of having made one or two observations myself.
+Indeed, if I may say so, I talked rather well."
+
+"You may also recollect," continued the Woman of the World, "that
+the next time we met I asked you what he had said, and that your
+mind was equally a blank on the subject.  You admitted you had found
+him interesting.  I was puzzled at the time, but now I begin to
+understand.  Both of you, no doubt, found the conversation so
+brilliant, each of you felt it must have been your own."
+
+"A good book," I added--"a good talk is like a good dinner:  one
+assimilates it.  The best dinner is the dinner you do not know you
+have eaten."
+
+"A thing will often suggest interesting thought," observed the Old
+Maid, "without being interesting.  Often I find the tears coming
+into my eyes as I witness some stupid melodrama--something said,
+something hinted at, will stir a memory, start a train of thought."
+
+"I once," I said, "sat next to a country-man in the pit of a music-
+hall some years ago.  He enjoyed himself thoroughly up to half-past
+ten.  Songs about mothers-in-law, drunken wives, and wooden legs he
+roared at heartily.  At ten-thirty entered a well-known artiste who
+was then giving a series of what he called 'Condensed Tragedies in
+Verse.'  At the first two my country friend chuckled hugely.  The
+third ran:  'Little boy; pair of skates:  broken ice; heaven's
+gates.'  My friend turned white, rose hurriedly, and pushed his way
+impatiently out of the house.  I left myself some ten minutes later,
+and by chance ran against him again in the bar of the 'Criterion,'
+where he was drinking whisky rather copiously.  'I couldn't stand
+that fool,' he explained to me in a husky voice.  'Truth is, my
+youngest kid got drowned last winter skating.  Don't see any sense
+making fun of real trouble.'"
+
+"I can cap your story with another," said the Philosopher.  "Jim
+sent me a couple of seats for one of his first nights a month or two
+ago.  They did not reach me till four o'clock in the afternoon.  I
+went down to the club to see if I could pick up anybody.  The only
+man there I knew at all was a rather quiet young fellow, a new
+member.  He had just taken Bates's chambers in Staple Inn--you have
+met him, I think.  He didn't know many people then and was grateful
+for my invitation.  The play was one of those Palais Royal farces--
+it cannot matter which, they are all exactly alike.  The fun
+consists of somebody's trying to sin without being found out.  It
+always goes well.  The British public invariably welcomes the theme,
+provided it be dealt with in a merry fashion.  It is only the
+serious discussion of evil that shocks us.  There was the usual
+banging of doors and the usual screaming.  Everybody was laughing
+around us.  My young friend sat with rather a curious fixed smile
+upon his face.  'Fairly well constructed,' I said to him, as the
+second curtain fell amid yells of delight.  'Yes,' he answered, 'I
+suppose it's very funny.'  I looked at him; he was little more than
+a boy.  'You are rather young,' I said, 'to be a moralist.'  He gave
+a short laugh.  'Oh! I shall grow out of it in time,' he said.  He
+told me his story later, when I came to know him better.  He had
+played the farce himself over in Melbourne--he was an Australian.
+Only the third act had ended differently.  His girl wife, of whom he
+was passionately fond, had taken it quite seriously and had
+committed suicide.  A foolish thing to do."
+
+"Man is a beast!" said the Girton Girl, who was prone to strong
+expression.
+
+"I thought so myself when I was younger," said the Woman of the
+World.
+
+"And don't you now, when you hear a thing like that?" suggested the
+Girton Girl.
+
+"Certainly, my dear," replied the Woman of the World; "there is a
+deal of the animal in man; but--well, I was myself expressing that
+same particular view of him, the brute, to a very old lady with whom
+I was spending a winter in Brussels, many years ago now, when I was
+quite a girl.  She had been a friend of my father's, and was one of
+the sweetest and kindest--I was almost going to say the most perfect
+woman I have ever met; though as a celebrated beauty, stories,
+dating from the early Victorian era, were told about her.  But
+myself I never believed them.  Her calm, gentle, passionless face,
+crowned with its soft, silver hair--I remember my first sight of the
+Matterhorn on a summer's evening; somehow it at once reminded me of
+her."
+
+"My dear," laughed the Old Maid, "your anecdotal method is becoming
+as jerky as a cinematograph."
+
+"I have noticed it myself," replied the Woman of the World; "I try
+to get in too much."
+
+"The art of the raconteur," observed the Philosopher, "consists in
+avoiding the unessential.  I have a friend who never yet to my
+knowledge reached the end of a story.  It is intensely unimportant
+whether the name of the man who said the thing or did the deed be
+Brown or Jones or Robinson.  But she will worry herself into a fever
+trying to recollect.  'Dear, dear me!' she will leave off to
+exclaim; 'I know his name so well.  How stupid of me!'  She will
+tell you why she ought to recollect his name, how she always has
+recollected his name till this precise moment.  She will appeal to
+half the people in the room to help her.  It is hopeless to try and
+induce her to proceed, the idea has taken possession of her mind.
+After a world of unnecessary trouble she recollects that it was
+Tomkins, and is delighted; only to be plunged again into despair on
+discovery that she has forgotten his address.  This makes her so
+ashamed of herself she declines to continue, and full of self-
+reproach she retires to her own room.  Later she re-enters, beaming,
+with the street and number pat.  But by that time she has forgotten
+the anecdote."
+
+"Well, tell us about your old lady, and what it was you said to
+her," spoke impatiently the Girton Girl, who is always eager when
+the subject under discussion happens to be the imbecility or
+criminal tendency of the opposite sex.
+
+"I was at the age," continued the Woman of the World, "when a young
+girl tiring of fairy stories puts down the book and looks round her
+at the world, and naturally feels indignant at what she notices.  I
+was very severe upon both the shortcomings and the overgoings of
+man--our natural enemy.  My old friend used to laugh, and that made
+me think her callous and foolish.  One day our bonne--like all
+servants, a lover of gossip--came to us delighted with a story which
+proved to me how just had been my estimate of the male animal.  The
+grocer at the corner of our rue, married only four years to a
+charming and devoted little wife, had run away and left her.
+
+"'He never gave her even a hint, the pretty angel!' so Jeanne
+informed us.  'Had had his box containing his clothes and everything
+he wanted ready packed for a week, waiting for him at the railway
+station--just told her he was going to play a game of dominoes, and
+that she was not to sit up for him; kissed her and the child good-
+night, and--well, that was the last she ever saw of him.  Did Madame
+ever hear the like of it?' concluded Jeanne, throwing up her hands
+to heaven.  'I am sorry to say, Jeanne, that I have,' replied my
+sweet Madame with a sigh, and led the conversation by slow degrees
+back to the subject of dinner.  I turned to her when Jeanne had left
+the room.  I can remember still the burning indignation of my face.
+I had often spoken to the man myself, and had thought what a
+delightful husband he was--so kind, so attentive, so proud,
+seemingly, of his dainty femme.  'Doesn't that prove what I say,' I
+cried, 'that men are beasts?'  'I am afraid it helps in that
+direction,' replied my old friend.  'And yet you defend them,' I
+answered.  'At my age, my dear,' she replied, 'one neither defends
+nor blames; one tries to understand.'  She put her thin white hand
+upon my head.  'Shall we hear a little more of the story?' she said.
+'It is not a pleasant one, but it may be useful to us.'  'I don't
+want to hear any more of it,' I answered; 'I have heard enough.'
+'It is sometimes well,' she persisted, 'to hear the whole of a case
+before forming our judgment.'  And she rang the bell for Jeanne.
+'That story about our little grocer friend,' she said--'it is rather
+interesting to me.  Why did he leave her and run away--do you know?'
+Jeanne shrugged her ample shoulders.  'Oh! the old story, Madame,'
+she answered, with a short laugh.  'Who was she?' asked my friend.
+'The wife of Monsieur Savary, the wheelwright, as good a husband as
+ever a woman had.  It's been going on for months, the hussy!'
+'Thank you, that will do, Jeanne.'  She turned again to me so soon
+as Jeanne had left the room.  'My dear,' she said, 'whenever I see a
+bad man, I peep round the corner for the woman.  Whenever I see a
+bad woman, I follow her eyes; I know she is looking for her mate.
+Nature never makes odd samples.'"
+
+"I cannot help thinking," said the Philosopher, "that a good deal of
+harm is being done to the race as a whole by the overpraise of
+women."
+
+"Who overpraises them?" demanded the Girton Girl.  "Men may talk
+nonsense to us--I don't know whether any of us are foolish enough to
+believe it--but I feel perfectly sure that when they are alone most
+of their time is occupied in abusing us."
+
+"That is hardly fair," interrupted the Old Maid.  "I doubt if they
+do talk about us among themselves as much as we think.  Besides, it
+is always unwise to go behind the verdict.  Some very beautiful
+things have been said about women by men."
+
+"Well, ask them," said the Girton Girl.  "Here are three of them
+present.  Now, honestly, when you talk about us among yourselves, do
+you gush about our virtue, and goodness, and wisdom?"
+
+"'Gush,'" said the Philosopher, reflecting, "'gush' would hardly be
+the correct word."
+
+"In justice to the truth," I said, "I must admit our Girton friend
+is to a certain extent correct.  Every man at some time of his life
+esteems to excess some one particular woman.  Very young men,
+lacking in experience, admire perhaps indiscriminately.  To them,
+anything in a petticoat is adorable:  the milliner makes the angel.
+And very old men, so I am told, return to the delusions of their
+youth; but as to this I cannot as yet speak positively.  The rest of
+us--well, when we are alone, it must be confessed, as our
+Philosopher says, that 'gush' is not the correct word."
+
+"I told you so," chortled the Girton Girl.
+
+"Maybe," I added, "it is merely the result of reaction.  Convention
+insists that to her face we show her a somewhat exaggerated
+deference.  Her very follies we have to regard as added charms--the
+poets have decreed it.  Maybe it comes as a relief to let the
+pendulum swing back."
+
+"But is it not a fact," asked the Old Maid, "that the best men and
+even the wisest are those who have held women in most esteem?  Do we
+not gauge civilization by the position a nation accords to its
+women?"
+
+"In the same way as we judge them by the mildness of their laws,
+their tenderness for the weak.  Uncivilised man killed off the
+useless numbers of the tribe; we provide for them hospitals,
+almshouses.  Man's attitude towards woman proves the extent to which
+he has conquered his own selfishness, the distance he has travelled
+from the law of the ape:  might is right.
+
+"Please don't misunderstand me," pleaded the Philosopher, with a
+nervous glance towards the lowering eyebrows of the Girton Girl.  "I
+am not saying for a moment woman is not the equal of man; indeed, it
+is my belief that she is.  I am merely maintaining she is not his
+superior.  The wise man honours woman as his friend, his fellow-
+labourer, his complement.  It is the fool who imagines her unhuman."
+
+"But are we not better," persisted the Old Maid, "for our ideals?  I
+don't say we women are perfect--please don't think that.  You are
+not more alive to our faults than we are.  Read the women novelists
+from George Eliot downwards.  But for your own sake--is it not well
+man should have something to look up to, and failing anything
+better--?"
+
+"I draw a very wide line," answered the Philosopher, "between ideals
+and delusions.  The ideal has always helped man; but that belongs to
+the land of his dreams, his most important kingdom, the kingdom of
+his future.  Delusions are earthly structures, that sooner or later
+fall about his ears, blinding him with dust and dirt.  The
+petticoat-governed country has always paid dearly for its folly."
+
+"Elizabeth!" cried the Girton Girl.  "Queen Victoria!"
+
+"Were ideal sovereigns," returned the Philosopher, "leaving the
+government of the country to its ablest men.  France under its
+Pompadours, the Byzantine Empire under its Theodoras, are truer
+examples of my argument.  I am speaking of the unwisdom of assuming
+all women to be perfect.  Belisarius ruined himself and his people
+by believing his own wife to be an honest woman."
+
+"But chivalry," I argued, "has surely been of service to mankind?"
+
+"To an immense extent," agreed the Philosopher.  "It seized a
+natural human passion and turned it to good uses.  Then it was a
+reality.  So once was the divine right of kings, the infallibility
+of the Church, for cumbering the ground with the lifeless bodies of
+which mankind has paid somewhat dearly.  Not its upstanding lies--
+they can be faced and defeated--but its dead truths are the world's
+stumbling-blocks.  To the man of war and rapine, trained in cruelty
+and injustice, the woman was the one thing that spoke of the joy of
+yielding.  Woman, as compared with man, was then an angel:  it was
+no mere form of words.  All the tender offices of life were in her
+hands.  To the warrior, his life divided between fighting and
+debauchery, his womenfolk tending the sick, helping the weak,
+comforting the sorrowing, must have moved with white feet across a
+world his vices had made dark.  Her mere subjection to the
+priesthood, her inborn feminine delight in form and ceremony--now an
+influence narrowing her charity--must then, to his dim eyes, trained
+to look upon dogma as the living soul of his religion, have seemed a
+halo, deifying her.  Woman was then the servant.  It was naturally
+to her advantage to excite tenderness and mercy in man.  Since she
+has become the mistress of the world.  It is no longer her
+interested mission to soften his savage instincts.  Nowadays, it is
+the women who make war, the women who exalt brute force.  Today, it
+is the woman who, happy herself, turns a deaf ear to the world's low
+cry of pain; holding that man honoured who would ignore the good of
+the species to augment the comforts of his own particular family;
+holding in despite as a bad husband and father the man whose sense
+of duty extends beyond the circle of the home.  One recalls Lady
+Nelson's reproach to her lord after the battle of the Nile.  'I have
+married a wife, and therefore cannot come,' is the answer to his God
+that many a woman has prompted to her lover's tongue.  I was
+speaking to a woman only the other day about the cruelty of skinning
+seals alive.  'I feel so sorry for the poor creatures,' she
+murmured; 'but they say it gives so much more depth of colour to the
+fur.'  Her own jacket was certainly a very beautiful specimen."
+
+"When I was editing a paper," I said, "I opened my columns to a
+correspondence on this very subject.  Many letters were sent to me--
+most of them trite, many of them foolish.  One, a genuine document,
+I remember.  It came from a girl who for six years had been
+assistant to a fashionable dressmaker.  She was rather tired of the
+axiom that all women, at all times, are perfection.  She suggested
+that poets and novelists should take service for a year in any large
+drapery or millinery establishment where they would have an
+opportunity of studying woman in her natural state, so to speak."
+
+"It is unfair to judge us by what, I confess, is our chief
+weakness," argued the Woman of the World.  "Woman in pursuit of
+clothes ceases to be human--she reverts to the original brute.
+Besides, dressmakers can be very trying.  The fault is not entirely
+on one side."
+
+"I still fail to be convinced," remarked the Girton Girl, "that
+woman is over-praised.  Not even the present conversation, so far as
+it has gone, altogether proves your point."
+
+"I am not saying it is the case among intelligent thinkers,"
+explained the Philosopher, "but in popular literature the convention
+still lingers.  To woman's face no man cares to protest against it;
+and woman, to her harm, has come to accept it as a truism.  'What
+are little girls made of?  Sugar and spice and all that's nice.'  In
+more or less varied form the idea has entered into her blood,
+shutting out from her hope of improvement.  The girl is discouraged
+from asking herself the occasionally needful question:  Am I on the
+way to becoming a sound, useful member of society?  Or am I in
+danger of degenerating into a vain, selfish, lazy piece of good-for-
+nothing rubbish?  She is quite content so long as she can detect in
+herself no tendency to male vices, forgetful that there are also
+feminine vices.  Woman is the spoilt child of the age.  No one tells
+her of her faults.  The World with its thousand voices flatters her.
+Sulks, bad temper, and pig-headed obstinacy are translated as
+'pretty Fanny's wilful ways.'  Cowardice, contemptible in man or
+woman, she is encouraged to cultivate as a charm.  Incompetence to
+pack her own bag or find her own way across a square and round a
+corner is deemed an attraction.  Abnormal ignorance and dense
+stupidity entitle her to pose as the poetical ideal.  If she give a
+penny to a street beggar, selecting generally the fraud, or kiss a
+puppy's nose, we exhaust the language of eulogy, proclaiming her a
+saint.  The marvel to me is that, in spite of the folly upon which
+they are fed, so many of them grow to be sensible women."
+
+"Myself," remarked the Minor Poet, "I find much comfort in the
+conviction that talk, as talk, is responsible for much less good and
+much less harm in the world than we who talk are apt to imagine.
+Words to grow and bear fruit must fall upon the earth of fact."
+
+"But you hold it right to fight against folly?" demanded the
+Philosopher.
+
+"Heavens, yes!" cried the Minor Poet.  "That is how one knows it is
+Folly--if we can kill it.  Against the Truth our arrows rattle
+harmlessly."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+"But what is her reason?" demanded the Old Maid.
+
+"Reason!  I don't believe any of them have any reason."  The Woman
+of the World showed sign of being short of temper, a condition of
+affairs startlingly unusual to her.  "Says she hasn't enough work to
+do."
+
+"She must be an extraordinary woman," commented the Old Maid.
+
+"The trouble I have put myself to in order to keep that woman, just
+because George likes her savouries, no one would believe," continued
+indignantly the Woman of the World.  "We have had a dinner party
+regularly once a week for the last six months, entirely for her
+benefit.  Now she wants me to give two.  I won't do it!"
+
+"If I could be of any service?" offered the Minor Poet.  "My
+digestion is not what it once was, but I could make up in quality--a
+recherche little banquet twice a week, say on Wednesdays and
+Saturdays, I would make a point of eating with you.  If you think
+that would content her!"
+
+"It is really thoughtful of you," replied the Woman of the World,
+"but I cannot permit it.  Why should you be dragged from the simple
+repast suitable to a poet merely to oblige my cook?  It is not
+reason."
+
+"I was thinking rather of you," continued the Minor Poet.
+
+"I've half a mind," said the Woman of the World, "to give up
+housekeeping altogether and go into an hotel.  I don't like the
+idea, but really servants are becoming impossible."
+
+"It is very interesting," said the Minor Poet.
+
+"I am glad you find it so!" snapped the Woman of the World.
+
+"What is interesting?" I asked the Minor Poet.
+
+"That the tendency of the age," he replied, "should be slowly but
+surely driving us into the practical adoption of a social state that
+for years we have been denouncing the Socialists for merely
+suggesting.  Everywhere the public-houses are multiplying, the
+private dwellings diminishing."
+
+"Can you wonder at it?" commented the Woman of the World.  "You men
+talk about 'the joys of home.'  Some of you write poetry--generally
+speaking, one of you who lives in chambers, and spends two-thirds of
+his day at a club."  We were sitting in the garden.  The attention
+of the Minor Poet became riveted upon the sunset.  "'Ethel and I by
+the fire.'  Ethel never gets a chance of sitting by the fire.  So
+long as you are there, comfortable, you do not notice that she has
+left the room to demand explanation why the drawing-room scuttle is
+always filled with slack, and the best coal burnt in the kitchen
+range.  Home to us women is our place of business that we never get
+away from."
+
+"I suppose," said the Girton Girl--to my surprise she spoke with
+entire absence of indignation.  As a rule, the Girton Girl stands
+for what has been termed "divine discontent" with things in general.
+In the course of time she will outlive her surprise at finding the
+world so much less satisfactory an abode than she had been led to
+suppose--also her present firm conviction that, given a free hand,
+she could put the whole thing right in a quarter of an hour.  There
+are times even now when her tone suggests less certainty of her
+being the first person who has ever thought seriously about the
+matter.  "I suppose," said the Girton Girl, "it comes of education.
+Our grandmothers were content to fill their lives with these small
+household duties.  They rose early, worked with their servants, saw
+to everything with their own eyes.  Nowadays we demand time for
+self-development, for reading, for thinking, for pleasure.
+Household drudgery, instead of being the object of our life, has
+become an interference to it.  We resent it."
+
+"The present revolt of woman," continued the Minor Poet, "will be
+looked back upon by the historian of the future as one of the chief
+factors in our social evolution.  The 'home'--the praises of which
+we still sing, but with gathering misgiving--depended on her
+willingness to live a life of practical slavery.  When Adam delved
+and Eve span--Adam confining his delving to the space within his own
+fence, Eve staying her spinning-wheel the instant the family hosiery
+was complete--then the home rested upon the solid basis of an actual
+fact.  Its foundations were shaken when the man became a citizen and
+his interests expanded beyond the domestic circle.  Since that
+moment woman alone has supported the institution.  Now she, in her
+turn, is claiming the right to enter the community, to escape from
+the solitary confinement of the lover's castle.  The 'mansions,'
+with common dining-rooms, reading-rooms, their system of common
+service, are springing up in every quarter; the house, the villa, is
+disappearing.  The story is the same in every country.  The separate
+dwelling, where it remains, is being absorbed into a system.  In
+America, the experimental laboratory of the future, the houses are
+warmed from a common furnace.  You do not light the fire, you turn
+on the hot air.  Your dinner is brought round to you in a travelling
+oven.  You subscribe for your valet or your lady's maid.  Very soon
+the private establishment, with its staff of unorganised,
+quarrelling servants, of necessity either over or underworked, will
+be as extinct as the lake dwelling or the sandstone cave."
+
+"I hope," said the Woman of the World, "that I may live to see it."
+
+"In all probability," replied the Minor Poet, "you will.  I would I
+could feel as hopeful for myself."
+
+"If your prophecy be likely of fulfilment," remarked the
+Philosopher, "I console myself with the reflection that I am the
+oldest of the party.  Myself; I never read these full and exhaustive
+reports of the next century without revelling in the reflection that
+before they can be achieved I shall be dead and buried.  It may be a
+selfish attitude, but I should be quite unable to face any of the
+machine-made futures our growing guild of seers prognosticate.  You
+appear to me, most of you, to ignore a somewhat important
+consideration--namely, that mankind is alive.  You work out your
+answers as if he were a sum in rule-of-three:  'If man in so many
+thousands of years has done so much in such a direction at this or
+that rate of speed, what will he be doing--?' and so on.  You forget
+he is swayed by impulses that can enter into no calculation--drawn
+hither and thither by powers that can never be represented in your
+algebra.  In one generation Christianity reduced Plato's republic to
+an absurdity.  The printing-press has upset the unanswerable
+conclusions of Machiavelli."
+
+"I disagree with you," said the Minor Poet.
+
+"The fact does not convince me of my error," retorted the
+Philosopher.
+
+"Christianity," continued the Minor Poet, "gave merely an added
+force to impulses the germs of which were present in the infant
+race.  The printing-press, teaching us to think in communities, has
+nonplussed to a certain extent the aims of the individual as opposed
+to those of humanity.  Without prejudice, without sentiment, cast
+your eye back over the panorama of the human race.  What is the
+picture that presents itself?  Scattered here and there over the
+wild, voiceless desert, first the holes and caves, next the rude-
+built huts, the wigwams, the lake dwellings of primitive man.
+Lonely, solitary, followed by his dam and brood, he creeps through
+the tall grass, ever with watchful, terror-haunted eyes; satisfies
+his few desires; communicates, by means of a few grunts and signs,
+his tiny store of knowledge to his offspring; then, crawling beneath
+a stone, or into some tangled corner of the jungle, dies and
+disappears.  We look again.  A thousand centuries have flashed and
+faded.  The surface of the earth is flecked with strange quivering
+patches:  here, where the sun shines on the wood and sea, close
+together, almost touching one another; there, among the shadows, far
+apart.  The Tribe has formed itself.  The whole tiny mass moves
+forward, halts, runs backwards, stirred always by one common
+impulse.  Man has learnt the secret of combination, of mutual help.
+The City rises.  From its stone centre spreads its power; the Nation
+leaps to life; civilisation springs from leisure; no longer is each
+man's life devoted to his mere animal necessities.  The artificer,
+the thinker--his fellows shall protect him.  Socrates dreams,
+Phidias carves the marble, while Pericles maintains the law and
+Leonidas holds the Barbarian at bay.  Europe annexes piece by piece
+the dark places of the earth, gives to them her laws.  The Empire
+swallows the small State; Russia stretches her arm round Asia.  In
+London we toast the union of the English-speaking peoples; in Berlin
+and Vienna we rub a salamander to the deutscher Bund; in Paris we
+whisper of a communion of the Latin races.  In great things so in
+small.  The stores, the huge Emporium displaces the small
+shopkeeper; the Trust amalgamates a hundred firms; the Union speaks
+for the worker.  The limits of country, of language, are found too
+narrow for the new Ideas.  German, American, or English--let what
+yard of coloured cotton you choose float from the mizzenmast, the
+business of the human race is their captain.  One hundred and fifty
+years ago old Sam Johnson waited in a patron's anteroom; today the
+entire world invites him to growl his table talk the while it takes
+its dish of tea.  The poet, the novelist, speak in twenty languages.
+Nationality--it is the County Council of the future.  The world's
+high roads run turnpike-free from pole to pole.  One would be blind
+not to see the goal towards which we are rushing.  At the outside it
+is but a generation or two off.  It is one huge murmuring Hive--one
+universal Hive just the size of the round earth.  The bees have been
+before us; they have solved the riddle towards which we in darkness
+have been groping.
+
+The Old Maid shuddered visibly.  "What a terrible idea!" she said.
+
+"To us," replied the Minor Poet; "not to those who will come after
+us.  The child dreads manhood.  To Abraham, roaming the world with
+his flocks, the life of your modern City man, chained to his office
+from ten to four, would have seemed little better than penal
+servitude."
+
+"My sympathies are with the Abrahamitical ideal," observed the
+Philosopher.
+
+"Mine also," agreed the Minor Poet.  "But neither you nor I
+represent the tendency of the age.  We are its curiosities.  We, and
+such as we, serve as the brake regulating the rate of progress.  The
+genius of species shows itself moving in the direction of the
+organised community--all life welded together, controlled by one
+central idea.  The individual worker is drawn into the factory.
+Chippendale today would have been employed sketching designs; the
+chair would have been put together by fifty workers, each one
+trained to perfection in his own particular department.  Why does
+the hotel, with its five hundred servants, its catering for three
+thousand mouths, work smoothly, while the desirable family
+residence, with its two or three domestics, remains the scene of
+waste, confusion, and dispute?  We are losing the talent of living
+alone; the instinct of living in communities is driving it out."
+
+"So much the worse for the community," was the comment of the
+Philosopher.  "Man, as Ibsen has said, will always be at his
+greatest when he stands alone.  To return to our friend Abraham,
+surely he, wandering in the wilderness, talking with his God, was
+nearer the ideal than the modern citizen, thinking with his morning
+paper, applauding silly shibboleths from a theatre pit, guffawing at
+coarse jests, one of a music-hall crowd?  In the community it is the
+lowest always leads.  You spoke just now of all the world inviting
+Samuel Johnson to its dish of tea.  How many read him as compared to
+the number of subscribers to the Ha'penny Joker?  This 'thinking in
+communities,' as it is termed, to what does it lead?  To mafficking
+and Dreyfus scandals.  What crowd ever evolved a noble idea?  If
+Socrates and Galileo, Confucius and Christ had 'thought in
+communities,' the world would indeed be the ant-hill you appear to
+regard as its destiny."
+
+"In balancing the books of life one must have regard to both sides
+of the ledger," responded the Minor Poet.  "A crowd, I admit, of
+itself creates nothing; on the other hand, it receives ideals into
+its bosom and gives them needful shelter.  It responds more readily
+to good than to evil.  What greater stronghold of virtue than your
+sixpenny gallery?  Your burglar, arrived fresh from jumping on his
+mother, finds himself applauding with the rest stirring appeals to
+the inborn chivalry of man.  Suggestion that it was right or proper
+under any circumstances to jump upon one's mother he would at such
+moment reject with horror.  'Thinking in communities' is good for
+him.  The hooligan, whose patriotism finds expression in squirting
+dirty water into the face of his coster sweetheart:  the
+boulevardiere, primed with absinth, shouting 'Conspuez les Juifs!'--
+the motive force stirring them in its origin was an ideal.  Even
+into making a fool of itself, a crowd can be moved only by
+incitement of its finer instincts.  The service of Prometheus to
+mankind must not be judged by the statistics of the insurance
+office.  The world as a whole has gained by community, will attain
+its goal only through community.  From the nomadic savage by the
+winding road of citizenship we have advanced far.  The way winds
+upward still, hidden from us by the mists, but along its tortuous
+course lies our track into the Promised Land.  Not the development
+of the individual--that is his own concern--but the uplifting of the
+race would appear to be the law.  The lonely great ones, they are
+the shepherds of the flock--the servants, not the masters of the
+world.  Moses shall die and be buried in the wilderness, seeing only
+from afar the resting-place of man's tired feet.  It is unfortunate
+that the Ha'penny Joker and its kind should have so many readers.
+Maybe it teaches those to read who otherwise would never read at
+all.  We are impatient, forgetting that the coming and going of our
+generations are but as the swinging of the pendulum of Nature's
+clock.  Yesterday we booked our seats for gladiatorial shows, for
+the burning of Christians, our windows for Newgate hangings.  Even
+the musical farce is an improvement upon that--at least, from the
+humanitarian point of view."
+
+"In the Southern States of America," observed the Philosopher,
+sticking to his guns, "they run excursion trains to lynching
+exhibitions.  The bull-fight is spreading to France, and English
+newspapers are advocating the reintroduction of bear-baiting and
+cock-fighting.  Are we not moving in a circle?"
+
+"The road winds, as I have allowed," returned the Minor Poet; "the
+gradient is somewhat steep.  Just now, maybe, we are traversing a
+backward curve.  I gain my faith by pausing now and then to look
+behind.  I see the weary way with many a downward sweep.  But we are
+climbing, my friend, we are climbing."
+
+"But to such a very dismal goal, according to your theory," grumbled
+the Old Maid.  "I should hate to feel myself an insect in a hive, my
+little round of duties apportioned to me, my every action regulated
+by a fixed law, my place assigned to me, my very food and drink, I
+suppose, apportioned to me.  Do think of something more cheerful."
+
+The Minor Poet laughed.  "My dear lady," he replied, "it is too
+late.  The thing is already done.  The hive already covers us, the
+cells are in building.  Who leads his own life?  Who is master of
+himself?  What can you do but live according to your income in, I am
+sure, a very charming little cell; buzz about your little world with
+your cheerful, kindly song, helping these your fellow insects here,
+doing day by day the useful offices apportioned to you by your
+temperament and means, seeing the same faces, treading ever the same
+narrow circle?  Why do I write poetry?  I am not to blame.  I must
+live.  It is the only thing I can do.  Why does one man live and die
+upon the treeless rocks of Iceland, another labour in the vineyards
+of the Apennines?  Why does one woman make matches, ride in a van to
+Epping Forest, drink gin, and change hats with her lover on the
+homeward journey; another pant through a dinner-party and half a
+dozen receptions every night from March to June, rush from country
+house to fashionable Continental resort from July to February, dress
+as she is instructed by her milliner, say the smart things that are
+expected of her?  Who would be a sweep or a chaperon, were all roads
+free?  Who is it succeeds in escaping the law of the hive?  The
+loafer, the tramp.  On the other hand, who is the man we respect and
+envy?  The man who works for the community, the public-spirited man,
+as we call him; the unselfish man, the man who labours for the
+labour's sake and not for the profit, devoting his days and nights
+to learning Nature's secrets, to acquiring knowledge useful to the
+race.  Is he not the happiest, the man who has conquered his own
+sordid desires, who gives himself to the public good?  The hive was
+founded in dark days before man knew; it has been built according to
+false laws.  This man will have a cell bigger than any other cell;
+all the other little men shall envy him; a thousand fellow-crawling
+mites shall slave for him, wear out their lives in wretchedness for
+him and him alone; all their honey they shall bring to him; he shall
+gorge while they shall starve.  Of what use?  He has slept no
+sounder in his foolishly fanciful cell.  Sleep is to tired eyes, not
+to silken coverlets.  We dream in Seven Dials as in Park Lane.  His
+stomach, distend it as he will--it is very small--resents being
+distended.  The store of honey rots.  The hive was conceived in the
+dark days of ignorance, stupidity, brutality.  A new hive shall
+arise."
+
+"I had no idea," said the Woman of the World, "you were a
+Socialist."
+
+"Nor had I," agreed the Minor Poet, "before I began talking."
+
+"And next Wednesday," laughed the Woman of the World; "you will be
+arguing in favour of individualism."
+
+"Very likely," agreed the Minor Poet.  "'The deep moans round with
+many voices.'"
+
+"I'll take another cup of tea," said the Philosopher.
+
+
+
+
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html
+     PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+     "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>Tea-table Talk</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">Tea-table Talk, by Jerome K. Jerome</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tea-table Talk, by Jerome K. Jerome
+(#21 in our series by Jerome K. Jerome)
+
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+Title: Tea-table Talk
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Release Date: October, 2000  [EBook #2353]
+[This file was first posted on November 28, 1999]
+[Most recently updated: November 28, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1903 Hutchinson &amp; Co. edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>TEA-TABLE TALK</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;They are very pretty, some of them,&rdquo; said the Woman
+of the World; &ldquo;not the sort of letters I should have written myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should like to see a love-letter of yours,&rdquo; interrupted
+the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is very kind of you to say so,&rdquo; replied the Woman
+of the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;It never occurred to me that you would care
+for one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is what I have always maintained,&rdquo; retorted the Minor
+Poet; &ldquo;you have never really understood me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe a volume of assorted love-letters would sell well,&rdquo;
+said the Girton Girl; &ldquo;written by the same hand, if you like,
+but to different correspondents at different periods.&nbsp; To the same
+person one is bound, more or less, to repeat oneself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Or from different lovers to the same correspondent,&rdquo;
+suggested the Philosopher.&nbsp; &ldquo;It would be interesting to observe
+the response of various temperaments exposed to an unvaried influence.&nbsp;
+It would throw light on the vexed question whether the qualities that
+adorn our beloved are her own, or ours lent to her for the occasion.&nbsp;
+Would the same woman be addressed as &lsquo;My Queen!&rsquo; by one
+correspondent, and as &lsquo;Dear Popsy Wopsy!&rsquo; by another, or
+would she to all her lovers be herself?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You might try it,&rdquo; I suggested to the Woman of the World,
+&ldquo;selecting, of course, only the more interesting.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It would cause so much unpleasantness, don&rsquo;t you think?&rdquo;
+replied the Woman of the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;Those I left out would
+never forgive me.&nbsp; It is always so with people you forget to invite
+to a funeral - they think it is done with deliberate intention to slight
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The first love-letter I ever wrote,&rdquo; said the Minor
+Poet, &ldquo;was when I was sixteen.&nbsp; Her name was Monica; she
+was the left-hand girl in the third joint of the crocodile.&nbsp; I
+have never known a creature so ethereally beautiful.&nbsp; I wrote the
+letter and sealed it, but I could not make up my mind whether to slip
+it into her hand when we passed them, as we usually did on Thursday
+afternoons, or to wait for Sunday.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There can be no question,&rdquo; murmured the Girton Girl
+abstractedly, &ldquo;the best time is just as one is coming out of church.&nbsp;
+There is so much confusion; besides, one has one&rsquo;s Prayer-book
+- I beg your pardon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was saved the trouble of deciding,&rdquo; continued the
+Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;On Thursday her place was occupied by a fat,
+red-headed girl, who replied to my look of inquiry with an idiotic laugh,
+and on Sunday I searched the Hypatia House pews for her in vain.&nbsp;
+I learnt subsequently that she had been sent home on the previous Wednesday,
+suddenly.&nbsp; It appeared that I was not the only one.&nbsp; I left
+the letter where I had placed it, at the bottom of my desk, and in course
+of time forgot it.&nbsp; Years later I fell in love really.&nbsp; I
+sat down to write her a love-letter that should imprison her as by some
+subtle spell.&nbsp; I would weave into it the love of all the ages.&nbsp;
+When I had finished it, I read it through and was pleased with it.&nbsp;
+Then by an accident, as I was going to seal it, I overturned my desk,
+and on to the floor fell that other love-letter I had written seven
+years before, when a boy.&nbsp; Out of idle curiosity I tore it open;
+I thought it would afford me amusement.&nbsp; I ended by posting it
+instead of the letter I had just completed.&nbsp; It carried precisely
+the same meaning; but it was better expressed, with greater sincerity,
+with more artistic simplicity.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;After all,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;what can a
+man do more than tell a woman that he loves her?&nbsp; All the rest
+is mere picturesque amplification, on a par with the &lsquo;Full and
+descriptive report from our Special Correspondent,&rsquo; elaborated
+out of a three-line telegram of Reuter&rsquo;s.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Following that argument,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet, &ldquo;you
+could reduce &lsquo;Romeo and Juliet&rsquo; to a two-line tragedy -</p>
+<p>Lass and lad, loved like mad;</p>
+<p>Silly muddle, very sad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To be told that you are loved,&rdquo; said the Girton Girl,
+&ldquo;is only the beginning of the theorem - its proposition, so to
+speak.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Or the argument of the poem,&rdquo; murmured the Old Maid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The interest,&rdquo; continued the Girton Girl, &ldquo;lies
+in proving it - why does he love me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I asked a man that once,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He said it was because he couldn&rsquo;t help it.&nbsp; It seemed
+such a foolish answer - the sort of thing your housemaid always tells
+you when she breaks your favourite teapot.&nbsp; And yet, I suppose
+it was as sensible as any other.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;More so,&rdquo; commented the Philosopher.&nbsp; &ldquo;It
+is the only possible explanation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet, &ldquo;it were a question
+one could ask of people without offence; I so often long to put it.&nbsp;
+Why do men marry viragoes, pimply girls with incipient moustaches?&nbsp;
+Why do beautiful heiresses choose thick-lipped, little men who bully
+them?&nbsp; Why are old bachelors, generally speaking, sympathetic,
+kind-hearted men; and old maids, so many of them, sweet-looking and
+amiable?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said the Old Maid, &ldquo;that perhaps - &rdquo;&nbsp;
+But there she stopped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pray go on,&rdquo; said the Philosopher.&nbsp; &ldquo;I shall
+be so interested to have your views.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was nothing, really,&rdquo; said the Old Maid; &ldquo;I
+have forgotten.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If only one could obtain truthful answers,&rdquo; the Minor
+Poet, &ldquo;what a flood of light they might let fall on the hidden
+half of life!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;that,
+if anything, Love is being exposed to too much light.&nbsp; The subject
+is becoming vulgarised.&nbsp; Every year a thousand problem plays and
+novels, poems and essays, tear the curtain from Love&rsquo;s Temple,
+drag it naked into the market-place for grinning crowds to gape at.&nbsp;
+In a million short stories, would-be comic, would-be serious, it is
+handled more or less coarsely, more or less unintelligently, gushed
+over, gibed and jeered at.&nbsp; Not a shred of self-respect is left
+to it.&nbsp; It is made the central figure of every farce, danced and
+sung round in every music-hall, yelled at by gallery, guffawed at by
+stalls.&nbsp; It is the stock-in-trade of every comic journal.&nbsp;
+Could any god, even a Mumbo Jumbo, so treated, hold its place among
+its votaries?&nbsp; Every term of endearment has become a catchword,
+every caress mocks us from the hoardings.&nbsp; Every tender speech
+we make recalls to us even while we are uttering it a hundred parodies.&nbsp;
+Every possible situation has been spoilt for us in advance by the American
+humorist.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have sat out a good many parodies of &lsquo;Hamlet,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+said the Minor Poet, &ldquo;but the play still interests me.&nbsp; I
+remember a walking tour I once took in Bavaria.&nbsp; In some places
+the waysides are lined with crucifixes that are either comic or repulsive.&nbsp;
+There is a firm that turns them out by machinery.&nbsp; Yet, to the
+peasants who pass by, the Christ is still beautiful.&nbsp; You can belittle
+only what is already contemptible.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Patriotism is a great virtue,&rdquo; replied the Philosopher:
+&ldquo;the Jingoes have made it ridiculous.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On the contrary,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet, &ldquo;they have
+taught us to distinguish between the true and the false.&nbsp; So it
+is with love.&nbsp; The more it is cheapened, ridiculed, employed for
+market purposes, the less the inclination to affect it - to be in love
+with love, as Heine admitted he was, for its own sake.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is the necessity to love born in us,&rdquo; said the Girton
+Girl, &ldquo;or do we practise to acquire it because it is the fashion
+- make up our mind to love, as boys learn to smoke, because every other
+fellow does it, and we do not like to be peculiar?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The majority of men and women,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet,
+&ldquo;are incapable of love.&nbsp; With most it is a mere animal passion,
+with others a mild affection.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We talk about love,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;as
+though it were a known quantity.&nbsp; After all, to say that a man
+loves is like saying that he paints or plays the violin; it conveys
+no meaning until we have witnessed his performance.&nbsp; Yet to hear
+the subject discussed, one might imagine the love of a Dante or a society
+Johnny, of a Cleopatra or a Georges Sand, to be precisely the same thing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was always poor Susan&rsquo;s trouble,&rdquo; said the
+Woman of the World; &ldquo;she could never be persuaded that Jim really
+loved her.&nbsp; It was very sad, because I am sure he was devoted to
+her, in his way.&nbsp; But he could not do the sort of things she wanted
+him to do; she was so romantic.&nbsp; He did try.&nbsp; He used to go
+to all the poetical plays and study them.&nbsp; But he hadn&rsquo;t
+the knack of it and he was naturally clumsy.&nbsp; He would rush into
+the room and fling himself on his knees before her, never noticing the
+dog, so that, instead of pouring out his heart as he had intended, he
+would have to start off with, &lsquo;So awfully sorry!&nbsp; Hope I
+haven&rsquo;t hurt the little beast?&rsquo;&nbsp; Which was enough to
+put anybody out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Young girls are so foolish,&rdquo; said the Old Maid; &ldquo;they
+run after what glitters, and do not see the gold until it is too late.&nbsp;
+At first they are all eyes and no heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I knew a girl,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;or, rather, a young married
+woman, who was cured of folly by the homoeopathic method.&nbsp; Her
+great trouble was that her husband had ceased to be her lover.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems to me so sad,&rdquo; said the Old Maid.&nbsp; &ldquo;Sometimes
+it is the woman&rsquo;s fault, sometimes the man&rsquo;s; more often
+both.&nbsp; The little courtesies, the fond words, the tender nothings
+that mean so much to those that love - it would cost so little not to
+forget them, and they would make life so much more beautiful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is a line of common sense running through all things,&rdquo;
+I replied; &ldquo;the secret of life consists in not diverging far from
+it on either side.&nbsp; He had been the most devoted wooer, never happy
+out of her eyes; but before they had been married a year she found to
+her astonishment that he could be content even away from her skirts,
+that he actually took pains to render himself agreeable to other women.&nbsp;
+He would spend whole afternoons at his club, slip out for a walk occasionally
+by himself, shut himself up now and again in his study.&nbsp; It went
+so far that one day he expressed a distinct desire to leave her for
+a week and go a-fishing with some other men.&nbsp; She never complained
+- at least, not to him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is where she was foolish,&rdquo; said the Girton Girl.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Silence in such cases is a mistake.&nbsp; The other party does
+not know what is the matter with you, and you yourself - your temper
+bottled up within - become more disagreeable every day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She confided her trouble to a friend,&rdquo; I explained.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I so dislike people who do that,&rdquo; said the Woman of
+the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;Emily never would speak to George; she would
+come and complain about him to me, as if I were responsible for him:
+I wasn&rsquo;t even his mother.&nbsp; When she had finished, George
+would come along, and I had to listen to the whole thing over again
+from his point of view.&nbsp; I got so tired of it at last that I determined
+to stop it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did you succeed?&rdquo; asked the Old Maid, who appeared
+to be interested in the recipe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I knew George was coming one afternoon,&rdquo; explained the
+Woman of the World, &ldquo;so I persuaded Emily to wait in the conservatory.&nbsp;
+She thought I was going to give him good advice; instead of that I sympathised
+with him and encouraged him to speak his mind freely, which he did.&nbsp;
+It made her so mad that she came out and told him what she thought of
+him.&nbsp; I left them at it.&nbsp; They were both of them the better
+for it; and so was I.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In my case,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it came about differently.&nbsp;
+Her friend explained to him just what was happening.&nbsp; She pointed
+out to him how his neglect and indifference were slowly alienating his
+wife&rsquo;s affections from him.&nbsp; He argued the subject.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But a lover and a husband are not the same,&rsquo;
+he contended; &lsquo;the situation is entirely different.&nbsp; You
+run after somebody you want to overtake; but when you have caught him
+up, you settle down quietly and walk beside him; you don&rsquo;t continue
+shouting and waving your handkerchief after you have gained him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Their mutual friend presented the problem differently.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;You must hold what you have won,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;or
+it will slip away from you.&nbsp; By a certain course of conduct and
+behaviour you gained a sweet girl&rsquo;s regard; show yourself other
+than you were, how can you expect her to think the same of you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You mean,&rsquo; he inquired, &lsquo;that I should
+talk and act as her husband exactly as I did when her lover?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Precisely,&rsquo; said the friend &lsquo;why not?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It seems to me a mistake,&rsquo; he grumbled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Try it and see,&rsquo; said the friend.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;All right,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I will.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And he went straight home and set to work.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was it too late,&rdquo; asked the Old Maid, &ldquo;or did
+they come together again?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For the next mouth,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;they were together
+twenty-four hours of the day.&nbsp; And then it was the wife who suggested,
+like the poet in Gilbert&rsquo;s <i>Patience</i>, the delight with which
+she would welcome an occasional afternoon off.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He hung about her while she was dressing in the morning.&nbsp;
+Just as she had got her hair fixed he would kiss it passionately and
+it would come down again.&nbsp; All meal-time he would hold her hand
+under the table and insist on feeding her with a fork.&nbsp; Before
+marriage he had behaved once or twice in this sort of way at picnics;
+and after marriage, when at breakfast-time he had sat at the other end
+of the table reading the paper or his letters, she had reminded him
+of it reproachfully.&nbsp; The entire day he never left her side.&nbsp;
+She could never read a book; instead, he would read to her aloud, generally
+Browning&rsquo; poems or translations from Goethe.&nbsp; Reading aloud
+was not an accomplishment of his, but in their courting days she had
+expressed herself pleased at his attempts, and of this he took care,
+in his turn, to remind her.&nbsp; It was his idea that if the game were
+played at all, she should take a hand also.&nbsp; If he was to blither,
+it was only fair that she should bleat back.&nbsp; As he explained,
+for the future they would both be lovers all their life long; and no
+logical argument in reply could she think of.&nbsp; If she tried to
+write a letter, he would snatch away the paper her dear hands were pressing
+and fall to kissing it - and, of course, smearing it.&nbsp; When he
+wasn&rsquo;t giving her pins and needles by sitting on her feet he was
+balancing himself on the arm of her chair and occasionally falling over
+on top of her.&nbsp; If she went shopping, he went with her and made
+himself ridiculous at the dressmaker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; In society he took
+no notice of anybody but of her, and was hurt if she spoke to anybody
+but to him.&nbsp; Not that it was often, during that month, that they
+did see any society; most invitations he refused for them both, reminding
+her how once upon a time she had regarded an evening alone with him
+as an entertainment superior to all others.&nbsp; He called her ridiculous
+names, talked to her in baby language; while a dozen times a day it
+became necessary for her to take down her back hair and do it up afresh.&nbsp;
+At the end of a month, as I have said, it was she who suggested a slight
+cessation of affection.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Had I been in her place,&rdquo; said the Girton Girl, &ldquo;it
+would have been a separation I should have suggested.&nbsp; I should
+have hated him for the rest of my life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For merely trying to agree with you?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For showing me I was a fool for ever having wanted his affection,&rdquo;
+replied the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can generally,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;make
+people ridiculous by taking them at their word.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Especially women,&rdquo; murmured the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;is there really
+so much difference between men and women as we think?&nbsp; What there
+is, may it not be the result of Civilisation rather than of Nature,
+of training rather than of instinct?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Deny the contest between male and female, and you deprive
+life of half its poetry,&rdquo; urged the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poetry,&rdquo; returned the Philosopher, &ldquo;was made for
+man, not man for poetry.&nbsp; I am inclined to think that the contest
+you speak of is somewhat in the nature of a &lsquo;put-up job&rsquo;
+on the part of you poets.&nbsp; In the same way newspapers will always
+advocate war; it gives them something to write about, and is not altogether
+unconnected with sales.&nbsp; To test Nature&rsquo;s original intentions,
+it is always safe to study our cousins the animals.&nbsp; There we see
+no sign of this fundamental variation; the difference is merely one
+of degree.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I quite agree with you,&rdquo; said the Girton Girl.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Man, acquiring cunning, saw the advantage of using his one superiority,
+brute strength, to make woman his slave.&nbsp; In all other respects
+she is undoubtedly his superior.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In a woman&rsquo;s argument,&rdquo; I observed, &ldquo;equality
+of the sexes invariably does mean the superiority of woman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is very curious,&rdquo; added the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;As you say, a woman never can be logical.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are all men logical?&rdquo; demanded the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As a class,&rdquo; replied the Minor Poet, &ldquo;yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;What woman suffers from,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;is
+over-praise.&nbsp; It has turned her head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You admit, then, that she has a head?&rdquo; demanded the
+Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It has always been a theory of mine,&rdquo; returned the Philosopher,
+&ldquo;that by Nature she was intended to possess one.&nbsp; It is her
+admirers who have always represented her as brainless.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why is it that the brainy girl invariably has straight hair?&rdquo;
+asked the Woman of the World.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because she doesn&rsquo;t curl it,&rdquo; explained the Girton
+Girl.&nbsp; She spoke somewhat snappishly, it seemed to me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I never thought of that,&rdquo; murmured the Woman of the
+World.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is to be noted in connection with the argument,&rdquo;
+I ventured to remark, &ldquo;that we hear but little concerning the
+wives of intellectual men.&nbsp; When we do, as in the case of the Carlyles,
+it is to wish we did not.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When I was younger even than I am now,&rdquo; said the Minor
+Poet, &ldquo;I thought a good deal of marriage - very young men do.&nbsp;
+My wife, I told myself, must be a woman of mind.&nbsp; Yet, curiously,
+of all the women I have ever loved, no single one has been remarkable
+for intellect - present company, as usual, of course excepted.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why is it,&rdquo; sighed the Philosopher, &ldquo;that in the
+most serious business of our life, marriage, serious considerations
+count for next to nothing?&nbsp; A dimpled chin can, and often does,
+secure for a girl the best of husbands; while virtue and understanding
+combined cannot be relied upon to obtain her even one of the worst.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think the explanation is,&rdquo; replied the Minor Poet,
+&ldquo;that as regards, let us say, the most natural business of our
+life, marriage, our natural instincts alone are brought into play.&nbsp;
+Marriage - clothe the naked fact in what flowers of rhetoric we will
+- has to do with the purely animal part of our being.&nbsp; The man
+is drawn towards it by his primeval desires; the woman by her inborn
+craving towards motherhood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The thin, white hands of the Old Maid fluttered, troubled, where
+they lay upon her lap.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why should we seek to explain away
+all the beautiful things of life?&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; She spoke with
+a heat unusual to her.&nbsp; &ldquo;The blushing lad, so timid, so devotional,
+worshipping as at the shrine of some mystic saint; the young girl moving
+spell-bound among dreams!&nbsp; They think of nothing but of one another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tracing a mountain stream to its sombre source need not mar
+its music for us as it murmurs through the valley,&rdquo; expounded
+the Philosopher.&nbsp; &ldquo;The hidden law of our being feeds each
+leaf of our life as sap runs through the tree.&nbsp; The transient blossom,
+the ripened fruit, is but its changing outward form.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hate going to the roots of things,&rdquo; said the Woman
+of the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;Poor, dear papa was so fond of doing that.&nbsp;
+He would explain to us the genesis of oysters just when we were enjoying
+them.&nbsp; Poor mamma could never bring herself to touch them after
+that.&nbsp; While in the middle of dessert he would stop to argue with
+my Uncle Paul whether pig&rsquo;s blood or bullock&rsquo;s was the best
+for grape vines.&nbsp; I remember the year before Emily came out her
+favourite pony died; I have never known her so cut up about anything
+before or since.&nbsp; She asked papa if he would mind her having the
+poor creature buried in the garden.&nbsp; Her idea was that she would
+visit now and then its grave and weep awhile.&nbsp; Papa was awfully
+nice about it and stroked her hair.&nbsp; &lsquo;Certainly, my dear,&rsquo;
+he said, &lsquo;we will have him laid to rest in the new strawberry
+bed.&rsquo;&nbsp; Just then old Pardoe, the head gardener, came up to
+us and touched his hat.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well, I was just going to inquire
+of Miss Emily,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;if she wouldn&rsquo;t rather have
+the poor thing buried under one of the nectarine-trees.&nbsp; They ain&rsquo;t
+been doing very well of late.&rsquo;&nbsp; He said it was a pretty spot,
+and that he would put up a sort of stone.&nbsp; Poor Emily didn&rsquo;t
+seem to care much where the animal was buried by that time, so we left
+them arguing the question.&nbsp; I forget how it was settled; but I
+know we neither of us ate either strawberries or nectarines for the
+next two years.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is a time for everything,&rdquo; agreed the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;With the lover, penning poetry to the wondrous red and white
+upon his mistress&rsquo; cheek, we do not discuss the subject of pigment
+in the blood, its cause and probable duration.&nbsp; Nevertheless, the
+subject is interesting.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We men and women,&rdquo; continued the Minor Poet, &ldquo;we
+are Nature&rsquo;s favourites, her hope, for whom she has made sacrifice,
+putting aside so many of her own convictions, telling herself she is
+old-fashioned.&nbsp; She has let us go from her to the strange school
+where they laugh at all her notions.&nbsp; We have learnt new, strange
+ideas that bewilder the good dame.&nbsp; Yet, returning home it is curious
+to notice how little, in the few essential things of life, we differ
+from her other children, who have never wandered from her side.&nbsp;
+Our vocabulary has been extended and elaborated, yet face to face with
+the realities of existence it is unavailing.&nbsp; Clasping the living,
+standing beside the dead, our language still is but a cry.&nbsp; Our
+wants have grown more complicated; the ten-course banquet, with all
+that it involves, has substituted itself for the handful of fruits and
+nuts gathered without labour; the stalled ox and a world of trouble
+for the dinner of herbs and leisure therewith.&nbsp; Are we so far removed
+thereby above our little brother, who, having swallowed his simple,
+succulent worm, mounts a neighbouring twig and with easy digestion carols
+thanks to God?&nbsp; The square brick box about which we move, hampered
+at every step by wooden lumber, decked with many rags and strips of
+coloured paper, cumbered with odds and ends of melted flint and moulded
+clay, has replaced the cheap, convenient cave.&nbsp; We clothe ourselves
+in the skins of other animals instead of allowing our own to develop
+into a natural protection.&nbsp; We hang about us bits of stone and
+metal, but underneath it all we are little two-legged animals, struggling
+with the rest to live and breed.&nbsp; Beneath each hedgerow in the
+springtime we can read our own romances in the making - the first faint
+stirring of the blood, the roving eye, the sudden marvellous discovery
+of the indispensable She, the wooing, the denial, hope, coquetry, despair,
+contention, rivalry, hate, jealousy, love, bitterness, victory, and
+death.&nbsp; Our comedies, our tragedies, are being played upon each
+blade of grass.&nbsp; In fur and feather we run epitomised.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World; &ldquo;I have
+heard it all so often.&nbsp; It is nonsense; I can prove it to you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is easy,&rdquo; observed the Philosopher.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+Sermon on the Mount itself has been proved nonsense - among others,
+by a bishop.&nbsp; Nonsense is the reverse side of the pattern - the
+tangled ends of the thread that Wisdom weaves.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There was a Miss Askew at the College,&rdquo; said the Girton
+Girl.&nbsp; &ldquo;She agreed with every one.&nbsp; With Marx she was
+a Socialist, with Carlyle a believer in benevolent despotism, with Spinoza
+a materialist, with Newman a fanatic.&nbsp; I had a long talk with her
+before she left, and tried to understand her; she was an interesting
+girl.&nbsp; &lsquo;I think,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I could choose among
+them if only they would answer one another.&nbsp; But they don&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+They won&rsquo;t listen to one another.&nbsp; They only repeat their
+own case.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There never is an answer,&rdquo; explained the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The kernel of every sincere opinion is truth.&nbsp; This life
+contains only the questions - the solutions to be published in a future
+issue.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She was a curious sort of young woman,&rdquo; smiled the Girton
+Girl; &ldquo;we used to laugh at her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can quite believe it,&rdquo; commented the Philosopher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is so like shopping,&rdquo; said the Old Maid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Like shopping!&rdquo; exclaimed the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>The Old Maid blushed.&nbsp; &ldquo;I was merely thinking,&rdquo;
+she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;It sounds foolish.&nbsp; The idea occurred to
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were thinking of the difficulty of choosing?&rdquo; I
+suggested.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the Old Maid.&nbsp; &ldquo;They will
+show you so many different things, one is quite unable - at least, I
+know it is so in my own case.&nbsp; I get quite angry with myself.&nbsp;
+It seems so weak-minded, but I cannot help it.&nbsp; This very dress
+I have on now - &rdquo;<br />&ldquo;It is very charming,&rdquo; said
+the Woman of the World, &ldquo;in itself.&nbsp; I have been admiring
+it.&nbsp; Though I confess I think you look even better in dark colours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are quite right,&rdquo; replied the Old Maid; &ldquo;myself,
+I hate it.&nbsp; But you know how it is.&nbsp; I seemed to have been
+all the morning in the shop.&nbsp; I felt so tired.&nbsp; If only -
+&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Old Maid stopped abruptly.&nbsp; &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo;
+she said, &ldquo;I am afraid I&rsquo;ve interrupted.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am so glad you told us,&rdquo; said the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Do you know that seems to me an explanation?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of what?&rdquo; asked the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of how so many of us choose our views,&rdquo; returned the
+Philosopher; &ldquo;we don&rsquo;t like to come out of the shop without
+something.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you were about to explain,&rdquo; continued the Philosopher,
+turning to the Woman of the World, &ldquo; - to prove a point.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That I had been talking nonsense,&rdquo; reminded her the
+Minor Poet; &ldquo;if you are sure it will not weary you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; answered the Woman of the World; &ldquo;it
+is quite simple.&nbsp; The gifts of civilisation cannot be the meaningless
+rubbish you advocates of barbarism would make out.&nbsp; I remember
+Uncle Paul&rsquo;s bringing us home a young monkey he had caught in
+Africa.&nbsp; With the aid of a few logs we fitted up a sort of stage-tree
+for this little brother of mine, as I suppose you would call him, in
+the gun-room.&nbsp; It was an admirable imitation of the thing to which
+he and his ancestors must have been for thousands of years accustomed;
+and for the first two nights he slept perched among its branches.&nbsp;
+On the third the little brute turned the poor cat out of its basket
+and slept on the eiderdown, after which no more tree for him, real or
+imitation.&nbsp; At the end of the three months, if we offered him monkey-nuts,
+he would snatch them from our hand and throw them at our head.&nbsp;
+He much preferred gingerbread and weak tea with plenty of sugar; and
+when we wanted him to leave the kitchen fire and enjoy a run in the
+garden, we had to carry him out swearing - I mean he was swearing, of
+course.&nbsp; I quite agree with him.&nbsp; I much prefer this chair
+on which I am sitting - this &lsquo;wooden lumber,&rsquo; as you term
+it - to the most comfortable lump of old red sandstone that the best
+furnished cave could possibly afford; and I am degenerate enough to
+fancy that I look very nice in this frock - much nicer than my brothers
+or sisters to whom it originally belonged: they didn&rsquo;t know how
+to make the best of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You would look charming anyhow,&rdquo; I murmured with conviction,
+&ldquo;even - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know what you are going to say,&rdquo; interrupted the Woman
+of the World; &ldquo;please don&rsquo;t.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s very shocking,
+and, besides, I don&rsquo;t agree with you.&nbsp; I should have had
+a thick, coarse skin, with hair all over me and nothing by way of a
+change.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am contending,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet, &ldquo;that what
+we choose to call civilisation has done little beyond pandering to our
+animal desires.&nbsp; Your argument confirms my theory.&nbsp; Your evidence
+in support of civilisation comes to this - that it can succeed in tickling
+the appetites of a monkey.&nbsp; You need not have gone back so far.&nbsp;
+The noble savage of today flings aside his clear spring water to snatch
+at the missionary&rsquo;s gin.&nbsp; He will even discard his feathers,
+which at least were picturesque, for a chimney-pot hat innocent of nap.&nbsp;
+Plaid trousers and cheap champagne follow in due course.&nbsp; Where
+is the advancement?&nbsp; Civilisation provides us with more luxuries
+for our bodies.&nbsp; That I grant you.&nbsp; Has it brought us any
+real improvement that could not have been arrived at sooner by other
+roads?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It has given us Art,&rdquo; said the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When you say &lsquo;us,&rsquo;&rdquo; replied the Minor Poet,
+&ldquo;I presume you are referring to the one person in half a million
+to whom Art is anything more than a name.&nbsp; Dismissing the countless
+hordes who have absolutely never heard the word, and confining attention
+to the few thousands scattered about Europe and America who prate of
+it, how many of even these do you think it really influences, entering
+into their lives, refining, broadening them?&nbsp; Watch the faces of
+the thin but conscientious crowd streaming wearily through our miles
+of picture galleries and art museums; gaping, with guide-book in hand,
+at ruined temple or cathedral tower; striving, with the spirit of the
+martyr, to feel enthusiasm for Old Masters at which, left to themselves,
+they would enjoy a good laugh - for chipped statues which, uninstructed,
+they would have mistaken for the damaged stock of a suburban tea-garden.&nbsp;
+Not more than one in twelve enjoys what he is looking at, and he by
+no means is bound to be the best of the dozen.&nbsp; Nero was a genuine
+lover of Art; and in modern times August the Strong, of Saxony, &lsquo;the
+man of sin,&rsquo; as Carlyle calls him, has left undeniable proof behind
+him that he was a connoisseur of the first water.&nbsp; One recalls
+names even still more recent.&nbsp; Are we so sure that Art does elevate?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are talking for the sake of talking,&rdquo; told him the
+Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One can talk for the sake of thinking also,&rdquo; reminded
+her the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;The argument is one that has to be
+faced.&nbsp; But admitting that Art has been of service to mankind on
+the whole, that it possesses one-tenth of the soul-forming properties
+claimed for it in the advertisement - which I take to be a generous
+estimate - its effect upon the world at large still remains infinitesimal.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It works down,&rdquo; maintained the Girton Girl.&nbsp; &ldquo;From
+the few it spreads to the many.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The process appears to be somewhat slow,&rdquo; answered the
+Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;The result, for whatever it may be worth, we
+might have obtained sooner by doing away with the middleman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What middleman?&rdquo; demanded the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The artist,&rdquo; explained the Minor Poet; &ldquo;the man
+who has turned the whole thing into a business, the shopman who sells
+emotions over the counter.&nbsp; A Corot, a Turner is, after all, but
+a poor apology compared with a walk in spring through the Black Forest
+or the view from Hampstead Heath on a November afternoon.&nbsp; Had
+we been less occupied acquiring &lsquo;the advantages of civilisation,&rsquo;
+working upward through the weary centuries to the city slum, the corrugated-iron-roofed
+farm, we might have found time to learn to love the beauty of the world.&nbsp;
+As it is, we have been so busy &lsquo;civilising&rsquo; ourselves that
+we have forgotten to live.&nbsp; We are like an old lady I once shared
+a carriage with across the Simplon Pass.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; I remarked, &ldquo;one is going to be saved
+all that bother in the future.&nbsp; They have nearly completed the
+new railway line.&nbsp; One will be able to go from Domo d&rsquo;Orsola
+to Brieg in a little over the two hours.&nbsp; They tell me the tunnelling
+is wonderful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It will be very charming,&rdquo; sighed the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I am looking forward to a future when, thanks to &lsquo;civilisation,&rsquo;
+travel will be done away with altogether.&nbsp; We shall be sewn up
+in a sack and shot there.&nbsp; At the time I speak of we still had
+to be content with the road winding through some of the most magnificent
+scenery in Switzerland.&nbsp; I rather enjoyed the drive myself, but
+my companion was quite unable to appreciate it.&nbsp; Not because she
+did not care for scenery.&nbsp; As she explained to me, she was passionately
+fond of it.&nbsp; But her luggage claimed all her attention.&nbsp; There
+were seventeen pieces of it altogether, and every time the ancient vehicle
+lurched or swayed, which on an average was once every thirty seconds,
+she was in terror lest one or more of them should be jerked out.&nbsp;
+Half her day was taken up in counting them and re-arranging them, and
+the only view in which she was interested was the cloud of dust behind
+us.&nbsp; One bonnet-box did contrive during the course of the journey
+to make its escape, after which she sat with her arms round as many
+of the remaining sixteen articles as she could encompass, and sighed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I knew an Italian countess,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World;
+&ldquo;she had been at school with mamma.&nbsp; She never would go half
+a mile out of her way for scenery.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why should I?&rsquo;
+she would say.&nbsp; &lsquo;What are the painters for?&nbsp; If there
+is anything good, let them bring it to me and I will look at it.&nbsp;
+She said she preferred the picture to the real thing, it was so much
+more artistic.&nbsp; In the landscape itself, she complained, there
+was sure to be a chimney in the distance, or a restaurant in the foreground,
+that spoilt the whole effect.&nbsp; The artist left it out.&nbsp; If
+necessary, he could put in a cow or a pretty girl to help the thing.&nbsp;
+The actual cow, if it happened to be there at all, would probably be
+standing the wrong way round; the girl, in all likelihood, would be
+fat and plain, or be wearing the wrong hat.&nbsp; The artist knew precisely
+the sort of girl that ought to be there, and saw to it that she was
+there, with just the right sort of hat.&nbsp; She said she had found
+it so all through life - the poster was always an improvement on the
+play.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is rapidly coming to that,&rdquo; answered the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Nature, as a well known painter once put it, is not &lsquo;creeping
+up&rsquo; fast enough to keep pace with our ideals.&nbsp; In advanced
+Germany they improve the waterfalls and ornament the rocks.&nbsp; In
+Paris they paint the babies&rsquo; faces.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can hardly lay the blame for that upon civilisation,&rdquo;
+pleaded the Girton Girl.&nbsp; &ldquo;The ancient Briton had a pretty
+taste in woads.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Man&rsquo;s first feeble steps upon the upward path of Art,&rdquo;
+assented the Minor Poet, &ldquo;culminating in the rouge-pot and the
+hair-dye.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come!&rdquo; laughed the Old Maid, &ldquo;you are narrow-minded.&nbsp;
+Civilisation has given us music.&nbsp; Surely you will admit that has
+been of help to us?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; replied the Minor Poet, &ldquo;you speak
+of the one accomplishment with which Civilisation has had little or
+nothing to do, the one art that Nature has bestowed upon man in common
+with the birds and insects, the one intellectual enjoyment we share
+with the entire animal creation, excepting only the canines; and even
+the howling of the dog - one cannot be sure - may be an honest, however
+unsatisfactory, attempt towards a music of his own.&nbsp; I had a fox
+terrier once who invariably howled in tune.&nbsp; Jubal hampered, not
+helped us.&nbsp; He it was who stifled music with the curse of professionalism;
+so that now, like shivering shop-boys paying gate-money to watch games
+they cannot play, we sit mute in our stalls listening to the paid performer.&nbsp;
+But for the musician, music might have been universal.&nbsp; The human
+voice is still the finest instrument that we possess.&nbsp; We have
+allowed it to rust, the better to hear clever manipulators blow through
+tubes and twang wires.&nbsp; The musical world might have been a literal
+expression.&nbsp; Civilisation has contracted it to designate a coterie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World, &ldquo;talking
+of music, have you heard that last symphony of Grieg&rsquo;s?&nbsp;
+It came in the last parcel.&nbsp; I have been practising it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! do let us hear it,&rdquo; urged the Old Maid.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+love Grieg.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Woman of the World rose and opened the piano.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Myself, I have always been of opinion - &rdquo; I remarked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t chatter,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I never liked her,&rdquo; said the Old Maid; &ldquo;I always
+knew she was heartless.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To my thinking,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet, &ldquo;she has
+shown herself a true woman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Really,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World, laughing, &ldquo;I
+shall have to nickname you Dr.&nbsp; Johnson Redivivus.&nbsp; I believe,
+were the subject under discussion, you would admire the coiffure of
+the Furies.&nbsp; It would occur to you that it must have been naturally
+curly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is the Irish blood flowing in his veins,&rdquo; I told
+them.&nbsp; &ldquo;He must always be &lsquo;agin the Government.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We ought to be grateful to him,&rdquo; remarked the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What can be more uninteresting than an agreeable conversation
+I mean, a conversation - where everybody is in agreement?&nbsp; Disagreement,
+on the other hand, is stimulating.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe that is the reason,&rdquo; I suggested, &ldquo;why modern
+society is so tiresome an affair.&nbsp; By tabooing all difference of
+opinion we have eliminated all zest from our intercourse.&nbsp; Religion,
+sex, politics - any subject on which man really thinks, is scrupulously
+excluded from all polite gatherings.&nbsp; Conversation has become a
+chorus; or, as a writer wittily expressed it, the pursuit of the obvious
+to no conclusion.&nbsp; When not occupied with mumbling, &lsquo;I quite
+agree with you&rsquo; - &lsquo;As you say&rsquo; - &lsquo;That is precisely
+my opinion&rsquo; - we sit about and ask each other riddles: &lsquo;What
+did the Pro-Boer?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Why did Julius Caesar?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fashion has succeeded where Force for centuries has failed,&rdquo;
+added the Philosopher.&nbsp; &ldquo;One notices the tendency even in
+public affairs.&nbsp; It is bad form nowadays to belong to the Opposition.&nbsp;
+The chief aim of the Church is to bring itself into line with worldly
+opinion.&nbsp; The Nonconformist Conscience grows every day a still
+smaller voice.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World, &ldquo;that
+was the reason why Emily never got on with poor dear George.&nbsp; He
+agreed with her in everything.&nbsp; She used to say it made her feel
+such a fool.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Man is a fighting animal,&rdquo; explained the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;An officer who had been through the South African War was telling
+me only the other day: he was with a column, and news came in that a
+small commando was moving in the neighbourhood.&nbsp; The column set
+off in the highest of spirits, and after three days&rsquo; trying work
+through a difficult country came up with, as they thought, the enemy.&nbsp;
+As a matter of fact, it was not the enemy, but a troop of Imperial Yeomanry
+that had lost its way.&nbsp; My friend informs me that the language
+with which his column greeted those unfortunate Yeomen - their fellow
+countrymen, men of their own blood - was most unsympathetic.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Myself, I should hate a man who agreed with me,&rdquo; said
+the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; replied the Woman of the World, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+think any would.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; demanded the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was thinking more of you, dear,&rdquo; replied the Woman
+of the World.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad you all concur with me,&rdquo; murmured the Minor
+Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have always myself regarded the Devil&rsquo;s Advocate
+as the most useful officer in the Court of Truth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I remember being present one evening,&rdquo; I observed, &ldquo;at
+a dinner-party where an eminent judge met an equally eminent K.&nbsp;
+C.; whose client the judge that very afternoon had condemned to be hanged.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It is always a satisfaction,&rsquo; remarked to him genially
+the judge, &lsquo;condemning any prisoner defended by you.&nbsp; One
+feels so absolutely certain he was guilty.&rsquo;&nbsp; The K. C. responded
+that he should always remember the judge&rsquo;s words with pride.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who was it,&rdquo; asked the Philosopher, &ldquo;who said:
+&lsquo;Before you can attack a lie, you must strip it of its truth&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It sounds like Emerson,&rdquo; I ventured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very possibly,&rdquo; assented the Philosopher; &ldquo;very
+possibly not.&nbsp; There is much in reputation.&nbsp; Most poetry gets
+attributed to Shakespeare.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I entered a certain drawing-room about a week ago,&rdquo;
+I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;&lsquo;We were just speaking about you,&rsquo;
+exclaimed my hostess.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is not this yours?&rsquo;&nbsp; She
+pointed to an article in a certain magazine lying open on the table.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;No,&rsquo; I replied; &lsquo;one or two people have asked me
+that same question.&nbsp; It seems to me rather an absurd article,&rsquo;
+I added.&nbsp; &lsquo;I cannot say I thought very much of it,&rsquo;
+agreed my hostess.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help it,&rdquo; said the Old Maid.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+shall always dislike a girl who deliberately sells herself for money.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what else is there to sell herself for?&rdquo; asked the
+Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She should not sell herself at all,&rdquo; retorted the Old
+Maid, with warmth.&nbsp; &ldquo;She should give herself, for love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are we not in danger of drifting into a difference of opinion
+concerning the meaning of words merely?&rdquo; replied the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;We have all of us, I suppose, heard the story of the Jew clothier
+remonstrated with by the Rabbi for doing business on the Sabbath.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Doing bithness!&rsquo; retorted the accused with indignation;
+&lsquo;you call thelling a thuit like that for eighteen shillings doing
+bithness!&nbsp; By, ith&rsquo;s tharity!&rsquo;&nbsp; This &lsquo;love&rsquo;
+for which the maiden gives herself - let us be a little more exact -
+does it not include, as a matter of course, material more tangible?&nbsp;
+Would not the adored one look somewhat astonished on discovering that,
+having given herself for &lsquo;love,&rsquo; love was all that her lover
+proposed to give for her.&nbsp; Would she not naturally exclaim: &lsquo;But
+where&rsquo;s the house, to say nothing of the fittings?&nbsp; And what
+are we to live on&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is you now who are playing with words,&rdquo; asserted
+the Old Maid.&nbsp; &ldquo;The greater includes the less.&nbsp; Loving
+her, he would naturally desire - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With all his worldly goods her to endow,&rdquo; completed
+for her the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;In other words, he pays a price
+for her.&nbsp; So far as love is concerned, they are quits.&nbsp; In
+marriage, the man gives himself to the woman as the woman gives herself
+to the man.&nbsp; Man has claimed, I am aware, greater liberty for himself;
+but the claim has always been vehemently repudiated by woman.&nbsp;
+She has won her case.&nbsp; Legally and morally now husband and wife
+are bound by the same laws.&nbsp; This being so, her contention that
+she gives herself falls to the ground.&nbsp; She exchanges herself.&nbsp;
+Over and above, she alone of the twain claims a price.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say a living wage,&rdquo; corrected the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Lazy rubbish lolls in petticoats, and idle stupidity struts in
+trousers.&nbsp; But, class for class, woman does her share of the world&rsquo;s
+work.&nbsp; Among the poor, of the two it is she who labours the longer.&nbsp;
+There is a many-versed ballad popular in country districts.&nbsp; Often
+I have heard it sung in shrill, piping voice at harvest supper or barn
+dance.&nbsp; The chorus runs -</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A man&rsquo;s work &rsquo;tis till set of sun,<br />But a woman&rsquo;s
+work is never done!</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;My housekeeper came to me a few months ago,&rdquo; said the
+Woman of the World, &ldquo;to tell me that my cook had given notice.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am sorry to hear it,&rsquo; I answered; &lsquo;has she found
+a better place?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I am not so sure about that,&rsquo;
+answered Markham; &lsquo;she&rsquo;s going as general servant.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;As general servant!&rsquo; I exclaimed.&nbsp; &lsquo;To old Hudson,
+at the coal wharf,&rsquo; answered Markham.&nbsp; &lsquo;His wife died
+last year, if you remember.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s got seven children, poor
+man, and no one to look after them.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I suppose you
+mean,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;that she&rsquo;s marrying him.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Well, that&rsquo;s the way she puts it,&rsquo; laughed Markham.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What I tell her is, she&rsquo;s giving up a good home and fifty
+pounds a year, to be a general servant on nothing a week.&nbsp; But
+they never see it.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I recollect her,&rdquo; answered the Minor Poet, &ldquo;a
+somewhat depressing lady.&nbsp; Let me take another case.&nbsp; You
+possess a remarkably pretty housemaid - Edith, if I have it rightly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have noticed her,&rdquo; remarked the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Her manners strike me as really quite exceptional.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I never could stand any one about me with carroty hair,&rdquo;
+remarked the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should hardly call it carroty,&rdquo; contended the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;There is a golden tint of much richness underlying, when you
+look closely.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She is a very good girl,&rdquo; agreed the Woman of the World;
+&ldquo;but I am afraid I shall have to get rid of her.&nbsp; The other
+woman servants don&rsquo;t get on with her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know whether she is engaged or not?&rdquo; demanded
+the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;At the present moment,&rdquo; answered the Woman of the World,
+&ldquo;she is walking out, I believe, with the eldest son of the &lsquo;Blue
+Lion.&rsquo;&nbsp; But she is never adverse to a change.&nbsp; If you
+are really in earnest about the matter - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was not thinking of myself,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But suppose some young gentleman of personal attractions equal
+to those of the &lsquo;Blue Lion,&rsquo; or even not quite equal, possessed
+of two or three thousand a year, were to enter the lists, do you think
+the &lsquo;Blue Lion&rsquo; would stand much chance?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Among the Upper Classes,&rdquo; continued the Minor Poet,
+&ldquo;opportunity for observing female instinct hardly exists.&nbsp;
+The girl&rsquo;s choice is confined to lovers able to pay the price
+demanded, if not by the beloved herself, by those acting on her behalf.&nbsp;
+But would a daughter of the Working Classes ever hesitate, other things
+being equal, between Mayfair and Seven Dials?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me ask you one,&rdquo; chimed in the Girton Girl.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Would a bricklayer hesitate any longer between a duchess and
+a scullery-maid?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But duchesses don&rsquo;t fall in love with bricklayers,&rdquo;
+returned the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now, why not?&nbsp; The stockbroker
+flirts with the barmaid - cases have been known; often he marries her.&nbsp;
+Does the lady out shopping ever fall in love with the waiter at the
+bun-shop?&nbsp; Hardly ever.&nbsp; Lordlings marry ballet girls, but
+ladies rarely put their heart and fortune at the feet of the Lion Comique.&nbsp;
+Manly beauty and virtue are not confined to the House of Lords and its
+dependencies.&nbsp; How do you account for the fact that while it is
+common enough for the man to look beneath him, the woman will almost
+invariably prefer her social superior, and certainly never tolerate
+her inferior?&nbsp; Why should King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid appear
+to us a beautiful legend, while Queen Cophetua and the Tramp would be
+ridiculous?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The simple explanation is,&rdquo; expounded the Girton Girl,
+&ldquo;woman is so immeasurably man&rsquo;s superior that only by weighting
+him more or less heavily with worldly advantages can any semblance of
+balance be obtained.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; answered the Minor Poet, &ldquo;you surely agree
+with me that woman is justified in demanding this &lsquo;make-weight.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The woman gives her love, if you will.&nbsp; It is the art treasure,
+the gilded vase thrown in with the pound of tea; but the tea has to
+be paid for.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It all sounds very clever,&rdquo; commented the Old Maid;
+&ldquo;yet I fail to see what good comes of ridiculing a thing one&rsquo;s
+heart tells one is sacred.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do not be so sure I am wishful to ridicule,&rdquo; answered
+the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;Love is a wondrous statue God carved with
+His own hands and placed in the Garden of Life, long ago.&nbsp; And
+man, knowing not sin, worshipped her, seeing her beautiful.&nbsp; Till
+the time came when man learnt evil; then saw that the statue was naked,
+and was ashamed of it.&nbsp; Since when he has been busy, draping it,
+now in the fashion of this age, now in the fashion of that.&nbsp; We
+have shod her in dainty bottines, regretting the size of her feet.&nbsp;
+We employ the best artistes to design for her cunning robes that shall
+disguise her shape.&nbsp; Each season we fix fresh millinery upon her
+changeless head.&nbsp; We hang around her robes of woven words.&nbsp;
+Only the promise of her ample breasts we cannot altogether hide, shocking
+us not a little; only that remains to tell us that beneath the tawdry
+tissues still stands the changeless statue God carved with His own hands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I like you better when you talk like that,&rdquo; said the
+Old Maid; &ldquo;but I never feel quite sure of you.&nbsp; All I mean,
+of course, is that money should not be her first consideration.&nbsp;
+Marriage for money - it is not marriage; one cannot speak of it.&nbsp;
+Of course, one must be reasonable.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; persisted the Minor Poet, &ldquo;you would
+have her think also of her dinner, of her clothes, her necessities,
+luxuries.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is not only for herself,&rdquo; answered the Old Maid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For whom?&rdquo; demanded the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>The white hands of the Old Maid fluttered on her lap, revealing her
+trouble; for of the old school is this sweet friend of mine.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There are the children to be considered,&rdquo; I explained.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;A woman feels it even without knowing.&nbsp; It is her instinct.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Old Maid smiled on me her thanks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is where I was leading,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Woman has been appointed by Nature the trustee of the children.&nbsp;
+It is her duty to think of them, to plan for them.&nbsp; If in marriage
+she does not take the future into consideration, she is untrue to her
+trust.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Before you go further,&rdquo; interrupted the Philosopher,
+&ldquo;there is an important point to be considered.&nbsp; Are children
+better or worse for a pampered upbringing?&nbsp; Is not poverty often
+the best school?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is what I always tell George,&rdquo; remarked the Woman
+of the World, &ldquo;when he grumbles at the tradesmen&rsquo;s books.&nbsp;
+If Papa could only have seen his way to being a poor man, I feel I should
+have been a better wife.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t suggest the possibility,&rdquo; I begged
+the Woman of the World; &ldquo;the thought is too bewildering.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were never imaginative,&rdquo; replied the Woman of the
+World.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not to that extent,&rdquo; I admitted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;The best mothers make the worst children,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+quoted the Girton Girl.&nbsp; &ldquo;I intend to bear that in mind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your mother was a very beautiful character - one of the most
+beautiful I ever knew,&rdquo; remarked the Old Maid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is some truth in the saying,&rdquo; agreed the Minor
+Poet, &ldquo;but only because it is the exception; and Nature invariably
+puts forth all her powers to counteract the result of deviation from
+her laws.&nbsp; Were it the rule, then the bad mother would be the good
+mother and the good mother the bad mother.&nbsp; And - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t go on,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I was up late last night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was merely going to show,&rdquo; explained the Minor Poet,
+&ldquo;that all roads lead to the law that the good mother is the best
+mother.&nbsp; Her duty is to her children, to guard their infancy, to
+take thought for their equipment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you seriously ask us to believe,&rdquo; demanded the Old
+Maid, &ldquo;that the type of woman who does marry for money considers
+for a single moment any human being but herself?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not consciously, perhaps,&rdquo; admitted the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Our instincts, that they may guide us easily, are purposely made
+selfish.&nbsp; The flower secretes honey for its own purposes, not with
+any sense of charity towards the bee.&nbsp; Man works, as he thinks,
+for beer and baccy; in reality, for the benefit of unborn generations.&nbsp;
+The woman, in acting selfishly, is assisting Nature&rsquo;s plans.&nbsp;
+In olden days she chose her mate for his strength.&nbsp; She, possibly
+enough, thought only of herself; he could best provide for her then
+simple wants, best guard her from the disagreeable accidents of nomadic
+life.&nbsp; But Nature, unseen, directing her, was thinking of the savage
+brood needing still more a bold protector.&nbsp; Wealth now is the substitute
+for strength.&nbsp; The rich man is the strong man.&nbsp; The woman&rsquo;s
+heart unconsciously goes out to him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do men never marry for money?&rdquo; inquired the Girton Girl.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I ask merely for information.&nbsp; Maybe I have been misinformed,
+but I have heard of countries where the <i>dot</i> is considered of
+almost more importance than the bride.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The German officer,&rdquo; I ventured to strike in, &ldquo;is
+literally on sale.&nbsp; Young lieutenants are most expensive, and even
+an elderly colonel costs a girl a hundred thousand marks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; corrected the Minor Poet, &ldquo;costs her
+father.&nbsp; The Continental husband demands a dowry with his wife,
+and sees that he gets it.&nbsp; He in his turn has to save and scrape
+for years to provide each of his daughters with the necessary <i>dot</i>.&nbsp;
+It comes to the same thing precisely.&nbsp; Your argument could only
+apply were woman equally with man a wealth producer.&nbsp; As it is,
+a woman&rsquo;s wealth is invariably the result of a marriage, either
+her own or that of some shrewd ancestress.&nbsp; And as regards the
+heiress, the principle of sale and purchase, if I may be forgiven the
+employment of common terms, is still more religiously enforced.&nbsp;
+It is not often that the heiress is given away; stolen she may be occasionally,
+much to the indignation of Lord Chancellors and other guardians of such
+property; the thief is very properly punished - imprisoned, if need
+be.&nbsp; If handed over legitimately, her price is strictly exacted,
+not always in money - that she possesses herself, maybe in sufficiency;
+it enables her to bargain for other advantages no less serviceable to
+her children - for title, place, position.&nbsp; In the same way the
+Neolithic woman, herself of exceptional strength and ferocity, may have
+been enabled to bestow a thought upon her savage lover&rsquo;s beauty,
+his prehistoric charm of manner; thus in other directions no less necessary
+assisting the development of the race.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot argue with you,&rdquo; said the Old Maid.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+know one case.&nbsp; They were both poor; it would have made no difference
+to her, but it did to him.&nbsp; Maybe I am wrong, but it seems to me
+that, as you say, our instincts are given us to guide us.&nbsp; I do
+not know.&nbsp; The future is not in our hands; it does not belong to
+us.&nbsp; Perhaps it were wiser to listen to the voices that are sent
+to us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I remember a case, also,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World.&nbsp;
+She had risen to prepare the tea, and was standing with her back to
+us.&nbsp; &ldquo;Like the woman you speak of, she was poor, but one
+of the sweetest creatures I have ever known.&nbsp; I cannot help thinking
+it would have been good for the world had she been a mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; cried the Minor Poet, &ldquo;you help
+me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I always do, according to you,&rdquo; laughed the Woman of
+the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;I appear to resemble the bull that tossed the
+small boy high into the apple-tree he had been trying all the afternoon
+to climb.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is very kind of you,&rdquo; answered the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;My argument is that woman is justified in regarding marriage
+as the end of her existence, the particular man as but a means.&nbsp;
+The woman you speak of acted selfishly, rejecting the crown of womanhood
+because not tendered to her by hands she had chosen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You would have us marry without love?&rdquo; asked the Girton
+Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With love, if possible,&rdquo; answered the Minor Poet; &ldquo;without,
+rather than not at all.&nbsp; It is the fulfilment of the woman&rsquo;s
+law.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You would make of us goods and chattels,&rdquo; cried the
+Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would make of you what you are,&rdquo; returned the Minor
+Poet, &ldquo;the priestesses of Nature&rsquo;s temple, leading man to
+the worship of her mysteries.&nbsp; An American humorist has described
+marriage as the craving of some young man to pay for some young woman&rsquo;s
+board and lodging.&nbsp; There is no escaping from this definition;
+let us accept it.&nbsp; It is beautiful - so far as the young man is
+concerned.&nbsp; He sacrifices himself, deprives himself, that he may
+give.&nbsp; That is love.&nbsp; But from the woman&rsquo;s point of
+view?&nbsp; If she accept thinking only of herself, then it is a sordid
+bargain on her part.&nbsp; To understand her, to be just to her, we
+must look deeper.&nbsp; Not sexual, but maternal love is her kingdom.&nbsp;
+She gives herself not to her lover, but through her lover to the great
+Goddess of the Myriad Breasts that shadows ever with her guardian wings
+Life from the outstretched hand of Death.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She may be a nice enough girl from Nature&rsquo;s point of
+view,&rdquo; said the Old Maid; &ldquo;personally, I shall never like
+her.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;What is the time?&rdquo; asked the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>I looked at my watch.&nbsp; &ldquo;Twenty past four,&rdquo; I answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Exactly?&rdquo; demanded the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Precisely,&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Strange,&rdquo; murmured the Girton Girl.&nbsp; &ldquo;There
+is no accounting for it, yet it always is so.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is there no accounting for?&rdquo; I inquired.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What is strange?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is a German superstition,&rdquo; explained the Girton Girl,
+&ldquo;I learnt it at school.&nbsp; Whenever complete silence falls
+upon any company, it is always twenty minutes past the hour.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why do we talk so much?&rdquo; demanded the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As a matter of fact,&rdquo; observed the Woman of the World,
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we do - not we, personally, not much.&nbsp;
+Most of our time we appear to be listening to you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then why do I talk so much, if you prefer to put it that way?&rdquo;
+continued the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;If I talked less, one of you
+others would have to talk more.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There would be that advantage about it,&rdquo; agreed the
+Philosopher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In all probability, you,&rdquo; returned to him the Minor
+Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;Whether as a happy party we should gain or lose by
+the exchange, it is not for me to say, though I have my own opinion.&nbsp;
+The essential remains - that the stream of chatter must be kept perpetually
+flowing.&nbsp; Why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is a man I know,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;you may have
+met him, a man named Longrush.&nbsp; He is not exactly a bore.&nbsp;
+A bore expects you to listen to him.&nbsp; This man is apparently unaware
+whether you are listening to him or not.&nbsp; He is not a fool.&nbsp;
+A fool is occasionally amusing - Longrush never.&nbsp; No subject comes
+amiss to him.&nbsp; Whatever the topic, he has something uninteresting
+to say about it.&nbsp; He talks as a piano-organ grinds out music steadily,
+strenuously, tirelessly.&nbsp; The moment you stand or sit him down
+he begins, to continue ceaselessly till wheeled away in cab or omnibus
+to his next halting-place.&nbsp; As in the case of his prototype, his
+rollers are changed about once a month to suit the popular taste.&nbsp;
+In January he repeats to you Dan Leno&rsquo;s jokes, and gives you other
+people&rsquo;s opinions concerning the Old Masters at the Guild-hall.&nbsp;
+In June he recounts at length what is generally thought concerning the
+Academy, and agrees with most people on most points connected with the
+Opera.&nbsp; If forgetful for a moment - as an Englishman may be excused
+for being - whether it be summer or winter, one may assure oneself by
+waiting to see whether Longrush is enthusing over cricket or football.&nbsp;
+He is always up-to-date.&nbsp; The last new Shakespeare, the latest
+scandal, the man of the hour, the next nine days&rsquo; wonder - by
+the evening Longrush has his roller ready.&nbsp; In my early days of
+journalism I had to write each evening a column for a provincial daily,
+headed &lsquo;What People are Saying.&rsquo;&nbsp; The editor was precise
+in his instructions.&nbsp; &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t want your opinions;
+I don&rsquo;t want you to be funny; never mind whether the thing appears
+to you to be interesting or not.&nbsp; I want it to be real, the things
+people <i>are</i> saying.&rsquo;&nbsp; I tried to be conscientious.&nbsp;
+Each paragraph began with &lsquo;That.&rsquo;&nbsp; I wrote the column
+because I wanted the thirty shillings.&nbsp; Why anybody ever read it,
+I fail to understand to this day; but I believe it was one of the popular
+features of the paper.&nbsp; Longrush invariably brings back to my mind
+the dreary hours I spent penning that fatuous record.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think I know the man you mean,&rdquo; said the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I had forgotten his name.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought it possible you might have met him,&rdquo; I replied.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Well, my cousin Edith was arranging a dinner-party the other
+day, and, as usual, she did me the honour to ask my advice.&nbsp; Generally
+speaking, I do not give advice nowadays.&nbsp; As a very young man I
+was generous with it.&nbsp; I have since come to the conclusion that
+responsibility for my own muddles and mistakes is sufficient.&nbsp;
+However, I make an exception in Edith&rsquo;s case, knowing that never
+by any chance will she follow it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Speaking of editors,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;Bates
+told me at the club the other night that he had given up writing the
+&lsquo;Answers to Correspondents&rsquo; personally, since discovery
+of the fact that he had been discussing at some length the attractive
+topic, &lsquo;Duties of a Father,&rsquo; with his own wife, who is somewhat
+of a humorist.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There was the wife of a clergyman my mother used to tell of,&rdquo;
+said the Woman of the World, &ldquo;who kept copies of her husband&rsquo;s
+sermons.&nbsp; She would read him extracts from them in bed, in place
+of curtain lectures.&nbsp; She explained it saved her trouble.&nbsp;
+Everything she felt she wanted to say to him he had said himself so
+much more forcibly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The argument always appears to me weak,&rdquo; said the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;If only the perfect may preach, our pulpits would remain empty.&nbsp;
+Am I to ignore the peace that slips into my soul when perusing the Psalms,
+to deny myself all benefit from the wisdom of the Proverbs, because
+neither David nor Solomon was a worthy casket of the jewels that God
+had placed in them?&nbsp; Is a temperance lecturer never to quote the
+self-reproaches of poor Cassio because Master Will Shakespeare, there
+is evidence to prove, was a gentleman, alas! much too fond of the bottle?&nbsp;
+The man that beats the drum may be himself a coward.&nbsp; It is the
+drum that is the important thing to us, not the drummer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of all my friends,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World, &ldquo;the
+one who has the most trouble with her servants is poor Jane Meredith.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am exceedingly sorry to hear it,&rdquo; observed the Philosopher,
+after a slight pause.&nbsp; &ldquo;But forgive me, I really do not see
+- &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; answered the Woman of the World.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I thought everybody knew &lsquo;Jane Meredith.&rsquo;&nbsp; She
+writes &lsquo;The Perfect Home&rsquo; column for <i>The Woman&rsquo;s
+World</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It will always remain a riddle, one supposes,&rdquo; said
+the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;Which is the real ego - I, the author of
+&lsquo;The Simple Life,&rsquo; fourteenth edition, three and sixpence
+net - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; pleaded the Old Maid, with a smile; &ldquo;please
+don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t what?&rdquo; demanded the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ridicule it - make fun of it, even though it may
+happen to be your own.&nbsp; There are parts of it I know by heart.&nbsp;
+I say them over to myself when -&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t spoil it for me.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The Old Maid laughed, but nervously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; reassured her the Minor Poet, &ldquo;do
+not be afraid.&nbsp; No one regards that poem with more reverence than
+do I.&nbsp; You can have but small conception what a help it is to me
+also.&nbsp; I, too, so often read it to myself; and when -&nbsp; We
+understand.&nbsp; As one who turns his back on scenes of riot to drink
+the moonlight in quiet ways, I go to it for sweetness and for peace.&nbsp;
+So much do I admire the poem, I naturally feel desire and curiosity
+to meet its author, to know him.&nbsp; I should delight, drawing him
+aside from the crowded room, to grasp him by the hand, to say to him:
+&lsquo;My dear - my very dear Mr. Minor Poet, I am so glad to meet you!&nbsp;
+I would I could tell you how much your beautiful work has helped me.&nbsp;
+This, my dear sir - this is indeed privilege!&rsquo;&nbsp; But I can
+picture so vividly the bored look with which he would receive my gush.&nbsp;
+I can imagine the contempt with which he, the pure liver, would regard
+me did he know me - me, the liver of the fool&rsquo;s hot days.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A short French story I once read somewhere,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;rather impressed me.&nbsp; A poet or dramatist - I am not sure
+which - had married the daughter of a provincial notary.&nbsp; There
+was nothing particularly attractive about her except her <i>dot</i>.&nbsp;
+He had run through his own small fortune and was in some need.&nbsp;
+She worshipped him and was, as he used to boast to his friends, the
+ideal wife for a poet.&nbsp; She cooked admirably - a useful accomplishment
+during the first half-dozen years of their married life; and afterwards,
+when fortune came to him, managed his affairs to perfection, by her
+care and economy keeping all worldly troubles away from his study door.&nbsp;
+An ideal <i>Hausfrau</i>, undoubtedly, but of course no companion for
+our poet.&nbsp; So they went their ways; till, choosing as in all things
+the right moment, when she could best be spared, the good lady died
+and was buried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And here begins the interest of the story, somewhat late.&nbsp;
+One article of furniture, curiously out of place among the rich appointments
+of their fine <i>h&ocirc;tel</i>, the woman had insisted on retaining,
+a heavy, clumsily carved oak desk her father had once used in his office,
+and which he had given to her for her own as a birthday present back
+in the days of her teens.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You must read the story for yourselves if you would enjoy
+the subtle sadness that surrounds it, the delicate aroma of regret through
+which it moves.&nbsp; The husband finding after some little difficulty
+the right key, fits it into the lock of the bureau.&nbsp; As a piece
+of furniture, plain, solid, squat, it has always jarred upon his artistic
+sense.&nbsp; She too, his good, affectionate Sara, had been plain, solid,
+a trifle squat.&nbsp; Perhaps that was why the poor woman had clung
+so obstinately to the one thing in the otherwise perfect house that
+was quite out of place there.&nbsp; Ah, well! she is gone now, the good
+creature.&nbsp; And the bureau - no, the bureau shall remain.&nbsp;
+Nobody will need to come into this room, no one ever did come there
+but the woman herself.&nbsp; Perhaps she had not been altogether so
+happy as she might have been.&nbsp; A husband less intellectual - one
+from whom she would not have lived so far apart - one who could have
+entered into her simple, commonplace life! it might have been better
+for both of them.&nbsp; He draws down the lid, pulls out the largest
+drawer.&nbsp; It is full of manuscripts, folded and tied neatly with
+ribbons once gay, now faded.&nbsp; He thinks at first they are his own
+writings - things begun and discarded, reserved by her with fondness.&nbsp;
+She thought so much of him, the good soul! Really, she could not have
+been so dull as he had deemed her.&nbsp; The power to appreciate rightly
+- this, at least, she must have possessed.&nbsp; He unties the ribbon.&nbsp;
+No, the writing is her own, corrected, altered, underlined.&nbsp; He
+opens a second, a third.&nbsp; Then with a smile he sits down to read.&nbsp;
+What can they be like, these poems, these stories?&nbsp; He laughs,
+smoothing the crumpled paper, foreseeing the trite commonness, the shallow
+sentiment.&nbsp; The poor child!&nbsp; So she likewise would have been
+a <i>litt&eacute;rateure</i>.&nbsp; Even she had her ambition, her dream.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The sunshine climbs the wall behind him, creeps stealthily
+across the ceiling of the room, slips out softly by the window, leaving
+him alone.&nbsp; All these years he had been living with a fellow poet.&nbsp;
+They should have been comrades, and they had never spoken.&nbsp; Why
+had she hidden herself?&nbsp; Why had she left him, never revealing
+herself?&nbsp; Years ago, when they were first married - he remembers
+now - she had slipped little blue-bound copy-books into his pocket,
+laughing, blushing, asking him to read them.&nbsp; How could he have
+guessed?&nbsp; Of course, he had forgotten them.&nbsp; Later, they had
+disappeared again; it had never occurred to him to think.&nbsp; Often
+in the earlier days she had tried to talk to him about his work.&nbsp;
+Had he but looked into her eyes, he might have understood.&nbsp; But
+she had always been so homely-seeming, so good.&nbsp; Who would have
+suspected?&nbsp; Then suddenly the blood rushes into his face.&nbsp;
+What must have been her opinion of his work?&nbsp; All these years he
+had imagined her the amazed devotee, uncomprehending but admiring.&nbsp;
+He had read to her at times, comparing himself the while with Moli&egrave;re
+reading to his cook.&nbsp; What right had she to play this trick upon
+him?&nbsp; The folly of it!&nbsp; The pity of it!&nbsp; He would have
+been so glad of her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What becomes, I wonder,&rdquo; mused the Philosopher, &ldquo;of
+the thoughts that are never spoken?&nbsp; We know that in Nature nothing
+is wasted; the very cabbage is immortal, living again in altered form.&nbsp;
+A thought published or spoken we can trace, but such must only be a
+small percentage.&nbsp; It often occurs to me walking down the street.&nbsp;
+Each man and woman that I pass by, each silently spinning his silken
+thought, short or long, fine or coarse.&nbsp; What becomes of it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I heard you say once,&rdquo; remarked the Old Maid to the
+Minor Poet, &ldquo;that &lsquo;thoughts are in the air,&rsquo; that
+the poet but gathers them as a child plucks wayside blossoms to shape
+them into nosegays.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was in confidence,&rdquo; replied the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Please do not let it get about, or my publisher will use it as
+an argument for cutting down my royalties.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have always remembered it,&rdquo; answered the Old Maid.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It seemed so true.&nbsp; A thought suddenly comes to you.&nbsp;
+I think of them sometimes, as of little motherless babes creeping into
+our brains for shelter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is a pretty idea,&rdquo; mused the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+shall see them in the twilight: pathetic little round-eyed things of
+goblin shape, dimly luminous against the darkening air.&nbsp; Whence
+come you, little tender Thought, tapping at my brain?&nbsp; From the
+lonely forest, where the peasant mother croons above the cradle while
+she knits?&nbsp; Thought of Love and Longing: lies your gallant father
+with his boyish eyes unblinking underneath some tropic sun?&nbsp; Thought
+of Life and Thought of Death: are you of patrician birth, cradled by
+some high-born maiden, pacing slowly some sweet garden?&nbsp; Or did
+you spring to life amid the din of loom or factory?&nbsp; Poor little
+nameless foundlings!&nbsp; I shall feel myself in future quite a philanthropist,
+taking them in, adopting them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have not yet decided,&rdquo; reminded him the Woman of
+the World, &ldquo;which you really are: the gentleman we get for three
+and sixpence net, or the one we are familiar with, the one we get for
+nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t think I am suggesting any comparison,&rdquo;
+continued the Woman of the World, &ldquo;but I have been interested
+in the question since George joined a Bohemian club and has taken to
+bringing down minor celebrities from Saturday to Monday.&nbsp; I hope
+I am not narrow-minded, but there is one gentleman I have been compelled
+to put my foot down on.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I really do not think he will complain,&rdquo; I interrupted.&nbsp;
+The Woman of the World possesses, I should explain, the daintiest of
+feet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is heavier than you think,&rdquo; replied the Woman of
+the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;George persists I ought to put up with him because
+he is a true poet.&nbsp; I cannot admit the argument.&nbsp; The poet
+I honestly admire.&nbsp; I like to have him about the place.&nbsp; He
+lies on my drawing-room table in white vellum, and helps to give tone
+to the room.&nbsp; For the poet I am quite prepared to pay the four-and-six
+demanded; the man I don&rsquo;t want.&nbsp; To be candid, he is not
+worth his own discount.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is hardly fair,&rdquo; urged the Minor Poet, &ldquo;to
+confine the discussion to poets.&nbsp; A friend of mine some years ago
+married one of the most charming women in New York, and that is saying
+a good deal.&nbsp; Everybody congratulated him, and at the outset he
+was pleased enough with himself.&nbsp; I met him two years later in
+Geneva, and we travelled together as far as Rome.&nbsp; He and his wife
+scarcely spoke to one another the whole journey, and before I left him
+he was good enough to give me advice which to another man might be useful.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Never marry a charming woman,&rsquo; he counselled me.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Anything more unutterably dull than &ldquo;the charming woman&rdquo;
+outside business hours you cannot conceive.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think we must agree to regard the preacher,&rdquo; concluded
+the Philosopher, &ldquo;merely as a brother artist.&nbsp; The singer
+may be a heavy, fleshy man with a taste for beer, but his voice stirs
+our souls.&nbsp; The preacher holds aloft his banner of purity.&nbsp;
+He waves it over his own head as much as over the heads of those around
+him.&nbsp; He does not cry with the Master, &lsquo;Come to Me,&rsquo;
+but &lsquo;Come with me, and be saved.&rsquo;&nbsp; The prayer &lsquo;Forgive
+them&rsquo; was the prayer not of the Priest, but of the God.&nbsp;
+The prayer dictated to the Disciples was &lsquo;Forgive us,&rsquo; &lsquo;Deliver
+us.&rsquo;&nbsp; Not that he should be braver, not that he should be
+stronger than they that press behind him, is needed of the leader, but
+that he should know the way.&nbsp; He, too, may faint, he, too, may
+fall; only he alone must never turn his back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is quite comprehensible, looked at from one point of view,&rdquo;
+remarked the Minor Poet, &ldquo;that he who gives most to others should
+himself be weak.&nbsp; The professional athlete pays, I believe, the
+price of central weakness.&nbsp; It is a theory of mine that the charming,
+delightful people one meets with in society are people who have dishonestly
+kept to themselves gifts entrusted to them by Nature for the benefit
+of the whole community.&nbsp; Your conscientious, hard-working humorist
+is in private life a dull dog.&nbsp; The dishonest trustee of laughter,
+on the other hand, robbing the world of wit bestowed upon him for public
+purposes, becomes a brilliant conversationalist.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; added the Minor Poet, turning to me, &ldquo;you
+were speaking of a man named Longrush, a great talker.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A long talker,&rdquo; I corrected.&nbsp; &ldquo;My cousin
+mentioned him third in her list of invitations.&nbsp; &lsquo;Longrush,&rsquo;
+she said with conviction, &lsquo;we must have Longrush.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Isn&rsquo;t he rather tiresome?&rsquo; I suggested.&nbsp; &lsquo;He
+is tiresome,&rsquo; she agreed, &lsquo;but then he&rsquo;s so useful.&nbsp;
+He never lets the conversation drop.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why is it?&rdquo; asked the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why,
+when we meet together, must we chatter like a mob of sparrows?&nbsp;
+Why must every assembly to be successful sound like the parrot-house
+of a zoological garden?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I remember a parrot story,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;but I forget
+who told it to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe one of us will remember as you go on,&rdquo; suggested
+the Philosopher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A man,&rdquo; I said - &ldquo;an old farmer, if I remember
+rightly - had read a lot of parrot stories, or had heard them at the
+club.&nbsp; As a result he thought he would like himself to be the owner
+of a parrot, so journeyed to a dealer and, according to his own account,
+paid rather a long price for a choice specimen.&nbsp; A week later he
+re-entered the shop, the parrot borne behind him by a boy.&nbsp; &lsquo;This
+bird,&rsquo; said the farmer, &lsquo;this bird you sold me last week
+ain&rsquo;t worth a sovereign!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the
+matter with it?&rsquo; demanded the dealer.&nbsp; &lsquo;How do I know
+what&rsquo;s the matter with the bird?&rsquo; answered the farmer.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What I tell you is that it ain&rsquo;t worth a sovereign - &lsquo;tain&rsquo;
+t worth a half a sovereign!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Why not?&rsquo; persisted
+the dealer; &lsquo;it talks all right, don&rsquo;t it?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Talks!&rsquo; retorted the indignant farmer, &lsquo;the damn
+thing talks all day, but it never says anything funny!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A friend of mine,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;once
+had a parrot - &rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you come into the garden?&rdquo; said the Woman
+of the World, rising and leading the way.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Myself,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet, &ldquo;I read the book
+with the most intense enjoyment.&nbsp; I found it inspiring - so inspiring,
+I fear I did not give it sufficient attention.&nbsp; I must read it
+again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I understand you,&rdquo; said the Philosopher.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+book that really interests us makes us forget that we are reading.&nbsp;
+Just as the most delightful conversation is when nobody in particular
+appears to be talking.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you remember meeting that Russian man George brought down
+here about three months ago?&rdquo; asked the Woman of the World, turning
+to the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;I forget his name.&nbsp; As a matter
+of fact, I never knew it.&nbsp; It was quite unpronounceable and, except
+that it ended, of course, with a double f, equally impossible to spell.&nbsp;
+I told him frankly at the beginning I should call him by his Christian
+name, which fortunately was Nicholas.&nbsp; He was very nice about it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I remember him distinctly,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;A charming man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was equally charmed with you,&rdquo; replied the Woman
+of the World.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can credit it easily,&rdquo; murmured the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;One of the most intelligent men I ever met.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You talked together for two hours in a corner,&rdquo; said
+the Woman of the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;I asked him when you had gone what
+he thought of you.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah! what a talker!&rsquo; he exclaimed,
+making a gesture of admiration with his hands.&nbsp; &lsquo;I thought
+maybe you would notice it,&rsquo; I answered him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Tell
+me, what did he talk about?&rsquo;&nbsp; I was curious to know; you
+had been so absorbed in yourselves and so oblivious to the rest of us.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Upon my word,&rsquo; he replied, &lsquo;I really cannot tell
+you.&nbsp; Do you know, I am afraid, now I come to think of it, that
+I must have monopolised the conversation.&rsquo;&nbsp; I was glad to
+be able to ease his mind on that point.&nbsp; &lsquo;I really don&rsquo;t
+think you did,&rsquo; I assured him.&nbsp; I should have felt equally
+confident had I not been present.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were quite correct,&rdquo; returned the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I have a distinct recollection of having made one or two observations
+myself.&nbsp; Indeed, if I may say so, I talked rather well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You may also recollect,&rdquo; continued the Woman of the
+World, &ldquo;that the next time we met I asked you what he had said,
+and that your mind was equally a blank on the subject.&nbsp; You admitted
+you had found him interesting.&nbsp; I was puzzled at the time, but
+now I begin to understand.&nbsp; Both of you, no doubt, found the conversation
+so brilliant, each of you felt it must have been your own.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A good book,&rdquo; I added - &ldquo;a good talk is like a
+good dinner: one assimilates it.&nbsp; The best dinner is the dinner
+you do not know you have eaten.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A thing will often suggest interesting thought,&rdquo; observed
+the Old Maid, &ldquo;without being interesting.&nbsp; Often I find the
+tears coming into my eyes as I witness some stupid melodrama - something
+said, something hinted at, will stir a memory, start a train of thought.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I once,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;sat next to a country-man in
+the pit of a music-hall some years ago.&nbsp; He enjoyed himself thoroughly
+up to half-past ten.&nbsp; Songs about mothers-in-law, drunken wives,
+and wooden legs he roared at heartily.&nbsp; At ten-thirty entered a
+well-known <i>artiste</i> who was then giving a series of what he called
+&lsquo;Condensed Tragedies in Verse.&rsquo;&nbsp; At the first two my
+country friend chuckled hugely.&nbsp; The third ran: &lsquo;Little boy;
+pair of skates: broken ice; heaven&rsquo;s gates.&rsquo;&nbsp; My friend
+turned white, rose hurriedly, and pushed his way impatiently out of
+the house.&nbsp; I left myself some ten minutes later, and by chance
+ran against him again in the bar of the &lsquo;Criterion,&rsquo; where
+he was drinking whisky rather copiously.&nbsp; &lsquo;I couldn&rsquo;t
+stand that fool,&rsquo; he explained to me in a husky voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Truth
+is, my youngest kid got drowned last winter skating.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t
+see any sense making fun of real trouble.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can cap your story with another,&rdquo; said the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Jim sent me a couple of seats for one of his first nights a month
+or two ago.&nbsp; They did not reach me till four o&rsquo;clock in the
+afternoon.&nbsp; I went down to the club to see if I could pick up anybody.&nbsp;
+The only man there I knew at all was a rather quiet young fellow, a
+new member.&nbsp; He had just taken Bates&rsquo;s chambers in Staple
+Inn - you have met him, I think.&nbsp; He didn&rsquo;t know many people
+then and was grateful for my invitation.&nbsp; The play was one of those
+Palais Royal farces - it cannot matter which, they are all exactly alike.&nbsp;
+The fun consists of somebody&rsquo;s trying to sin without being found
+out.&nbsp; It always goes well.&nbsp; The British public invariably
+welcomes the theme, provided it be dealt with in a merry fashion.&nbsp;
+It is only the serious discussion of evil that shocks us.&nbsp; There
+was the usual banging of doors and the usual screaming.&nbsp; Everybody
+was laughing around us.&nbsp; My young friend sat with rather a curious
+fixed smile upon his face.&nbsp; &lsquo;Fairly well constructed,&rsquo;
+I said to him, as the second curtain fell amid yells of delight.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he answered, &lsquo;I suppose it&rsquo;s very funny.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I looked at him; he was little more than a boy.&nbsp; &lsquo;You are
+rather young,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;to be a moralist.&rsquo;&nbsp; He
+gave a short laugh.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh! I shall grow out of it in time,&rsquo;
+he said.&nbsp; He told me his story later, when I came to know him better.&nbsp;
+He had played the farce himself over in Melbourne - he was an Australian.&nbsp;
+Only the third act had ended differently.&nbsp; His girl wife, of whom
+he was passionately fond, had taken it quite seriously and had committed
+suicide.&nbsp; A foolish thing to do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Man is a beast!&rdquo; said the Girton Girl, who was prone
+to strong expression.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought so myself when I was younger,&rdquo; said the Woman
+of the World.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And don&rsquo;t you now, when you hear a thing like that?&rdquo;
+suggested the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly, my dear,&rdquo; replied the Woman of the World;
+&ldquo;there is a deal of the animal in man; but - well, I was myself
+expressing that same particular view of him, the brute, to a very old
+lady with whom I was spending a winter in Brussels, many years ago now,
+when I was quite a girl.&nbsp; She had been a friend of my father&rsquo;s,
+and was one of the sweetest and kindest - I was almost going to say
+the most perfect woman I have ever met; though as a celebrated beauty,
+stories, dating from the early Victorian era, were told about her.&nbsp;
+But myself I never believed them.&nbsp; Her calm, gentle, passionless
+face, crowned with its soft, silver hair - I remember my first sight
+of the Matterhorn on a summer&rsquo;s evening; somehow it at once reminded
+me of her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; laughed the Old Maid, &ldquo;your anecdotal
+method is becoming as jerky as a cinematograph.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have noticed it myself,&rdquo; replied the Woman of the
+World; &ldquo;I try to get in too much.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The art of the <i>raconteur</i>,&rdquo; observed the Philosopher,
+&ldquo;consists in avoiding the unessential.&nbsp; I have a friend who
+never yet to my knowledge reached the end of a story.&nbsp; It is intensely
+unimportant whether the name of the man who said the thing or did the
+deed be Brown or Jones or Robinson.&nbsp; But she will worry herself
+into a fever trying to recollect.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dear, dear me!&rsquo;
+she will leave off to exclaim; &lsquo;I know his name so well.&nbsp;
+How stupid of me!&rsquo;&nbsp; She will tell you why she ought to recollect
+his name, how she always has recollected his name till this precise
+moment.&nbsp; She will appeal to half the people in the room to help
+her.&nbsp; It is hopeless to try and induce her to proceed, the idea
+has taken possession of her mind.&nbsp; After a world of unnecessary
+trouble she recollects that it was Tomkins, and is delighted; only to
+be plunged again into despair on discovery that she has forgotten his
+address.&nbsp; This makes her so ashamed of herself she declines to
+continue, and full of self-reproach she retires to her own room.&nbsp;
+Later she re-enters, beaming, with the street and number pat.&nbsp;
+But by that time she has forgotten the anecdote.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, tell us about your old lady, and what it was you said
+to her,&rdquo; spoke impatiently the Girton Girl, who is always eager
+when the subject under discussion happens to be the imbecility or criminal
+tendency of the opposite sex.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was at the age,&rdquo; continued the Woman of the World,
+&ldquo;when a young girl tiring of fairy stories puts down the book
+and looks round her at the world, and naturally feels indignant at what
+she notices.&nbsp; I was very severe upon both the shortcomings and
+the overgoings of man - our natural enemy.&nbsp; My old friend used
+to laugh, and that made me think her callous and foolish.&nbsp; One
+day our <i>bonne</i> - like all servants, a lover of gossip - came to
+us delighted with a story which proved to me how just had been my estimate
+of the male animal.&nbsp; The grocer at the corner of our <i>rue</i>,
+married only four years to a charming and devoted little wife, had run
+away and left her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;He never gave her even a hint, the pretty angel!&rsquo;<b>
+</b>so Jeanne informed us.&nbsp; &lsquo;Had had his box containing his
+clothes and everything he wanted ready packed for a week, waiting for
+him at the railway station - just told her he was going to play a game
+of dominoes, and that she was not to sit up for him; kissed her and
+the child good-night, and - well, that was the last she ever saw of
+him.&nbsp; Did Madame ever hear the like of it?&rsquo; concluded Jeanne,
+throwing up her hands to heaven.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am sorry to say, Jeanne,
+that I have,&rsquo; replied my sweet Madame with a sigh, and led the
+conversation by slow degrees back to the subject of dinner.&nbsp; I
+turned to her when Jeanne had left the room.&nbsp; I can remember still
+the burning indignation of my face.&nbsp; I had often spoken to the
+man myself, and had thought what a delightful husband he was - so kind,
+so attentive, so proud, seemingly, of his dainty <i>femme</i>.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Doesn&rsquo;t that prove what I say,&rsquo; I cried, &lsquo;that
+men are beasts?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I am afraid it helps in that direction,&rsquo;
+replied my old friend.&nbsp; &lsquo;And yet you defend them,&rsquo;
+I answered.&nbsp; &lsquo;At my age, my dear,&rsquo; she replied, &lsquo;one
+neither defends nor blames; one tries to understand.&rsquo;&nbsp; She
+put her thin white hand upon my head.&nbsp; &lsquo;Shall we hear a little
+more of the story?&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is not a pleasant
+one, but it may be useful to us.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t want
+to hear any more of it,&rsquo; I answered; &lsquo;I have heard enough.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It is sometimes well,&rsquo; she persisted, &lsquo;to hear the
+whole of a case before forming our judgment.&rsquo;&nbsp; And she rang
+the bell for Jeanne.&nbsp; &lsquo;That story about our little grocer
+friend,&rsquo; she said - &lsquo;it is rather interesting to me.&nbsp;
+Why did he leave her and run away - do you know?&rsquo;&nbsp; Jeanne
+shrugged her ample shoulders.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh! the old story, Madame,&rsquo;
+she answered, with a short laugh.&nbsp; &lsquo;Who was she?&rsquo; asked
+my friend.&nbsp; &lsquo;The wife of Monsieur Savary, the wheelwright,
+as good a husband as ever a woman had.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s been going on
+for months, the hussy!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Thank you, that will do,
+Jeanne.&rsquo;&nbsp; She turned again to me so soon as Jeanne had left
+the room.&nbsp; &lsquo;My dear,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;whenever I see
+a bad man, I peep round the corner for the woman.&nbsp; Whenever I see
+a bad woman, I follow her eyes; I know she is looking for her mate.&nbsp;
+Nature never makes odd samples.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot help thinking,&rdquo; said the Philosopher, &ldquo;that
+a good deal of harm is being done to the race as a whole by the overpraise
+of women.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who overpraises them?&rdquo; demanded the Girton Girl.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Men may talk nonsense to us - I don&rsquo;t know whether any
+of us are foolish enough to believe it - but I feel perfectly sure that
+when they are alone most of their time is occupied in abusing us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is hardly fair,&rdquo; interrupted the Old Maid.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I doubt if they do talk about us among themselves as much as
+we think.&nbsp; Besides, it is always unwise to go behind the verdict.&nbsp;
+Some very beautiful things have been said about women by men.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, ask them,&rdquo; said the Girton Girl.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here
+are three of them present.&nbsp; Now, honestly, when you talk about
+us among yourselves, do you gush about our virtue, and goodness, and
+wisdom?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Gush,&rsquo;&rdquo; said the Philosopher, reflecting,
+&ldquo;&lsquo;gush&rsquo; would hardly be the correct word.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In justice to the truth,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I must admit
+our Girton friend is to a certain extent correct.&nbsp; Every man at
+some time of his life esteems to excess some one particular woman.&nbsp;
+Very young men, lacking in experience, admire perhaps indiscriminately.&nbsp;
+To them, anything in a petticoat is adorable: the milliner makes the
+angel.&nbsp; And very old men, so I am told, return to the delusions
+of their youth; but as to this I cannot as yet speak positively.&nbsp;
+The rest of us - well, when we are alone, it must be confessed, as our
+Philosopher says, that &lsquo;gush&rsquo; is not the correct word.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I told you so,&rdquo; chortled the Girton Girl.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe,&rdquo; I added, &ldquo;it is merely the result of reaction.&nbsp;
+Convention insists that to her face we show her a somewhat exaggerated
+deference.&nbsp; Her very follies we have to regard as added charms
+- the poets have decreed it.&nbsp; Maybe it comes as a relief to let
+the pendulum swing back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But is it not a fact,&rdquo; asked the Old Maid, &ldquo;that
+the best men and even the wisest are those who have held women in most
+esteem?&nbsp; Do we not gauge civilization by the position a nation
+accords to its women?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the same way as we judge them by the mildness of their
+laws, their tenderness for the weak.&nbsp; Uncivilised man killed off
+the useless numbers of the tribe; we provide for them hospitals, almshouses.&nbsp;
+Man&rsquo;s attitude towards woman proves the extent to which he has
+conquered his own selfishness, the distance he has travelled from the
+law of the ape: might is right.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t misunderstand me,&rdquo; pleaded the Philosopher,
+with a nervous glance towards the lowering eyebrows of the Girton Girl.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I am not saying for a moment woman is not the equal of man; indeed,
+it is my belief that she is.&nbsp; I am merely maintaining she is not
+his superior.&nbsp; The wise man honours woman as his friend, his fellow-labourer,
+his complement.&nbsp; It is the fool who imagines her unhuman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But are we not better,&rdquo; persisted the Old Maid, &ldquo;for
+our ideals?&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t say we women are perfect - please don&rsquo;t
+think that.&nbsp; You are not more alive to our faults than we are.&nbsp;
+Read the women novelists from George Eliot downwards.&nbsp; But for
+your own sake - is it not well man should have something to look up
+to, and failing anything better - ?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I draw a very wide line,&rdquo; answered the Philosopher,
+&ldquo;between ideals and delusions.&nbsp; The ideal has always helped
+man; but that belongs to the land of his dreams, his most important
+kingdom, the kingdom of his future.&nbsp; Delusions are earthly structures,
+that sooner or later fall about his ears, blinding him with dust and
+dirt.&nbsp; The petticoat-governed country has always paid dearly for
+its folly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Elizabeth!&rdquo; cried the Girton Girl.&nbsp; &ldquo;Queen
+Victoria!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Were ideal sovereigns,&rdquo; returned the Philosopher, &ldquo;leaving
+the government of the country to its ablest men.&nbsp; France under
+its Pompadours, the Byzantine Empire under its Theodoras, are truer
+examples of my argument.&nbsp; I am speaking of the unwisdom of assuming
+all women to be perfect.&nbsp; Belisarius ruined himself and his people
+by believing his own wife to be an honest woman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But chivalry,&rdquo; I argued, &ldquo;has surely been of service
+to mankind?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To an immense extent,&rdquo; agreed the Philosopher.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It seized a natural human passion and turned it to good uses.&nbsp;
+Then it was a reality.&nbsp; So once was the divine right of kings,
+the infallibility of the Church, for cumbering the ground with the lifeless
+bodies of which mankind has paid somewhat dearly.&nbsp; Not its upstanding
+lies - they can be faced and defeated - but its dead truths are the
+world&rsquo;s stumbling-blocks.&nbsp; To the man of war and rapine,
+trained in cruelty and injustice, the woman was the one thing that spoke
+of the joy of yielding.&nbsp; Woman, as compared with man, was then
+an angel: it was no mere form of words.&nbsp; All the tender offices
+of life were in her hands.&nbsp; To the warrior, his life divided between
+fighting and debauchery, his womenfolk tending the sick, helping the
+weak, comforting the sorrowing, must have moved with white feet across
+a world his vices had made dark.&nbsp; Her mere subjection to the priesthood,
+her inborn feminine delight in form and ceremony - now an influence
+narrowing her charity - must then, to his dim eyes, trained to look
+upon dogma as the living soul of his religion, have seemed a halo, deifying
+her.&nbsp; Woman was then the servant.&nbsp; It was naturally to her
+advantage to excite tenderness and mercy in man.&nbsp; Since she has
+become the mistress of the world.&nbsp; It is no longer her interested
+mission to soften his savage instincts.&nbsp; Nowadays, it is the women
+who make war, the women who exalt brute force.&nbsp; Today, it is the
+woman who, happy herself, turns a deaf ear to the world&rsquo;s low
+cry of pain; holding that man honoured who would ignore the good of
+the species to augment the comforts of his own particular family; holding
+in despite as a bad husband and father the man whose sense of duty extends
+beyond the circle of the home.&nbsp; One recalls Lady Nelson&rsquo;s
+reproach to her lord after the battle of the Nile.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have
+married a wife, and therefore cannot come,&rsquo; is the answer to his
+God that many a woman has prompted to her lover&rsquo;s tongue.&nbsp;
+I was speaking to a woman only the other day about the cruelty of skinning
+seals alive.&nbsp; &lsquo;I feel so sorry for the poor creatures,&rsquo;
+she murmured; &lsquo;but they say it gives so much more depth of colour
+to the fur.&rsquo;&nbsp; Her own jacket was certainly a very beautiful
+specimen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When I was editing a paper,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I opened
+my columns to a correspondence on this very subject.&nbsp; Many letters
+were sent to me - most of them trite, many of them foolish.&nbsp; One,
+a genuine document, I remember.&nbsp; It came from a girl who for six
+years had been assistant to a fashionable dressmaker.&nbsp; She was
+rather tired of the axiom that all women, at all times, are perfection.&nbsp;
+She suggested that poets and novelists should take service for a year
+in any large drapery or millinery establishment where they would have
+an opportunity of studying woman in her natural state, so to speak.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is unfair to judge us by what, I confess, is our chief
+weakness,&rdquo; argued the Woman of the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;Woman in
+pursuit of clothes ceases to be human - she reverts to the original
+brute.&nbsp; Besides, dressmakers can be very trying.&nbsp; The fault
+is not entirely on one side.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I still fail to be convinced,&rdquo; remarked the Girton Girl,
+&ldquo;that woman is over-praised.&nbsp; Not even the present conversation,
+so far as it has gone, altogether proves your point.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am not saying it is the case among intelligent thinkers,&rdquo;
+explained the Philosopher, &ldquo;but in popular literature the convention
+still lingers.&nbsp; To woman&rsquo;s face no man cares to protest against
+it; and woman, to her harm, has come to accept it as a truism.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What are little girls made of?&nbsp; Sugar and spice and all
+that&rsquo;s nice.&rsquo;&nbsp; In more or less varied form the idea
+has entered into her blood, shutting out from her hope of improvement.&nbsp;
+The girl is discouraged from asking herself the occasionally needful
+question: Am I on the way to becoming a sound, useful member of society?&nbsp;
+Or am I in danger of degenerating into a vain, selfish, lazy piece of
+good-for-nothing rubbish?&nbsp; She is quite content so long as she
+can detect in herself no tendency to male vices, forgetful that there
+are also feminine vices.&nbsp; Woman is the spoilt child of the age.&nbsp;
+No one tells her of her faults.&nbsp; The World with its thousand voices
+flatters her.&nbsp; Sulks, bad temper, and pig-headed obstinacy are
+translated as &lsquo;pretty Fanny&rsquo;s wilful ways.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Cowardice, contemptible in man or woman, she is encouraged to cultivate
+as a charm.&nbsp; Incompetence to pack her own bag or find her own way
+across a square and round a corner is deemed an attraction.&nbsp; Abnormal
+ignorance and dense stupidity entitle her to pose as the poetical ideal.&nbsp;
+If she give a penny to a street beggar, selecting generally the fraud,
+or kiss a puppy&rsquo;s nose, we exhaust the language of eulogy, proclaiming
+her a saint.&nbsp; The marvel to me is that, in spite of the folly upon
+which they are fed, so many of them grow to be sensible women.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Myself,&rdquo; remarked the Minor Poet, &ldquo;I find much
+comfort in the conviction that talk, as talk, is responsible for much
+less good and much less harm in the world than we who talk are apt to
+imagine.&nbsp; Words to grow and bear fruit must fall upon the earth
+of fact.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you hold it right to fight against folly?&rdquo; demanded
+the Philosopher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heavens, yes!&rdquo; cried the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;That
+is how one knows it is Folly - if we can kill it.&nbsp; Against the
+Truth our arrows rattle harmlessly.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;But what is her reason?&rdquo; demanded the Old Maid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Reason!&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t believe any of them have any reason.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The Woman of the World showed sign of being short of temper, a condition
+of affairs startlingly unusual to her.&nbsp; &ldquo;Says she hasn&rsquo;t
+enough work to do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She must be an extraordinary woman,&rdquo; commented the Old
+Maid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The trouble I have put myself to in order to keep that woman,
+just because George likes her savouries, no one would believe,&rdquo;
+continued indignantly the Woman of the World.&nbsp; &ldquo;We have had
+a dinner party regularly once a week for the last six months, entirely
+for her benefit.&nbsp; Now she wants me to give two.&nbsp; I won&rsquo;t
+do it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I could be of any service?&rdquo; offered the Minor Poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;My digestion is not what it once was, but I could make up in
+quality - a <i>recherch&eacute;</i> little banquet twice a week, say
+on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I would make a point of eating with you.&nbsp;
+If you think that would content her!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is really thoughtful of you,&rdquo; replied the Woman of
+the World, &ldquo;but I cannot permit it.&nbsp; Why should you be dragged
+from the simple repast suitable to a poet merely to oblige my cook?&nbsp;
+It is not reason.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was thinking rather of you,&rdquo; continued the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve half a mind,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World,
+&ldquo;to give up housekeeping altogether and go into an hotel.&nbsp;
+I don&rsquo;t like the idea, but really servants are becoming impossible.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is very interesting,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad you find it so!&rdquo; snapped the Woman of the
+World.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is interesting?&rdquo; I asked the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That the tendency of the age,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;should
+be slowly but surely driving us into the practical adoption of a social
+state that for years we have been denouncing the Socialists for merely
+suggesting.&nbsp; Everywhere the public-houses are multiplying, the
+private dwellings diminishing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can you wonder at it?&rdquo; commented the Woman of the World.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You men talk about &lsquo;the joys of home.&rsquo;&nbsp; Some
+of you write poetry - generally speaking, one of you who lives in chambers,
+and spends two-thirds of his day at a club.&rdquo;&nbsp; We were sitting
+in the garden.&nbsp; The attention of the Minor Poet became riveted
+upon the sunset.&nbsp; &ldquo;&lsquo;Ethel and I by the fire.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Ethel never gets a chance of sitting by the fire.&nbsp; So long as you
+are there, comfortable, you do not notice that she has left the room
+to demand explanation why the drawing-room scuttle is always filled
+with slack, and the best coal burnt in the kitchen range.&nbsp; Home
+to us women is our place of business that we never get away from.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said the Girton Girl - to my surprise she
+spoke with entire absence of indignation.&nbsp; As a rule, the Girton
+Girl stands for what has been termed &ldquo;divine discontent&rdquo;
+with things in general.&nbsp; In the course of time she will outlive
+her surprise at finding the world so much less satisfactory an abode
+than she had been led to suppose - also her present firm conviction
+that, given a free hand, she could put the whole thing right in a quarter
+of an hour.&nbsp; There are times even now when her tone suggests less
+certainty of her being the first person who has ever thought seriously
+about the matter.&nbsp; &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said the Girton Girl,
+&ldquo;it comes of education.&nbsp; Our grandmothers were content to
+fill their lives with these small household duties.&nbsp; They rose
+early, worked with their servants, saw to everything with their own
+eyes.&nbsp; Nowadays we demand time for self-development, for reading,
+for thinking, for pleasure.&nbsp; Household drudgery, instead of being
+the object of our life, has become an interference to it.&nbsp; We resent
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The present revolt of woman,&rdquo; continued the Minor Poet,
+&ldquo;will be looked back upon by the historian of the future as one
+of the chief factors in our social evolution.&nbsp; The &lsquo;home&rsquo;
+- the praises of which we still sing, but with gathering misgiving -
+depended on her willingness to live a life of practical slavery.&nbsp;
+When Adam delved and Eve span - Adam confining his delving to the space
+within his own fence, Eve staying her spinning-wheel the instant the
+family hosiery was complete - then the home rested upon the solid basis
+of an actual fact.&nbsp; Its foundations were shaken when the man became
+a citizen and his interests expanded beyond the domestic circle.&nbsp;
+Since that moment woman alone has supported the institution.&nbsp; Now
+she, in her turn, is claiming the right to enter the community, to escape
+from the solitary confinement of the lover&rsquo;s castle.&nbsp; The
+&lsquo;mansions,&rsquo; with common dining-rooms, reading-rooms, their
+system of common service, are springing up in every quarter; the house,
+the villa, is disappearing.&nbsp; The story is the same in every country.&nbsp;
+The separate dwelling, where it remains, is being absorbed into a system.&nbsp;
+In America, the experimental laboratory of the future, the houses are
+warmed from a common furnace.&nbsp; You do not light the fire, you turn
+on the hot air.&nbsp; Your dinner is brought round to you in a travelling
+oven.&nbsp; You subscribe for your valet or your lady&rsquo;s maid.&nbsp;
+Very soon the private establishment, with its staff of unorganised,
+quarrelling servants, of necessity either over or underworked, will
+be as extinct as the lake dwelling or the sandstone cave.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hope,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World, &ldquo;that I
+may live to see it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In all probability,&rdquo; replied the Minor Poet, &ldquo;you
+will.&nbsp; I would I could feel as hopeful for myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If your prophecy be likely of fulfilment,&rdquo; remarked
+the Philosopher, &ldquo;I console myself with the reflection that I
+am the oldest of the party.&nbsp; Myself; I never read these full and
+exhaustive reports of the next century without revelling in the reflection
+that before they can be achieved I shall be dead and buried.&nbsp; It
+may be a selfish attitude, but I should be quite unable to face any
+of the machine-made futures our growing guild of seers prognosticate.&nbsp;
+You appear to me, most of you, to ignore a somewhat important consideration
+- namely, that mankind is alive.&nbsp; You work out your answers as
+if he were a sum in rule-of-three: &lsquo;If man in so many thousands
+of years has done so much in such a direction at this or that rate of
+speed, what will he be doing - ?&rsquo; and so on.&nbsp; You forget
+he is swayed by impulses that can enter into no calculation - drawn
+hither and thither by powers that can never be represented in your algebra.&nbsp;
+In one generation Christianity reduced Plato&rsquo;s republic to an
+absurdity.&nbsp; The printing-press has upset the unanswerable conclusions
+of Machiavelli.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I disagree with you,&rdquo; said the Minor Poet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The fact does not convince me of my error,&rdquo; retorted
+the Philosopher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Christianity,&rdquo; continued the Minor Poet, &ldquo;gave
+merely an added force to impulses the germs of which were present in
+the infant race.&nbsp; The printing-press, teaching us to think in communities,
+has nonplussed to a certain extent the aims of the individual as opposed
+to those of humanity.&nbsp; Without prejudice, without sentiment, cast
+your eye back over the panorama of the human race.&nbsp; What is the
+picture that presents itself?&nbsp; Scattered here and there over the
+wild, voiceless desert, first the holes and caves, next the rude-built
+huts, the wigwams, the lake dwellings of primitive man.&nbsp; Lonely,
+solitary, followed by his dam and brood, he creeps through the tall
+grass, ever with watchful, terror-haunted eyes; satisfies his few desires;
+communicates, by means of a few grunts and signs, his tiny store of
+knowledge to his offspring; then, crawling beneath a stone, or into
+some tangled corner of the jungle, dies and disappears.&nbsp; We look
+again.&nbsp; A thousand centuries have flashed and faded.&nbsp; The
+surface of the earth is flecked with strange quivering patches: here,
+where the sun shines on the wood and sea, close together, almost touching
+one another; there, among the shadows, far apart.&nbsp; The Tribe has
+formed itself.&nbsp; The whole tiny mass moves forward, halts, runs
+backwards, stirred always by one common impulse.&nbsp; Man has learnt
+the secret of combination, of mutual help.&nbsp; The City rises.&nbsp;
+From its stone centre spreads its power; the Nation leaps to life; civilisation
+springs from leisure; no longer is each man&rsquo;s life devoted to
+his mere animal necessities.&nbsp; The artificer, the thinker - his
+fellows shall protect him.&nbsp; Socrates dreams, Phidias carves the
+marble, while Pericles maintains the law and Leonidas holds the Barbarian
+at bay.&nbsp; Europe annexes piece by piece the dark places of the earth,
+gives to them her laws.&nbsp; The Empire swallows the small State; Russia
+stretches her arm round Asia.&nbsp; In London we toast the union of
+the English-speaking peoples; in Berlin and Vienna we rub a salamander
+to the <i>deutscher Bund</i>; in Paris we whisper of a communion of
+the Latin races.&nbsp; In great things so in small.&nbsp; The stores,
+the huge Emporium displaces the small shopkeeper; the Trust amalgamates
+a hundred firms; the Union speaks for the worker.&nbsp; The limits of
+country, of language, are found too narrow for the new Ideas.&nbsp;
+German, American, or English - let what yard of coloured cotton you
+choose float from the mizzenmast, the business of the human race is
+their captain.&nbsp; One hundred and fifty years ago old Sam Johnson
+waited in a patron&rsquo;s anteroom; today the entire world invites
+him to growl his table talk the while it takes its dish of tea.&nbsp;
+The poet, the novelist, speak in twenty languages.&nbsp; Nationality
+- it is the County Council of the future.&nbsp; The world&rsquo;s high
+roads run turnpike-free from pole to pole.&nbsp; One would be blind
+not to see the goal towards which we are rushing.&nbsp; At the outside
+it is but a generation or two off.&nbsp; It is one huge murmuring Hive
+- one universal Hive just the size of the round earth.&nbsp; The bees
+have been before us; they have solved the riddle towards which we in
+darkness have been groping.</p>
+<p>The Old Maid shuddered visibly.&nbsp; &ldquo;What a terrible idea!&rdquo;
+she said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To us,&rdquo; replied the Minor Poet; &ldquo;not to those
+who will come after us.&nbsp; The child dreads manhood.&nbsp; To Abraham,
+roaming the world with his flocks, the life of your modern City man,
+chained to his office from ten to four, would have seemed little better
+than penal servitude.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My sympathies are with the Abrahamitical ideal,&rdquo; observed
+the Philosopher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mine also,&rdquo; agreed the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;But
+neither you nor I represent the tendency of the age.&nbsp; We are its
+curiosities.&nbsp; We, and such as we, serve as the brake regulating
+the rate of progress.&nbsp; The genius of species shows itself moving
+in the direction of the organised community - all life welded together,
+controlled by one central idea.&nbsp; The individual worker is drawn
+into the factory.&nbsp; Chippendale today would have been employed sketching
+designs; the chair would have been put together by fifty workers, each
+one trained to perfection in his own particular department.&nbsp; Why
+does the hotel, with its five hundred servants, its catering for three
+thousand mouths, work smoothly, while the desirable family residence,
+with its two or three domestics, remains the scene of waste, confusion,
+and dispute?&nbsp; We are losing the talent of living alone; the instinct
+of living in communities is driving it out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So much the worse for the community,&rdquo; was the comment
+of the Philosopher.&nbsp; &ldquo;Man, as Ibsen has said, will always
+be at his greatest when he stands alone.&nbsp; To return to our friend
+Abraham, surely he, wandering in the wilderness, talking with his God,
+was nearer the ideal than the modern citizen, thinking with his morning
+paper, applauding silly shibboleths from a theatre pit, guffawing at
+coarse jests, one of a music-hall crowd?&nbsp; In the community it is
+the lowest always leads.&nbsp; You spoke just now of all the world inviting
+Samuel Johnson to its dish of tea.&nbsp; How many read him as compared
+to the number of subscribers to the <i>Ha&rsquo;penny Joker</i>?&nbsp;
+This &lsquo;thinking in communities,&rsquo; as it is termed, to what
+does it lead?&nbsp; To mafficking and Dreyfus scandals.&nbsp; What crowd
+ever evolved a noble idea?&nbsp; If Socrates and Galileo, Confucius
+and Christ had &lsquo;thought in communities,&rsquo; the world would
+indeed be the ant-hill you appear to regard as its destiny.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In balancing the books of life one must have regard to both
+sides of the ledger,&rdquo; responded the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+crowd, I admit, of itself creates nothing; on the other hand, it receives
+ideals into its bosom and gives them needful shelter.&nbsp; It responds
+more readily to good than to evil.&nbsp; What greater stronghold of
+virtue than your sixpenny gallery?&nbsp; Your burglar, arrived fresh
+from jumping on his mother, finds himself applauding with the rest stirring
+appeals to the inborn chivalry of man.&nbsp; Suggestion that it was
+right or proper under any circumstances to jump upon one&rsquo;s mother
+he would at such moment reject with horror.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thinking in
+communities&rsquo; is good for him.&nbsp; The hooligan, whose patriotism
+finds expression in squirting dirty water into the face of his coster
+sweetheart: the <i>boulevardi&egrave;re</i>, primed with absinth, shouting
+<i>&lsquo;Conspuez les Juifs</i>!&rsquo; - the motive force stirring
+them in its origin was an ideal.&nbsp; Even into making a fool of itself,
+a crowd can be moved only by incitement of its finer instincts.&nbsp;
+The service of Prometheus to mankind must not be judged by the statistics
+of the insurance office.&nbsp; The world as a whole has gained by community,
+will attain its goal only through community.&nbsp; From the nomadic
+savage by the winding road of citizenship we have advanced far.&nbsp;
+The way winds upward still, hidden from us by the mists, but along its
+tortuous course lies our track into the Promised Land.&nbsp; Not the
+development of the individual - that is his own concern - but the uplifting
+of the race would appear to be the law.&nbsp; The lonely great ones,
+they are the shepherds of the flock - the servants, not the masters
+of the world.&nbsp; Moses shall die and be buried in the wilderness,
+seeing only from afar the resting-place of man&rsquo;s tired feet.&nbsp;
+It is unfortunate that the <i>Ha&rsquo;penny Joker</i> and its kind
+should have so many readers.&nbsp; Maybe it teaches those to read who
+otherwise would never read at all.&nbsp; We are impatient, forgetting
+that the coming and going of our generations are but as the swinging
+of the pendulum of Nature&rsquo;s clock.&nbsp; Yesterday we booked our
+seats for gladiatorial shows, for the burning of Christians, our windows
+for Newgate hangings.&nbsp; Even the musical farce is an improvement
+upon that - at least, from the humanitarian point of view.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the Southern States of America,&rdquo; observed the Philosopher,
+sticking to his guns, &ldquo;they run excursion trains to lynching exhibitions.&nbsp;
+The bull-fight is spreading to France, and English newspapers are advocating
+the reintroduction of bear-baiting and cock-fighting.&nbsp; Are we not
+moving in a circle?<b>&rdquo;</b></p>
+<p>&ldquo;The road winds, as I have allowed,&rdquo; returned the Minor
+Poet; &ldquo;the gradient is somewhat steep.&nbsp; Just now, maybe,
+we are traversing a backward curve.&nbsp; I gain my faith by pausing
+now and then to look behind.&nbsp; I see the weary way with many a downward
+sweep.&nbsp; But we are climbing, my friend, we are climbing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But to such a very dismal goal, according to your theory,&rdquo;
+grumbled the Old Maid.&nbsp; &ldquo;I should hate to feel myself an
+insect in a hive, my little round of duties apportioned to me, my every
+action regulated by a fixed law, my place assigned to me, my very food
+and drink, I suppose, apportioned to me.&nbsp; Do think of something
+more cheerful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Minor Poet laughed.&nbsp; &ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; he replied,
+&ldquo;it is too late.&nbsp; The thing is already done.&nbsp; The hive
+already covers us, the cells are in building.&nbsp; Who leads his own
+life?&nbsp; Who is master of himself?&nbsp; What can you do but live
+according to your income in, I am sure, a very charming little cell;
+buzz about your little world with your cheerful, kindly song, helping
+these your fellow insects here, doing day by day the useful offices
+apportioned to you by your temperament and means, seeing the same faces,
+treading ever the same narrow circle?&nbsp; Why do I write poetry?&nbsp;
+I am not to blame.&nbsp; I must live.&nbsp; It is the only thing I can
+do.&nbsp; Why does one man live and die upon the treeless rocks of Iceland,
+another labour in the vineyards of the Apennines?&nbsp; Why does one
+woman make matches, ride in a van to Epping Forest, drink gin, and change
+hats with her lover on the homeward journey; another pant through a
+dinner-party and half a dozen receptions every night from March to June,
+rush from country house to fashionable Continental resort from July
+to February, dress as she is instructed by her milliner, say the smart
+things that are expected of her?&nbsp; Who would be a sweep or a chaperon,
+were all roads free?&nbsp; Who is it succeeds in escaping the law of
+the hive?&nbsp; The loafer, the tramp.&nbsp; On the other hand, who
+is the man we respect and envy?&nbsp; The man who works for the community,
+the public-spirited man, as we call him; the unselfish man, the man
+who labours for the labour&rsquo;s sake and not for the profit, devoting
+his days and nights to learning Nature&rsquo;s secrets, to acquiring
+knowledge useful to the race.&nbsp; Is he not the happiest, the man
+who has conquered his own sordid desires, who gives himself to the public
+good?&nbsp; The hive was founded in dark days before man knew; it has
+been built according to false laws.&nbsp; This man will have a cell
+bigger than any other cell; all the other little men shall envy him;
+a thousand fellow-crawling mites shall slave for him, wear out their
+lives in wretchedness for him and him alone; all their honey they shall
+bring to him; he shall gorge while they shall starve.&nbsp; Of what
+use?&nbsp; He has slept no sounder in his foolishly fanciful cell.&nbsp;
+Sleep is to tired eyes, not to silken coverlets.&nbsp; We dream in Seven
+Dials as in Park Lane.&nbsp; His stomach, distend it as he will - it
+is very small - resents being distended.&nbsp; The store of honey rots.&nbsp;
+The hive was conceived in the dark days of ignorance, stupidity, brutality.&nbsp;
+A new hive shall arise.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I had no idea,&rdquo; said the Woman of the World, &ldquo;you
+were a Socialist.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor had I,&rdquo; agreed the Minor Poet, &ldquo;before I began
+talking.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And next Wednesday,&rdquo; laughed the Woman of the World;
+&ldquo;you will be arguing in favour of individualism.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; agreed the Minor Poet.&nbsp; &ldquo;&lsquo;The
+deep moans round with many voices.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take another cup of tea,&rdquo; said the Philosopher.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
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