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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles in Womanland, by Max O'Rell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Rambles in Womanland
+
+Author: Max O'Rell
+
+Release Date: August 12, 2010 [EBook #33416]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                RAMBLES
+                              IN WOMANLAND
+
+                                   BY
+
+                               MAX O'RELL
+
+                               AUTHOR OF
+  'JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND,' 'H.R.H. WOMAN,' 'BETWEEN OURSELVES,' ETC
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                             SECOND EDITION
+
+                                 LONDON
+                            CHATTO & WINDUS
+                                  1903
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+
+RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+       I. THOUGHTS ON LIFE IN GENERAL                                1
+      II. OH, YOU MEN!                                               5
+     III. THE ROSE, THE LILY, AND THE VIOLET; OR, HOW DIFFERENT
+                METHODS APPEAL TO DIFFERENT WOMEN                   10
+      IV. WOMEN LOVE BETTER THAN MEN                                16
+       V. IS WOMAN A RESPONSIBLE BEING?                             19
+      VI. RAMBLES IN CUPID'S DOMAIN                                 22
+     VII. WHICH SEX WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO BE?                         28
+    VIII. RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND                                      32
+      IX. WOMEN AND THEIR WAYS                                      41
+       X. WOMAN'S MISSION IN THIS WORLD                             49
+      XI. IS WOMAN INFERIOR TO MAN?                                 52
+     XII. WOMEN WHO ARE FOLLOWED AND ANNOYED IN THE STREET          55
+    XIII. DANGEROUS MEN                                             58
+     XIV. THE MAN WHO SMILES                                        60
+      XV. WOMEN AND DOLLS                                           63
+     XVI. MEN AS A RULE ARE SELFISH--TWO KINDS OF SELFISH MEN       68
+    XVII. EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES                                 71
+   XVIII. AMERICAN WOMEN IN PARIS                                   74
+     XIX. WOMEN WHO WALK BEST                                       77
+      XX. WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN                                81
+     XXI. WOMEN MAY ALL BE BEAUTIFUL                                84
+    XXII. WOMEN AT SEA                                              87
+   XXIII. THE SECRET OF WOMAN'S BEAUTY                              91
+    XXIV. THE DURATION OF BEAUTY                                    95
+     XXV. THE WOMAN 'GOOD FELLOW'--A SOCIETY TYPE                   98
+    XXVI. THE WOMAN 'GOSSIP'                                       100
+   XXVII. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT                                      103
+  XXVIII. THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN                                106
+    XXIX. SHALL LOVE BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY?                           111
+     XXX. ARE MEN FAIR TO WOMEN?                                   115
+    XXXI. A PLEA FOR THE WORKING WOMAN                             118
+   XXXII. A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION                            122
+  XXXIII. THE WORST FEATURE OF WOMEN AS A SEX                      127
+   XXXIV. IS HOMOEOPATHY A CURE FOR LOVE?                          131
+    XXXV. DOMESTIC TYRANTS AND THEIR POOR WIVES                    135
+
+
+PART II
+
+RAMBLES IN MATRIMONY
+
+       I. ADVICE TO YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE                           139
+      II. THE MATRIMONIAL PROBLEM                                  142
+     III. WOMEN SHOULD ASSERT THEMSELVES IN MATRIMONY              146
+      IV. RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--I.                              150
+       V. RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--II.                             154
+      VI. RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--III.                            159
+     VII. THE START IN MATRIMONY, AND ITS DANGERS                  162
+    VIII. 'OMELETTE AU RHUM'                                       166
+      IX. COQUETRY IN MATRIMONY                                    169
+       X. RESIGNATION IN MATRIMONY                                 173
+      XI. TIT FOR TAT                                              176
+     XII. THE IDEAL HUSBAND                                        179
+    XIII. MARRYING ABOVE OR BELOW ONE'S STATION                    184
+     XIV. PREPARE FOR MATRIMONY, BUT DO NOT OVERTRAIN YOURSELVES   188
+      XV. ACTRESSES SHOULD NOT MARRY                               191
+     XVI. A MATRIMONIAL BOOM                                       195
+    XVII. LOVE WITH WHITE HAIR                                     199
+
+
+PART III
+
+RAMBLES EVERYWHERE
+
+       I. LITTLE MAXIMS FOR EVERYDAY USE                           203
+      II. DO THE BEST WITH THE HAND YOU HAVE                       207
+     III. BEWARE OF THE FINISHING TOUCH                            210
+      IV. THE SELFISHNESS OF SORROW                                214
+       V. THE RIGHT OF CHANGING ONE'S MIND                         217
+      VI. WHAT WE OWE TO CHANCE                                    220
+     VII. WE NEEDN'T GET OLD                                       223
+    VIII. THE SECRET OF OLD AGE                                    226
+      IX. ADVICE ON LETTER-POSTING                                 229
+       X.  ON PARASITES                                            232
+      XI. ADVICE-GIVING                                            234
+     XII. ON HOLIDAYS                                              237
+    XIII. EXTRACTS FROM THE DICTIONARY OF A CYNIC                  240
+     XIV. VARIOUS CRITICISMS ON CREATION                           243
+      XV. THE HUMOURS OF THE INCOME-TAX                            246
+     XVI. HOW TO BE ENTERTAINING                                   250
+    XVII. WHAT IS GENIUS?                                          253
+   XVIII. NEW AND PIQUANT CRITICISM                                256
+     XIX. ORIGINALITY IN LITERATURE                                259
+      XX. PLAGIARISM                                               262
+     XXI. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND REMINISCENCES                        266
+    XXII. THOUGHTS ON HATS                                         270
+   XXIII. THOUGHTS ON EYE-GLASSES                                  273
+    XXIV. THOUGHTS ON UMBRELLAS                                    277
+     XXV. SOME AMERICAN TOPICS                                     280
+    XXVI. SOME AMERICANS I OBJECT TO                               283
+   XXVII. PATIENCE--AN AMERICAN TRAIT                              286
+  XXVIII. AMERICAN FEELINGS FOR FOREIGNERS                         289
+    XXIX. SHOULD YOUNG GIRLS READ NOVELS?                          292
+     XXX. NOW, WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH FATHER?                      295
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THOUGHTS ON LIFE IN GENERAL
+
+
+Cupid will cause men to do many things; so will cupidity.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+I like economy too much as a virtue not to loathe it when it becomes a
+vice.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Many virtues, when carried too far, become vices.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Envy is a vice which does not pay. If you let your envy be apparent, you
+advertise your failure.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Nothing is less common than common-sense.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Whenever you can, pay cash for what you buy. A bill owing is like port
+wine--it generally improves by keeping.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+There are people whose signature has no more significance at the end of
+a letter of insults than it has value at the bottom of a cheque.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The hardest thing to do in life is to make a living dishonestly for any
+length of time.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The harm that happens to others very seldom does us any good, and the
+good that happens to them very seldom does us any harm. People who are
+successful are neither envious, jealous, nor revengeful.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Very often a man says, 'I have made a fool of myself!' who should only
+accuse his father.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A contract is a collection of clauses signed by two honourable persons
+who take each other for scoundrels.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Many people make a noise for the simple reason that, like drums, they
+are empty. Many others think themselves deep who are only hollow.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Never have anything to do with women in whose houses you never see a
+man. You may say what you like, but I have heard many women admit that
+the presence of a man adds a great deal of respectability to a house.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+If you cannot prevent evil, try not to see it. What we do not know does
+not hurt us.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A self-conscious man is sometimes one who is aware of his worth; a
+conceited man is generally one who is not aware of his unworthiness.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Many a saint in a small provincial town is a devil of a dog in the
+Metropolis. Life in small towns is like life in glass-houses. The fear
+of the neighbour is the beginning of wisdom.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Great revolutions were not caused by great grievances or even great
+sufferings, but by great injustices.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Revolutions, like new countries, are often started by somewhat
+objectionable adventurers. When they have been successful, steady and
+honest people come in.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The good diplomatist is not the one who forces events, but the one who
+foresees them, and, when they come, knows how to make the best of them.
+The good diplomatist is not the one who successfully takes people in,
+but the one who, when he has discovered who are his true friends, sticks
+to them through thick and thin.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+I prefer unrighteousness to self-righteousness. The unrighteous man may
+see the error of his ways and improve. He may even be lovable. The
+self-righteous man is unteachable, uncharitable, unloving, unlovable,
+and unlovely.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+You can judge the social standing of a woman from the way she sits down.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A woman may love a man she has hated, never one she has despised, seldom
+one who has been indifferent to her.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A woman is seldom jealous of another on account of her intellectual
+attainments, but if her bosom friend has on purpose or by mere chance
+eclipsed her by her dress at a party, they will probably be no longer on
+speaking terms.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Scientific men are generally the most honest of men, because their minds
+are constantly bent on the pursuit of truth.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+It requires a head better screwed on the shoulders to stand success than
+to endure misfortune.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The world is not ruled by men of talent, but by men of character.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A vain man speaks either well or ill of himself. A modest man never
+speaks of himself at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OH, YOU MEN!
+
+
+The Paris _Presse_ had asked its male readers to mention which virtue
+they most admire in women. Here is the result, with the number of votes
+obtained by each virtue, and truly it is not an edifying result:
+
+  1. Faithfulness         8,278
+  2. Economy              7,496
+  3. Kindness             6,736
+  4. Order                5,052
+  5. Modesty              4,975
+  6. Devotion             4,782
+  7. Charity              4,575
+  8. Sweetness            4,565
+  9. Cleanliness          3,594
+  10. Patience            2,750
+  11. Maternal love       2,703
+  12. Industry            2,125
+  13. Courage             1,758
+  14. Discretion          1,687
+  15. Simplicity          1,580
+  16. Wisdom              1,417
+  17. Honesty             1,389
+  18. Amiability          1,273
+  19. Chastity            1,230
+  20. Propriety             969
+  21. Self-abnegation       868
+
+Surely, here is food for reflections and comments. Economy, order, and
+devotion head the list; chastity and self-abnegation figure at the
+bottom. I should have imagined the last two virtues would have obtained
+the maximum of votes.
+
+And is it not wonderful that the most beautiful trait in a woman's
+character--I mean Loyalty--should be altogether omitted from this list
+of twenty-one most characteristic virtues in women? Are we to conclude
+that loyalty is a virtue for men alone, such as willpower, magnanimity,
+energy, bravery, and straightforwardness?
+
+And Sincerity, that most indispensable and precious virtue, which is
+supposed to make the friendship of men so valuable, is it not also a
+virtue that we should value in women?
+
+Do men mean to say that loyalty and sincerity should not be or could not
+be expected to be found in women? Woman must be sweet, of course, and be
+economical. She must charm men and keep their house on the principles of
+the strictest order. Lovely!
+
+I know men who allow their wives £1 a day to keep their houses in
+plenty, and who spend £2 every day at their club. Whatever the husband
+does, however, the wife must be faithful, and possess patience and
+self-abnegation. She must be resigned, and, mind you, always amiable and
+cheerful.
+
+Poor dear fellow! the truth is, that when a man has spent a jolly
+evening at his club with the 'boys,' it is devilishly hard on him to
+come home at one or two in the morning and to find his wife not amiable,
+not cheerful, but suffering from the dumps, and, maybe, not even patient
+enough to have waited for him. Sometimes she does worse than this, the
+wretch! She suffers from toothache or neuralgia. What of that? She
+should be patient, resigned, amiable, and cheerful; _c'est son métier_.
+
+Yes, on the threshold of the twentieth century we find man still
+considering woman as a pet animal or a nice little beast of burden;
+sometimes as both. I really should feel prouder of my sex if they would
+only be kind enough to assert that men are not beings inferior to
+monkeys and birds.
+
+For monkeys have but one rule of morality for the manners of both sexes,
+and birds share with their mates the duties of nest-building and feeding
+the little ones. The latter even go further. When the female bird does
+her little house duties in the nursery, the male entertains her with a
+song in order to keep her cheerful.
+
+Marriage will be a failure as long as men are of opinion that fidelity,
+patience, devotion, amiability, cheerfulness, and self-abnegation are
+virtues expected of women only; marriage will be a failure as long as it
+is a firm, the two partners of which do not bring about the same capital
+of qualities, as long as what is bad in the goose is not bad in the
+gander.
+
+Certainly I like to see in a man a more powerful will than in a woman; I
+like to see more sweetness in a woman than in a man. In other words, I
+like to see certain virtues or qualities more accentuated in a man,
+others more accentuated in a woman; but, so far as fidelity, kindness,
+order, patience, industry, discretion, courage, devotion,
+self-abnegation, wisdom, honesty, sincerity, amiability, and loyalty are
+concerned, I absolutely deny that they should be womanly virtues only.
+They are virtues that a man should expect to find in a woman as well as
+a woman in a man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oh, you men, most illogical creatures in the world! You call woman a
+weak being, but, although you make laws to protect children, you make
+none to protect women. Nay, on that woman whom you call weak you impose
+infallibility. When you strong, bearded men get out of the path of duty
+you say: 'The flesh is weak'; but when it is a woman who does there is
+no indulgence, no mercy, no pity. No extenuating circumstances are
+admitted.
+
+What you most admire in women is chastity. If so, how dare you leave
+unpunished the man who takes it away from them? How is it that you
+receive him in your club, welcome him in your house, and not uncommonly
+congratulate him on his good fortune?
+
+I hear you constantly complain that women are too fond of dress, too
+careless of the money that you make by the sweat of your brow, too
+frivolous, too fond of pleasure, and that matrimony becomes, on that
+account, more and more impossible.
+
+Let me assure you that there are many young girls, brought up by
+thoughtful mothers to be cheerful, devoted, and careful wives; but, as a
+rule, you despise them. You are attracted by the best dressed ones, and
+you go and offer your heart to the bird with fine feathers. You take the
+rose, and disdain to look at the violet. How illogical of you to make
+complaints! You only get what you want, and, later on, what you
+deserve.
+
+The law, made by man, and the customs exact virtue incarnate in woman.
+She is to have neither weaknesses, senses, nor passions. Whatever her
+husband does, she must be patient and resigned.
+
+The laws and customs would be much wiser if, instead of demanding
+infallibility of women, they were to make women's duties and virtues
+easier by showing less indulgence for men, and by declaring that, in
+matrimony, the same conjugal virtues are expected alike of men as of
+women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ROSE, THE LILY, AND THE VIOLET; OR, HOW DIFFERENT METHODS APPEAL TO
+DIFFERENT WOMEN
+
+
+The man butterfly is the most dangerous member of society. He is
+generally handsome, amiable, persuasive, and witty. He may be in
+succession cheerful, light-hearted, poetical, and sentimental.
+
+If he comes to the rose, he says to her in his sweetest voice: 'You are
+beautiful, and I love you tenderly, ardently. I feel I can devote my
+whole life to you. If you can love me, I can reward your love with a
+century of constancy and faithfulness.'
+
+'Oh!' says the rose, with an air of incredulity, 'I know what the
+faithfulness of the butterfly is.'
+
+'There are all sorts of butterflies,' he gently intimates; 'I know that
+some of them have committed perjury and deceived roses, but I am not one
+of them. Of the butterfly I have only the wings, to always bring me back
+to you. I am a one-rose butterfly; if the others are inconstant,
+unfaithful, liars, I am innocent of their faults. I swear, if you will
+not listen to me, I shall die, and in dying for you there will be
+happiness still.'
+
+The rose is touched, moved and charmed with this passionate language.
+'How he loves me!' she thinks. 'After all, if butterflies are generally
+perfidious, it is not his fault; he is not one of that sort.'
+
+The rose yields; she gives up to him her whole soul, all her most
+exquisite perfume. After he is saturated, he takes his flight.
+
+'Where are you going?' asks the rose.
+
+'Where am I going?' he says, with a protecting sneer. 'Why, I am going
+to visit the other flowers, your rivals.'
+
+'But you swore you would be faithful to me!'
+
+'I know, my dear; a butterfly's oath, nothing more. You should have been
+wiser, and not allowed yourself to be taken in.'
+
+Then he goes in the neighbourhood of a beautiful, haughty, vain lily.
+Meantime an ugly bumble comes near the rose and tries to sting her. She
+calls the butterfly to her help, but he does not even deign to answer.
+For him the rose is the past and the lily the present. He is no more
+grateful than he is faithful.
+
+
+WHEN HE MEETS THE LILY
+
+With the lily, whom he understands well, he knows he has to proceed in
+quite a different manner. He must use flattery.
+
+'Imagine, lovely lily,' he says to her, 'that this silly and vain rose
+thinks she is the queen of flowers. She is beautiful, no doubt, but
+what is her beauty compared to yours? What is her perfume? Almost
+insipid compared to your enchanting, intoxicating fragrance. What is her
+shape compared to your glorious figure? Why, she looks like a pink
+cabbage. Is not, after all, pure whiteness incomparable? My dear lady,
+you are above competition.'
+
+The vain lily listens with attention and pleasure. The wily butterfly
+sees he is making progress. He goes on flattering, then risks a few
+words of love.
+
+'Ah!' sighs the lily, 'if you were not a fickle butterfly, I might
+believe half of what you say!'
+
+'You do not know me!' he exclaims indignantly. 'I have only the shape of
+a butterfly; I have not the heart of one. How could I be unfaithful to
+you if you loved me? Are you not the most beautiful of flowers? How
+could it be possible for me to prefer any other to you? No, no; for the
+rest of my life there will be but the lily for me.'
+
+The vanity of the lily is flattered, she believes him, and gives herself
+up to the passionate embrace of the butterfly.
+
+'Oh, beloved one,' she exclaims in ecstasy, 'you will love me for ever;
+you will always be mine as I am yours!'
+
+'To tell you the truth, my dear lily,' says the butterfly coolly, 'you
+are very nice, but your perfume is rather strong, a little vulgar, and
+one gets tired of it quickly. I am not sure that I do not prefer the
+rose to you. Now, be good, and let me go quickly. I am a butterfly. I
+cannot help my nature; I was made like that. Good-bye!'
+
+
+THE MODEST VIOLET
+
+Then he flies towards a timid violet, modestly hidden in the ivy near
+the wall. Her sweet odour reveals her presence. So he stops and says to
+her:
+
+'Sweet, exquisite violet, how I do love you! Other flowers may be
+beautiful, my darling, but that is all. You, besides, are good and
+modest; as for your sweet, delicious perfume, it is absolutely beyond
+competition. I might admire a rose or a lily for a moment, lose my head
+over them, but not my heart. You alone can inspire sincere and true
+love. If you will marry me--for you do not imagine that I could ask you
+to love me without at the same time asking you to be my wife--we will
+lead a quiet, retired life of eternal bliss, hidden in the ivy, far from
+the noise and the crowd.'
+
+'This would be beautiful,' says the violet, 'but I am afraid you are too
+brilliant for me, and I too modest and humble for you. I have been
+warned against you. People say you are fickle.'
+
+'Who could have slandered me so? Your modesty is the very thing that has
+attracted me to you. I have crossed the garden without looking at any
+other flower in order to come to you straight. What I want is a heart
+like yours--tender, faithful--a heart that I may feel is mine for the
+rest of my days.'
+
+And he swears his love, always promising matrimony as soon as a few
+difficulties, 'over which he has no control,' are surmounted. The poor
+little violet is fascinated, won; she loves him, and gives herself to
+him; but it is not long before he goes.
+
+'Surely,' she says, with her eyes filled with tears, 'you are not going
+to abandon me. You are not going to leave me to fight the great big
+battle of life alone, with all the other flowers of the garden to sneer
+at me and despise me! Oh no, dear; I have loved you with my modest soul;
+I have given you all I have in the world. No, no, you are not going
+away, never to return again! It would be too cruel! No, the world is not
+so bad as that; you will return, won't you?'
+
+'I feel very sorry for you, dear--really very sorry; but, you see, I
+cannot. I am a gentleman, and I have my social position to think of. I
+am sure you understand that. You say you are fond of me; then you will
+put yourself in my place, and conclude that I have done the best I could
+for you. Good-bye! Forget me as quickly as you can.'
+
+The little violet commits suicide; and the butterfly, reading an account
+of it in the following day's papers, has not even a tear to shed, no
+remorse, no regret.
+
+
+A SHINING SOCIAL LIGHT.
+
+He is called by his club friends 'a devil of a fellow with the girls,'
+and that is almost meant as a compliment. As for the women of the very
+best society, he is thought rather enterprising and dangerous; but I
+have never heard that, for his conduct, he has ever been turned out of a
+respectable house or of a decent club.
+
+There is one drawback to the perfect happiness of the butterfly: he is
+generally in love with a worthless woman, who makes a fool of him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WOMEN LOVE BETTER THAN MEN
+
+
+How many people understand what love means? How many appreciate it? How
+many ever realize what it is? For some it is a more or less sickly
+sentiment, for others merely violent desires.
+
+Alas! it requires so many qualifications to appreciate love that very
+few people are sufficiently free from some vulgarity or other to be
+worthy of speaking of love without profanity.
+
+Love requires too much constancy to suit the light-hearted, too much
+ardour to suit calm temperaments, too much reserve to suit violent
+constitutions, too much delicacy to suit people destitute of refinement,
+too much enthusiasm to suit cool hearts, too much diplomacy to suit the
+simple-minded, too much activity to suit indolent characters, too many
+desires to suit the wise.
+
+See what love requires to be properly and thoroughly appreciated, and
+you will easily understand why it must be in woman's nature to love
+better and longer than man.
+
+Men can worship better than women, but women can love better than men.
+Of this there can be no doubt.
+
+Very often women believe that they are loved when they are only ardently
+desired because they are beautiful, piquant, elegant, rich, difficult to
+obtain, and because men are violent, ambitious, wilful, and obstinate;
+and the more obstacles there are in their way, the more bent they feel
+on triumphing over difficulties.
+
+To obtain a woman men will risk their lives, ruin themselves, commit any
+act of folly or extravagance which you care to name. Women are flattered
+by these follies and extravagances due to motives of very different
+characters; but they mistake passion for love.
+
+Yet passion is very seldom compatible with true love. Passion is as
+fickle as love is constant. Passion is but a proof of vanity and
+selfishness.
+
+Woman is only the pretext for the display of it. Singers, actresses,
+danseuses, all women detached from that shade and mystery in which love
+delights in dwelling, women who give to the public all the treasures of
+their beauty, amiability, and talent are those who inspire in men the
+most violent passions, but they are seldom truly loved unless they
+consent to retire from the glare of the footlights and withdraw to the
+shade.
+
+Passion excites vanity, noise, envy: it plays to the gallery. Love seeks
+retirement, and prefers a moss bank against some wall covered with ivy,
+some solitude where silence is so perfect that two hearts can hear each
+other beat, where space is so small that lips must forcibly meet.
+
+The man who takes his bride to Paris for the honeymoon does not really
+love her. If he loves truly he will take her to the border of a forest
+in some secluded, picturesque spot, where nature will act as a church in
+which both will fervently worship.
+
+Now, with very few exceptions, women understand these things much better
+than men. They are born with feelings of delicacy and refinement that
+only few men can acquire or develop; they are more earnest, more
+poetical, better diplomatists, and of temperaments generally more
+artistic.
+
+Besides--and it is in this that they are infinitely superior to
+men--whereas many men see their love cooled by possession, all women see
+theirs increased and sealed by it.
+
+The moment a woman is possessed by the man she loves, she belongs to him
+body, heart, and soul. Her love is the occupation of her life, her only
+thought, and, I may add without the slightest idea of irreverence, her
+religion.
+
+She loves that man as she does God. If all men could only be
+sufficiently impressed with this fact, how kind and devoted to women
+they would be!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+IS WOMAN A RESPONSIBLE BEING?
+
+
+There are nations still in existence where women are denied the
+possession of a soul; but these nations are not civilized. Now, Germany
+and England are civilized nations, yet I am not sure that some Germans
+and Englishmen really admit that women are beings possessed of a mind.
+
+I have constantly heard Englishmen of 'the good old school' say: 'If a
+man steals my horse, my dog, my poultry, I have him arrested, and he
+gets a few months' imprisonment; if he steals my wife, he remains at
+large, unmolested. Yet, is not my wife my most valuable property?' And
+that good Englishman is absolutely persuaded that his argument is
+unanswerable.
+
+The other day, in a German paper, I read the following exquisitely
+delicious remark: 'We have a treaty of extradition with Switzerland. If
+the man Giron had stolen the least valuable horse of the Crown Prince of
+Saxony, we could have had him arrested in Geneva and returned to us; but
+as he only stole the wife of that prince, the mother of his children, we
+can do nothing.'
+
+From all this we are bound to conclude that, in the eyes of many
+Germans and some Englishmen, a woman is like a horse or any other
+animal, a thing, a 'brute of no understanding,' a being without a mind.
+In my ignorance I thought that when women left their husbands to follow
+other men, they were, rightly or wrongly, using their own minds, acting
+on their own responsibility and on their own good or bad judgment.
+
+In other words, I thought that they were thinking beings.
+
+When a man steals a horse, he takes him by the mane or the mouth and
+pulls him away with him. He does not say to the animal, 'I like you; I
+will treat you better than your master; will you come with me?' He
+steals him, as he would an inanimate thing.
+
+When a man asks a woman to elope with him, he says to her: 'I love you,
+I know you love me; leave your husband, who makes you unhappy, and come
+with me, who will make you happy.' She reflects, and, through feelings
+of despair, of love, of passion, she yields, and answers, 'Yes, I will.'
+
+Now, her resolution may be most reprehensible, her conduct immoral; she
+may be a fool, anything you like, but she is not carried off by force.
+She acts of her own accord and free will, and is, I imagine, prepared to
+meet the consequences of her actions.
+
+I have heard an English magistrate say to a man whose wife was accused
+of disorderly conduct: 'You should look after your wife better than you
+do, and, in future, I will make you responsible for what she does.
+To-day I will impose a fine of ten shillings. If you pay it, I will set
+her free.'
+
+Now, this argument would be fairly good if the accused had been a dog. I
+should understand a magistrate saying to a man: 'Your dog is a nuisance
+and a source of danger to your neighbours; if he causes any more damage,
+if I hear again that he has killed your neighbour's cat, eaten his
+poultry, or bitten his children, I will hold you responsible, and make
+you pay the damages, _plus_ some compensation.' But a wife!--inasmuch
+that, mind you, when a woman has committed a murder in England, it is
+she who is hanged, not her husband.
+
+I believe that women are quite prepared to accept the responsibility of
+their actions. The emancipation of woman should be an accomplished fact
+by the declaration that she can do evil as well as good. And I am sure
+that if she wants credit for whatever good she does, she is also ready
+to accept the consequences of the mischief, to herself or to others,
+which she may make.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RAMBLES IN CUPID'S DOMAIN
+
+
+Love performs daily miracles. It causes people to see with closed eyes,
+and to see nothing with open ones.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women worship sacrifice to the extent of wishing us to believe (perhaps
+they believe it themselves) that, even at the altar of love, they make a
+sacrifice. Women in love have an irresistible craving for sacrifice.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+I have heard of women being so much in love as to declare to their
+husbands that they would not want a new hat for another month.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The world of love can boast a roll of demi-gods, heroes, martyrs, and
+saints that would put into the shade those of Paradise and Olympus.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love, after being conquered, has to be reconquered every day. Love is
+like money invested in doubtful stock, which has to be watched at every
+moment. Speculators know this; but married men and women too often
+ignore it.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In love the hand lies much less than the lips and the eyes. A certain
+pressing of the hand is often the most respectful and surest of proofs
+of love.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The language of the hand is most eloquent. Who has not been able to
+translate a pressure from a woman's hand by 'stay' or 'go'? How a woman
+can say to you with her hand 'I love you' or 'I cannot love you'!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Whoever says that two kisses can be perfectly alike does not know the A
+B C of love.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+No two acts dictated, or even suggested, by love should ever be alike.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In love it is better to be a creditor than a debtor.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Think of the torrents of harmony which maestros have composed with seven
+notes; the millions of thoughts which have been expressed with a score
+of letters; think of all the exploits, deeds of valour, and crimes that
+have been committed under the influence of love!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love is not compatible with conceit; the love of self excludes all
+other. Even injury cannot cure love; if it does, there was in the person
+much more conceit than love.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When a man and a woman have pronounced together the three sacramental
+words 'I love you,' they become priest and priestess of the same temple.
+In order to keep the sacred fire alive, they must be careful not to
+stifle it by an excess of fuel or to let it go out for want of air.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When you are in love, do not be over-sensitive, but always imagine that
+the other is. Thus your susceptibility will never be wounded, nor will
+that of your partner be.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Woe to people in love who satisfy all their desires in a week, in a
+month, in a year! Two lovers, or married people, should die without
+having drunk the cup of love to the last dregs.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Absence is a tonic for love only when men and women love with all their
+heart and soul. When they do not, the ancient proverb is still true:
+'Far from the eyes, far from the heart.'
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A beautiful woman is jealous of no woman, not even of a George Sand, a
+George Eliot, or of a queen; but a duchess may be jealous of a
+chambermaid.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+All the love-letters of a woman are not worth one of her smiles.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+If a woman wants to know the secret for remaining loved a long time, let
+her keep this recipe in mind: Give much, give more still, but be sure
+that you do not give all. Cupid is a little ungrateful beast, who takes
+his flight when expectations cease to whet his appetite.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+For common mortals, desire engenders love, and love kills desire; for
+the elect, love is the son of desire and the prolific father of a
+thousand new desires.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+To conquer a man is nothing for a woman to boast of, but to conquer a
+woman is a real victory, because it requires in a man, to conquer a
+woman, far more qualities than it requires in a woman to conquer a man.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+There is a touching exchange of amiable services between the sexes. The
+man of twenty often receives his first lesson in love from a woman of
+forty; and the woman of twenty generally receives hers from a man of
+forty.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The following are among the little tortures which people in love take
+pleasure in inflicting upon themselves-:
+
+'Amelia has been coughing twice to-day. I wonder if the poor darling is
+consumptive? An aunt of hers died of consumption. She was an aunt only
+by marriage, but when those confounded microbes enter a family, no one
+knows the mischief they may do!'
+
+'George did not notice I had a carnation, his favourite flower, on my
+corsage the whole of last evening. He loves me no more.'
+
+'Do I love Algy--do I adore him as he deserves? Am I worthy of him?
+Shall I be able to keep the love of a man so handsome, so kind, so
+clever? This morning he did not kiss me with the same ardour. Perhaps he
+has not courage enough to confess that he does not love me as much as he
+used to.'
+
+'I am too happy. Something tells me it cannot last. I have a
+presentiment that a great misfortune is going to happen. Our love cannot
+possibly enjoy such bliss for long. I feel I am going to cry.'
+
+And she bursts into hot tears.
+
+'To-day Arthur met me at the appointed time to the minute. Formerly he
+used to be in advance--always. I told him so, and he said, showing me
+the time by his watch, that he was quite punctual. He ought to have been
+pleased with my remark, and have answered otherwise. I wonder if there
+is anything wrong?'
+
+'He never notices my dresses as he used to. Yesterday I changed the bow
+I had on, and he made no remark. I know all his cravats, every one of
+them. I also know when he has tied them before a glass, and when he has
+not. He does not love me as I love him.'
+
+'I am quite happy when my hands are in his, but he is not satisfied with
+that; he always wants to kiss me. He loves me with his senses, not with
+his heart. They say all men are the same. I thought George was different
+from all of them!'
+
+'I have always heard that love is the most sublime joy on earth. I love
+and I am loved; yet I want to cry, and I don't know why. Oh, why?'
+
+'Why do I find that Angelina looks better in gray than in red? I ought
+to admire her in whatever colour she has on. Should I make such a remark
+if my love was intense? Was I a brute for making it before her? She has
+been sad ever since. But why does she wear red? Red does not suit a
+blonde. Red is for brunettes. Yet, can I tell her that? Of course, I
+cannot. I must not imagine that she does not know that herself, and
+besides, I should find her beautiful in anything. I am an ass, a silly
+ass!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WHICH SEX WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO BE?
+
+
+I once heard a Frenchman say, 'My wife could do without me, but I
+couldn't do without her;' but, as a rule, the Frenchman who has had the
+good fortune of marrying an intelligent wife becomes so dependent on
+her, so much under her influence, that no general rule should be drawn
+from the remark. When a man and wife have lived happily together, I
+find, from my personal observations, that when one has gone, it is
+generally the woman who can better do without the man than the reverse.
+
+Of course, the question is very complex, and one which I would rather
+ask than answer. If sexes could do one without the other, and resolved
+to do it for fifty years, the world would put up its shutters. May not
+the question resolve itself into the following: Of old bachelors and old
+maids, which are the happier?
+
+Even this question is not a fair one, because it must be admitted that
+society, which is very lenient over the peccadilloes of unmarried men,
+frowns unmercifully over those of unmarried women. Shall we then say, Of
+old bachelors and old maids, who have led monachal lives, which have
+been the happier, and would be the more ready to decline matrimony if
+the opportunity were again offered to them? Now, can you answer the
+question more easily? Well, if you can, I can't, and if you have
+anything to say on the subject I shall be glad to hear it.
+
+Personally, I think the question practically amounts to this: Which
+would you rather be, a man or a woman?
+
+Now, this is a question which my readers will find difficulty in
+answering, and even in speaking about, with authority, as each of them
+has only had the experiences of one sex.
+
+Before answering it, we must indeed talk it over with some very intimate
+and trustworthy friends of the other sex, and compare their sentiments
+and sensations with our own. We must recall to our minds all the
+observations which we have made on the lives of men and women whom we
+have known. Let us not follow the example of the woman who would be a
+man 'because men are free,' and the man who would be a woman 'because
+women are admired,' for the reason that all men are not free, and women
+are far from being all admired.
+
+I have interviewed on the subject many men and many women, and I have
+found an enormous majority of women who would elect to be men, and only
+a very small minority of men who would elect to be women. Conclusion:
+most people would elect to be men.
+
+I am a man, and if I were to be born again and asked to make a choice, I
+would elect to be a man; but the reason may be that I possess many
+failings of which I am aware, and also a few qualities which the most
+imperfect of us must necessarily possess who are not absolute objects of
+perdition.
+
+For let us say at once that sex suits character.
+
+I love freedom and hate conventionalities; I am a man of action, and
+must always be up and doing. I do not believe that I am in any way
+tyrannical, yet I like to lead and have my own way. If the position of
+first fiddle is engaged, I decline to form part of the orchestra. Most
+of these characteristics are failings, perhaps even faults, but I
+possess them, and I cannot help possessing them, and they naturally
+induce me to prefer being a man.
+
+I have made my confession, let my readers make theirs instead of taking
+me to task. I hate to feel protected, to be petted, but I would love to
+protect and pet a beloved one, whom I would think weaker than myself. I
+am a born fighter, and I don't care for smooth paths, unless I can make
+them smooth myself for my own use and also for the use of those who walk
+through life by my side.
+
+But, leaving aside personal characteristics which would lead me to elect
+to be a man, there are many reasons which would cause me to make that
+choice quite independent of my character. Nature has given women beauty
+of face and figure, but there she stopped, and to make her pay for that
+gift she has handicapped her in every possible way.
+
+And when I consider that there are in this world more ugly women than
+beautiful ones, and that an ugly woman is the abomination of desolation,
+an anomaly, a freak, I altogether fail to see why ninety women out of a
+hundred should return thanks for being women. I have no hesitation in
+saying that the woman who is not beautiful has no _raison d'être_, and
+that only a few beautiful women are happy to be alive after they are
+forty.
+
+Women have terrible grievances, many of which society and legislation
+(that is to say, in the second case, man) ought to redress. But the
+greatest grievances of women are, to my mind, against nature. These
+grievances cannot and will never be redressed.
+
+In love woman has an unfair position. She gets old when a man of the
+same age remains young. In every race she is handicapped out of any
+chance of winning or even getting a dead heat. For these reasons
+especially I should elect to be a man.
+
+Ah, what a pity we cannot decide our fate in every phase of life! in
+which case I would elect to be a beautiful woman from twenty to thirty,
+a brilliant officer from thirty to forty, a celebrated painter from
+forty to fifty, a famous poet or novelist from fifty to sixty, Prime
+Minister of England or President of the United States from sixty to
+seventy, and a Cardinal for the rest of my life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND
+
+
+When a woman says of her husband, 'He is a wretch!' she may still love
+him; probably she does. When she says, 'Oh, he is a good sort'--poor
+fellow!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+After bravery and generosity, tact and discretion are the two qualities
+that women most admire in men; audacity comes next.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Speaking of his wife, a Duke says, 'The Duchess'; a man standing always
+on ceremony, 'Mrs. B.'; a gentleman, 'My wife'; an idiot, 'My better
+half'; a common man, 'The missus'; a working man, as a compliment, 'The
+old woman'; a French grocer, 'La patronne'; a French working man, 'La
+bourgeoise.' The sweet French word 'épouse' is only used now by Paris
+concierges.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women are roses. I always suspected it from the thorns.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In the good old times of poetry and adventures, when a man was refused
+a girl by her parents, he carried her off; now he asks for another. But,
+then, posting exists no longer except for letters, and there is no
+poetry in eloping in a railroad car. Oh, progress! oh, civilization!
+such is thy handicraft! Dull, prosaic times we are living in!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Woman is an angel who may become a devil, a sister of mercy who may
+change into a viper, a ladybird who may be transformed into a
+stinging-bee. Sometimes she never changes, and all her lifetime remains
+angel, sister of mercy, ladybird, and sweet fragrant flower. It depends
+a great deal on the gardener.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When a man is on the wrong path in life, it is seldom he does not meet a
+woman who says to him, 'Don't go that way'; but when it is a woman who
+has lost her way, she always meets a man who indicates to her the wrong
+path.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The Lord took from man a rib, with which He made a woman. As soon as
+this process was finished, woman went back to man, and took the rest of
+him, which she has kept ever since.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The heart is a hollow and fleshy muscle which causes the blood to set in
+motion. It appears that this is what we love with. Funny!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Circe was an enchantress who changed men into pigs. Why do I say was? I
+don't think that she is dead.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women were not born to command, but they have enough inborn power to
+govern man who commands, and, as a rule, the best and happiest marriages
+are those where women have most authority, and where their advice is
+oftenest followed.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+There are three ways for a man to get popular with women. The first is
+to love them, the second to sympathize with their inclinations, and the
+third to give them reasons that will raise them in their own estimation.
+In other words, love them, love what they love, or cause them to love
+themselves better. Love, always love.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A woman knows that a man is in love with her long before he does. A
+woman's intuition is keener than her sight; in fact, it is a sixth sense
+given to her by nature, and which is more powerful than the other five
+put together.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Very beautiful, as well as very good, women are seldom very clever or
+very witty; yet a beautiful woman who is good is the masterpiece of
+creation.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A woman will often more easily resist the love which she feels for a
+man than the love which she inspires in him. It is in the most beautiful
+nature of woman to consider herself as a reward, but it is also,
+unfortunately for her, too often her misfortune.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+We admire a foreigner who gets naturalized in our own country, and
+despise a compatriot who makes a foreigner of himself. If a man joins
+our religion, we call him converted; if one of ours goes over to
+another, we call him perverted. In the same way, we blame the
+inconstancy of a woman when she leaves us for another, and we find her
+charming when she leaves another to come to us.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The reputation that a woman should try to obtain and deserve is to be a
+sensible woman in her house and an amiable woman in society.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Frivolous love may satisfy a man and a woman for a time, but only true
+and earnest love can satisfy a husband and a wife. Only this kind of
+love will survive the thousand-and-one little drawbacks of matrimony.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Men and women can no more conceal the love they feel than they can feign
+the one which they feel not.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love feeds on contrasts to such an extent that you see dark men prefer
+blondes, poets marry cooks and laundresses, clever men marry fools, and
+giants marry dwarfs.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+God has created beautiful women in order to force upon men the belief in
+His existence.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Like all the other fruits placed on earth for the delectation of men,
+the most beautiful women are not always the best and the most delicious.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In the heroic times of chivalry men drew their swords for the sake of
+women; in these modern prosaic ones they draw their cheques.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women entertain but little respect for men who have blind confidence in
+their love and devotion; they much prefer those who feel that they have
+to constantly keep alive the first and deserve the second.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A woman can take the measure of a man in half the time it takes a man to
+have the least notion of a woman.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+There are three kinds of men: those who will come across temptations and
+resist them, those who will avoid them for fear of succumbing, and those
+who seek them. Among the first are to be found only men whose love for
+a woman is the first consideration of their lives.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Young girls should bear in mind that husbands are not creatures who are
+always making love, any more than soldiers are men who are always
+fighting.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A love affair will interest even a very old woman, just as the account
+of a race will always interest an old jockey. Habit, you see!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The friendship of women for women is very often less based on love, or
+even sympathy, than on little indiscreet confidences which they may have
+made to one another.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In order that love may be lasting, it must be closely allied with tried
+friendship. One cannot replace the other, but so long as both march
+abreast, living together, a man and a woman can find life delicious.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+It is not matrimony that kills love, but the way in which many people
+live in the state of matrimony. It may be affirmed, however, that only
+intelligent diplomatists (alas! the select few!) can make love last long
+in matrimonial life.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women who suggest to the mind notes of interrogation are more
+interesting than those, too perfect, who only suggest notes of
+admiration.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Constant reproaches do not kill love so quickly and so surely as
+constant reminders of what one has done to deserve gratitude. Why?
+Simply because Cupid loves freedom, and lives on it. To ask for love as
+a debt of gratitude is like forcing it, and the failure is fatal.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women are all actresses. What makes actresses so fascinating and
+attractive to men is that they are women twice over.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Woman is weak and man is strong--so we constantly hear, at any rate.
+Then why, in the name of common-sense, do we expect to find in women
+virtues that demand a strength of which we men are not capable?
+
+     *   *   *
+
+There are women in the world who love with such ardour, such sincerity,
+and such devotion, that, after their death, they ought to be canonized.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love is a divine law; duty is only a human--nay, only a social--one.
+That is why love will always triumph over duty; it is the greater of the
+two.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Lovers are very much like thieves; they proceed very much in the same
+way, and the same fate eventually awaits them. First, they take
+superfluous precautions; then by degrees they neglect them, until they
+forget to take the necessary ones, and they are caught.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A man who has been married enters the kingdom of heaven ex-officio,
+having served his purgatory on earth; but if he has been married twice
+he is invariably refused admittance, as the Sojourn of the Seraphs is no
+place for lunatics.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+As long as there is one woman left on the face of the earth, and one man
+left to observe her, the world will be able to hear something new about
+women.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A man may be as perfect as you like, he will never be but a rough
+diamond until he has been cut and polished by the delicate hand of a
+woman.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Middle-aged and elderly men are often embellished by characteristic
+lines engraven on their faces, but women are not jealous of them.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A woman who marries a second time runs two risks: she may regret that
+she lost her first husband, or that she did not always have the second
+one. But, in the first case, her second husband may regret her first one
+even more than she does, and tell her so, too.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Many men say that they marry to make an end; but they forget that if
+marriage is for them an end, it is a beginning for the women, and then,
+look out!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+It is a great misfortune not to be loved by the one you love; but it is
+a still greater one to be loved by the one whom you have ceased to love.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love is like most contagious diseases: the more afraid you are of it,
+the more likely you are to catch it.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Men and women have in common five senses; but women possess a sixth one,
+by far the keenest of all--intuition. For that matter, women do not even
+think, argue, and judge as safely as they feel.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Cupid and Hymen are brothers, but, considering the difference in their
+temperaments, they cannot be sons by the same wife.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The motto of Cupid is, 'All or nothing'; that of Hymen, 'All and
+nothing.'
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love is more indulgent than Friendship for acts of infidelity.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+If men were all deaf, and women all blind, matrimony would stand a much
+better chance of success.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WOMEN AND THEIR WAYS
+
+
+I sometimes wonder how some women dare go out when it is windy. Their
+hats are fixed to their hair by means of long pins; their hair is fixed
+to their heads by means of short ones, and sometimes it happens that
+their heads are fixed to their shoulders by the most delicate of
+contrivances. Yes, it is wonderful!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Fiction is full of Kings and Princes marrying shepherdesses and
+beggar-maids; but in reality it is only the Grand-Ducal House of
+Tuscany, which for nearly three hundred years has exhibited royal
+Princesses running away with dancing masters and French masters engaged
+at their husbands' courts.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A man in love is always interesting. What a pity it is that husbands
+cannot always be in love!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Men who always praise women do not know them well; men who always speak
+ill of them do not know them at all.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+What particularly flatters the vanity of women is to know that some men
+love them and dare not tell them so. However, they do not always insist
+on those men remaining silent for ever.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The saddest spectacle that the world can offer is that of a sweet,
+sensible, intelligent woman married to a conceited, tyrannical fool.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The mirror is the only friend who is allowed to know the secrets of a
+woman's imperfections.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When a woman is deeply in love, the capacity of her heart for charity is
+without limit. If all women were in love there would be no poverty on
+the face of the earth.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The fidelity of a man to the woman he loves is not a duty, but almost an
+act of selfishness. It is for his own sake still more than for hers that
+he should be faithful to her.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Two excellent kinds of wine mixed together may make a very bad drink. An
+excellent man and a very good woman married together may make an
+abominable match.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Jealousy, discreet and delicate, is a proof of modesty which should be
+appreciated by the very woman who should resent violent jealousy.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When you constantly hear the talent or the wit of a woman praised, you
+may take it for granted that she is not beautiful. If she were, you
+would hear her beauty praised first of all.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+It is slow poison that kills love most surely. Love will survive even
+infidelity rather than boredom or satiety.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Men study women, and form opinions, generally wrong ones. Women look at
+men, guess their character, and seldom make mistakes.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+All the efforts that an old woman makes to hide her age only help to
+advertise it louder.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Of a man and a woman, it is the one who is loved, but who does not love,
+that is the unhappier of the two.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women often see without looking; men often look without seeing.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+I know handsome men who are bald, and there are not a few, but many, who
+derive distinction from this baldness. There are men--severe, stern
+types of men--who are not disfigured, but improved, by spectacles. Just
+imagine, if you can, the possibility of a bald woman with spectacles
+inspiring a tender passion! So much for the infallibility of the
+proverb, 'What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,' so often
+quoted by women when they are told that men can afford to do this or
+that, but not they. Lady women-righters, please answer.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In the tender relations between men and women, novelty is a wonderful
+attraction, and habit a powerful bond; but between the two there is a
+bottomless precipice into which love often falls, never to be heard of
+afterward. Happy those who know how to bridge over the chasm!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A woman never forgets, however old she may be, that she was once very
+beautiful. Why should she? The pity is that she very often forgets that
+she is so no longer. My pet aversion in society is the woman of sixty
+who succeeds in making herself look fifty, thinks she is forty, acts as
+if she were thirty, and dresses as if she were twenty.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+I am not prepared to say that celibacy is preferable to marriage; it
+has, however, this decided advantage over it: a bachelor can always
+cease to be one the moment he has discovered that he has made a mistake.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women are extremists in everything. Poets, painters and sculptors know
+this so well that they have always taken women as models for War,
+Pestilence, Death, Famine and Justice, Virtue, Glory, Victory, Pity,
+Charity. On the other hand, virtues and vices, blessings and calamities
+of a lesser degree are represented by men. Such are Work, Perseverance,
+Laziness, Avarice, etc.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+It is not given to any man or woman to fall in love more than once with
+the same person. And although men and women may love several times in
+succession, they can only once love to the fulness of their hearts.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love does to women what the sun does to flowers: it colours them,
+embellishes them, makes them look radiant and beautiful; but when it is
+too ardent it consumes and withers them.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+There are two terribly embarrassing moments in the life of a man. The
+first is when he has to say 'all' to the woman he loves, and the second
+when all is said.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+If a man is not to a certain extent ill at ease in the presence of a
+woman, you may be quite sure that he does not really love her.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A woman explains the beauty of a woman; a man feels it. A man does not
+always know why a woman is beautiful; a woman always does.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The sweetest music in the ears of a woman is the sound of the praises of
+the man whom she loves.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+It is a mistake for a married couple to consider that marriage has made
+them one. To be attractive to each other they should each preserve their
+personality quite distinct. Marriage is very often dull because man and
+wife are one, and feel lonely. Most people get bored in their own
+company.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Happiness in matrimony is sober, serious, based on love, confidence, and
+friendship. Those who seek in it frivolity, pleasure, noise, and passion
+condemn themselves to penal servitude.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The great misfortune of mankind is that matrimony is the only vocation
+for which candidates have had no training; yet it is the one that
+requires the most careful preparation.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+On the part of a husband, violent jealousy is an insult to his wife, but
+delicate, discreet jealousy is almost a compliment to her, for it proves
+his lack of self-confidence, and that sometimes he feels he is not good
+enough for her, not worthy of her.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Most women have the hearts of poets and the minds of diplomatists. What
+makes a wife so useful to an ambassador is that she adds her own power
+of intuition to the five senses already possessed by her husband.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love in matrimony can live only on condition that man and wife remain
+interesting in each other's eyes. Devotion, fidelity, attention to duty,
+and all the troop of domestic virtues will not be sufficient to keep
+love alive.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Beauty is not the mother of Love. On the contrary, it is often love
+which engenders beauty, gives brilliancy to the eyes, gracefulness to
+the body, vibration to the voice. Love is the sun that hatches the
+flowers of the soul. The face which reflects all the inner sentiments of
+the heart betrays the love of its owner, and is beautiful.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Those who in good faith promise eternal love and those who believe in
+such promises are dupes--the former of their hearts, the latter of their
+vanity. Wine well taken care of improves by keeping, but not for ever;
+it is destined to turn to vinegar sooner or later.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Love is a great healer. The worst characteristic traits of a man and of
+a woman have been known to be cured by it.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Men and women do not love before they are thirty, men especially. Until
+then it is little more than rehearsing. Fortunate are those who retain
+for the play the same company they had engaged for the rehearsal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+WOMAN'S MISSION IN THIS WORLD
+
+
+Naturalists make little difference between women and the other females
+of the animal kingdom: they declare that the mission of woman is to be a
+mother. Napoleon I., who was a naturalist, being asked to give a
+definition of the best woman, answered: 'The one who bears most
+children.' And as for him man was mere 'cannon flesh,' I am surprised he
+did not say, 'The one who bears most boys.'
+
+Moralists are kinder to women; they go so far as to grant that woman's
+mission is twofold: that she is intended to be a wife and a mother; that
+she is to be the guardian of the hearth, submissive and devoted to man,
+her lord and master; to look after her household, and be absorbed by her
+duties toward her husband and children.
+
+No sinecure, this mission of woman, as you see--no joke either; but
+moralists have no sense of humour--not a particle of it.
+
+No doubt this double rôle of wife and mother is most respectable; it is
+even sacred; but woman's nature demands something else. To restrict her
+circle of activity and influence to her family is to misappreciate her
+many faculties, her aspirations, her feelings, which, like those of men,
+are entitled to respect; it amounts to not recognising that her mission
+is not only familial, but social also.
+
+I will not dwell on the part she is called upon to play in the family as
+wife and mother. We men all know it, whether we are husbands or sons;
+but we have also to consider what the rôle of woman is in that society
+of which she is the great civilizing element as well as the greatest
+ornament.
+
+The most noble part that has been allotted to woman is that of the
+flower in the vegetable kingdom. This rôle consists in throwing a spell
+over the world, in making life more refined and poetical--in a word, in
+spreading fragrance around her and imparting it to all who come in
+contact with her. A wag once said that but for the women men could have
+hoped for Paradise. Good! But what about this world? Is not woman the
+direct or indirect motive for all our actions? Is she not the embodiment
+of the beautiful, and therefore the mother of Art?
+
+If she is sometimes the cause of a crime, is she not always the cause of
+the most heroic deeds performed by man? Can we for a moment suppose
+society without her? Why, without her it would fall into a state of
+indolence and degradation, even of utter abjection. Would life be worth
+living without the sweet presence of kind, cheerful, and amiable women?
+
+Ah, my dear sir, make fun of woman in your club as much as you like;
+crack jokes at her expense to your heart's content; but acknowledge
+frankly that you are under her power--at least, I hope, under her
+influence--and that you could no more do without her than without the
+air which enables you to breathe.
+
+Talk of woman's mission as wife and mother, as naturalists and moralists
+do, but let all of us artists cry at the top of our voices that woman's
+mission is to make life beautiful by the cultivation of her own beauty,
+beauty of body, mind, and heart.
+
+It is the duty of woman to look as beautiful as she can; it is her
+imperious duty to charm the world by her sweetness and amiability. A
+woman who neglects this duty is guilty toward her fellow-creatures, even
+guilty toward her Maker, by not helping the destiny for which she was
+created. Countries are civilized in proportion to the influence that
+women have over men in them.
+
+As long as gardens have flowers and the world has beautiful and amiable
+women, so long will life be worth living.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IS WOMAN INFERIOR TO MAN?
+
+
+Many, many years ago a great council was held to discuss the question
+whether women had souls. I forget the conclusion which that learned
+assembly arrived at; but what is certain is that now most men do believe
+that women have souls, although a great number of them are still of
+opinion that woman is a being inferior to man.
+
+They hold that man is the lord of creation, the masterpiece, the last
+word of the Almighty.
+
+Now, is this really the case? First, God made the earth, then light,
+after which He created fishes, birds, and animals of all sorts. Then He
+said: 'I will now create a being far above all the other animals.'
+
+He took some mud; mark well, I say, some mud, and made Adam. In His
+wisdom He thought that mud was not good enough to make woman out of, and
+for her creation he took matter which had already been purified by His
+Divine breath, and He took part of Adam, and out of it made Eve.
+
+Now, surely, my dear fellow-men, you must own that either mud is better
+stuff than yourself, or you must confess that woman has a nobler origin
+than you. You can't get out of it.
+
+Please notice the order of creation: Fish, birds, animals, man and
+woman. If men do not admit that the Creator began by the least and
+finished with the best, they will have to conclude that lobsters, eels,
+crocodiles, sharks, owls, vultures, and mere sparrows are beings
+superior to them.
+
+If men do not recognise the superiority of these animals over them, they
+will have to come to the conclusion that the work of creation is one of
+improvement every day.
+
+But man will say, woman is not so strong as we are. True enough; but
+horses are stronger than men; elephants by trampling on them can make
+marmalade of them. Stags are swifter than men. Camels can carry a weight
+of 2,500 lb. on their backs. Birds can fly, and men are only trying
+machines to help them do it.
+
+Is man more intelligent than woman? Certainly not. Who ate the apple? I
+know that Eve was the first to be disobedient, but she had an idea, at
+all events before Adam had one.
+
+Had he even the power of resistance? No. Did he even try to shield woman
+after the offence was committed? No, he didn't, the coward. He turned
+against her and accused her of being the cause of the whole evil done.
+Poor beginning, a poor show, and a sad lesson by which men have
+profited, and to this day they turn against the woman they have
+deceived, and often abandon her. Man is still true to his origin.
+
+My dear sirs, the proof that God was satisfied that, in creating woman,
+He had said the last word of His Divine work, is that He entrusted her
+with the most noble of missions, that of bearing the future generations,
+of bringing children to the world, of guiding their first steps, of
+cultivating their minds and inculcating in them the love of what is good
+and right. In intending woman to be mother, God proclaimed the
+superiority of women over the rest of the creation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+WOMEN WHO ARE FOLLOWED AND ANNOYED IN THE STREET
+
+
+I have constantly heard women complain, in Paris, in London, and in New
+York, that they can seldom go out in the street without being followed
+and annoyed by men, many of whom look like gentlemen.
+
+And they express their complaint in tones of indignation not altogether
+free from a little air of self-satisfaction that seems to say: 'Of
+course a pretty woman like myself is bound to be noticed and stared at
+by men.'
+
+Well, I hate to say anything unpleasant to women, but there is an
+illusion in which they too often indulge, and which I should like to
+dispel at once.
+
+There are women beautiful as they can be, who can walk in every city
+perfectly unmolested and in perfect comfort and security, and who would
+be unable to tell you whether any man or woman had noticed them.
+
+We men are not so bold as many women believe, nor are we so silly. We
+have instinct, and we know pretty well the woman who enjoys being
+noticed and looked at, and even the one who seeks that enjoyment for
+purpose of self-satisfaction or vanity.
+
+I am over fifty years old, and any girl of twenty, I guarantee, will
+make me feel as timid as she likes in her presence, not by words, but
+simply by her attitude of dignity and reserve.
+
+And I believe that practically the same might be said of every man who
+is not an unmitigated scoundrel or blackguard.
+
+In a word, I should like to prove that a woman, who is too often noticed
+and followed in the street, should be offended by it, and have enough
+conscience of her value to mention it as little as possible; she should
+also exercise more control over herself and pay great attention to the
+way she dresses, looks and walks when out in the street.
+
+For if she is constantly followed, take it for granted that there is in
+her appearance something, just a little something, that gives a wrong
+impression of her.
+
+Let women have simplicity in their toilette, dignity in their manner, a
+severe gracefulness in their general attitude, and I guarantee you that
+no man--I mean no fairly well-bred man--will ever turn round to look at
+them.
+
+Women should not call it success. They should feel humiliated to see
+that some gloriously beautiful women do not obtain it. They should take
+advice and seek a remedy with the earnestness of that cashier who,
+returning home, could not even take notice of his wife and children,
+much less kiss them, until he had discovered the cause of an error of a
+penny in his accounts amounting to several thousands of pounds.
+
+When a woman tells me that she cannot go out without men looking and
+smiling at her, I have always a mind to say to her: 'Perhaps you wink at
+them.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DANGEROUS MEN
+
+(A WARNING TO WOMEN)
+
+
+Among the men who are the most dangerous for women must be reckoned
+those whose advances of love generally prove unsuccessful. Women have no
+idea of the harm that may be done to them by those parasites of their
+homes.
+
+A woman, young, amiable, and cheerful, welcomes such men in her house
+without entertaining any suspicion. She invites them to her receptions,
+her dinner-parties; she often finds them pleasant, witty, and then they
+venture a few flattering compliments. She at first accepts them as the
+current coin of society, and pays no attention to them.
+
+As she is amiable to her guests, she is not on her guard, and she treats
+them to the same smiles, which these fops of the purest water often
+imagine are gracious smiles conferred on them only. Thus encouraged,
+they go further, and venture compliments bordering on declarations of
+love, or, at any rate, on expressions of deep admiration. The young
+woman, used to compliments, takes no notice of our heroes, or pretends
+to have understood nothing.
+
+Her silence is then taken for a tacit acceptance, and the fops,
+emboldened, make an open declaration of love. Now, a regular flirt or
+coquette knows how to encourage or discourage a man with one glance, but
+a perfectly good woman is taken unaware; she feels embarrassed, and,
+thus apparently encouraged, these men get bolder and bolder, until the
+young woman has to show them the door.
+
+Then her troubles begin. These parasites will go to their clubs, and,
+even in drawing-rooms, say that she is a heartless coquette who
+encourages men to make love to her just to amuse herself. They abuse
+her, watch her, and, if one day she should compromise herself in the
+least, woe to her if the secret should fall into such men's hands! There
+is no revenge of which they are not capable. A case of this sort was,
+not long ago, investigated thoroughly, and it turned out that an
+anonymous letter had been written to the husband of a most charming
+society woman by a cur whom she had to turn out of her house for
+offering her a worthless love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE MAN WHO SMILES
+
+
+There is to be met in society a man who is particularly provoking and
+supremely objectionable and offensive. He is about forty, very
+gentlemanly, self-possessed, irreproachably dressed, well informed,
+interesting talker, with a somewhat patronizing air, and an eternal
+smile of self-satisfaction on his face.
+
+This man has compromised more women than many a 'devil of a fellow.' If
+you say before him, 'Mrs. X. is very beautiful, isn't she?' he says
+nothing, but smiles complacently. So you look at him and add:
+
+'Oh, you know her, then?' He smiles again. 'You don't say so!' you
+remark. 'I should have thought her a woman above the breath of
+suspicion.'
+
+He smiles still. You become persuaded that he is, or has been, on the
+most intimate terms with the lady in question.
+
+Mention before him the name of any woman you like to choose, and if the
+woman is in the least fashionable, or renowned for her beauty or
+position, he smiles.
+
+If at a ball he asks a lady to give him the pleasure of her partnership
+for a waltz or a polka, he leans close toward her, smiling at her in
+such a strange way that people believe he is telling her words of love,
+or, worse, that he is granted permission to do so.
+
+If he calls on a lady on her reception day, he has a way to salute her,
+to kiss her hand, to look at her in a patronizing way that seems to say
+to the other callers:
+
+'See how ceremonious I am with her before other people, and what a good
+comedian I am!'
+
+And he smiles, smiles, and smiles.
+
+Women are ill at ease in his presence. They hate him, but as he is
+content with smiling, and goes no further, what are they to do? They
+avoid him when they can, his smiles are so compromising.
+
+And they are right. His smiles are more compromising than _bonâ fide_
+slander and calumny.
+
+The men hate him, too, but they feel as powerless as the women do. They
+would like to slap his face, but you cannot say to a man:
+
+'I slap your face because I saw you smile on hearing my wife's name.'
+
+No, that would be too absurd. He knows it, and that is why he goes on
+smiling. He is safe.
+
+When he hears a bit of gossip on a woman, he immediately takes her
+defence, but in such a weak manner, and with such a smile on his face
+all the time, that people immediately come to the conclusion that 'it
+must be all true.'
+
+What is most provoking is that the man has not a bad reputation. He has
+never been openly mixed in any intrigue, and even his intimate friends
+have never heard of any love affair connecting him with any woman. For
+some people he is an enigma, for others a clever comedian, a maniac, a
+bore, or a fop.
+
+For men who justly hold that women should be treated with such respect
+that no act of man should cause anyone to even breathe a light remark on
+their character, the man who smiles is a cur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+WOMEN AND DOLLS
+
+
+The love of little girls for their dolls is a very serious love; it
+absolutely amounts to maternal tenderness. I have watched little girls
+nurse their dolls, and detected in their eyes that almost divine glance
+that you can see in devoted mothers tending their little children. For
+that matter a little girl is only a woman in miniature. A young boy has
+none, or very few, of the characteristics of a man; but a young girl
+has, at ten years of age, all the characteristics of a woman.
+
+I have known little girls of ten and twelve who were perfect flirts,
+little coquettes, careful housekeepers, and, toward their dolls, most
+devoted mothers. I remember one who sternly refused to accompany us to a
+most tempting party, because her doll had a cold and she felt she must
+stay at home to nurse it. She was absolutely serious over it, and found
+even great delight in remaining at home all the time by the bedside of
+her doll. I remember another who had spent the whole morning cleaning
+her doll's house from top to bottom. When it was all over she drew a
+great sigh of relief. 'At last,' she said, 'the house is clean; that's
+comfort, anyway.' A good, dutiful, bourgeois housewife would not have
+expressed herself otherwise. Have you not, some of you, even seen little
+girls give medicines to their dolls, rock them to sleep, put them to
+bed, tuck them in most carefully, and see that the bedclothes did not
+choke them and cause them to have nightmares? I have, many times.
+
+A man very often shows inclinations, tastes, and all sorts of
+characteristic traits which his parents never discovered in him when he
+was a young boy; but a woman of thirty is what she was when she was ten,
+only a little more so. A bad boy may become a very good man, and I have
+known very good boys become very bad men; but a caressing, loving little
+girl will surely make a loving wife and a tender mother; a cold and
+uncaressing little girl will become a heartless woman, an indifferent
+wife and mother. A boy is a boy! a little girl is a little woman.
+
+This is so true that women, many women at all events, who treated their
+dolls as if they were children, treat their children as if they were
+dolls. It is the survival of the little girl in the woman. I have known
+women allow the hair of their boys to fall down their backs in long
+curls because they looked prettier and more like dolls, although they
+must have known that the sap of their young bodies was feeding hair at
+the expense of other far more important parts of their anatomy. When you
+see a woman most attentive to her baby, insisting on washing it,
+dressing it herself, you say: 'She is a most dutiful mother; she would
+trust no one but herself to attend her little child.' But it is not only
+the satisfaction of a duty performed that makes that woman look so
+happy, it is also the pleasure she derives from it. And the odds are ten
+to one that this very woman will play at doll with her child a great
+deal too long, and that the day on which she will be compelled to allow
+the child to have some liberty and become independent of her, she will
+resent it.
+
+There is not, I believe, a single elderly woman that does not prefer the
+child of her daughter to her daughter herself, who has become now an
+unmanageable doll who dresses and undresses without the help of anybody.
+And if this daughter does not allow her mother to do with the grandchild
+just as she likes, there will be trouble, caused by jealousy. There will
+be two women now to play at dolls. Why does a grandmother indulge a
+young child, give it sweets and candies? Is it to give that child a good
+digestion? No; it is to play at dolls. Do they dress little girls like
+the 'principal boys' of pantomimes in the palace scene, in order to make
+them acquire modest tastes and sensible notions? No; it is to play at
+dolls.
+
+Woman plays at dolls to the end of her life, with her toys, with her
+children, with her grandchildren, and with herself.
+
+I have never heard women have a good word to say of daughters-in-law who
+had not given children to their sons. Poor, dear old ladies! They
+certainly were under the impression that their sons had only one object
+in view when they contemplated matrimony, that of presenting 'Grannie'
+with dolls to play with. I quite understand that grandmothers should be
+admired, that children should bless them, and even advise other children
+to 'get some,' when they have not got any, but I do not think that
+grandmothers should be held up to the world as models, because more than
+nine times out of ten they spoil children, and derive pleasure not from
+duties performed to the child, but from the satisfaction of playing at
+dolls. I have very often met sensible mothers, but grandmothers seldom;
+they generally are incorrigible sinners--and proud of it, too.
+
+Alphonse Karr, in his 'Reminiscences,' relates how he used to meet in
+society a young and charming woman who always behaved towards him in a
+very cool manner. Unable to understand the reason, he one day took a
+chair by her side, made himself particularly pleasant, and point-blank
+asked her why she did not seem pleased to meet him, and inquired whether
+he might have unconsciously done anything to cause her displeasure. For
+a long time she defended herself, assuring him that her coldness towards
+him was only in his imagination; but, as he insisted, she at last said
+to him: 'Well, I will tell you. It was thirty-five years ago. One
+afternoon you called on us, and I was in the drawing-room. Being invited
+to take a seat by my mother, you chose an arm-chair on which my doll was
+asleep. You removed it, and quite unceremoniously laid it on a table,
+head downwards, at the risk of hurting it. In fact, you damaged its
+nose. I conceived for you a perfect hatred, and, upon my word, I do not
+think that I am now capable of forgiving you altogether.'
+
+MORAL.--If you want to get into the good graces of a woman, praise her
+baby; if you want a little girl to love you, admire her dolls and treat
+them with respect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+MEN AS A RULE ARE SELFISH--TWO KINDS OF SELFISH MEN
+
+
+There are in the world men who are devotion and self-abnegation
+personified; there are women who are the embodiment of selfishness. From
+this we cannot lay down a rule any more than we could if, in landing in
+New York, we saw a red-haired woman, and said at once:
+
+'The Americans are a red-haired people.'
+
+But as, during my life, I have known more men who are selfish than
+unselfish, and more women who are unselfish than selfish, I am prepared
+to conclude that man is more selfish than woman.
+
+I have known men of small income (and in their way good men they were)
+belong to two or three clubs, dine at expensive restaurants, and smoke
+excellent cigars all day long.
+
+Their daughters had to give lessons in order to obtain the money that
+was necessary for dressing decently, and the house had to be kept on
+most economical lines.
+
+I have known others, not worse than those I have just mentioned, allow
+nothing but water on their family table, and take champagne for dinner
+at the club or the restaurant.
+
+I could divide selfish men into two classes: the man with good redeeming
+features, and the execrably selfish man.
+
+The former is good-hearted and fairly sensitive. He hates nobody,
+because hatred disturbs sleep and rest. He avoids emotions for his own
+comfort; he is learnedly selfish.
+
+If you are unhappy, in distressed circumstances, don't bother him about
+it. He is sorry, he cannot help it, and he would rather not hear of it.
+
+If you are ill, do not expect a visit from him; the sight of pain or
+grief affects him. If you are in want, he may send you a £5 note, but he
+does not want to see you. He seeks the company of cheerful and happy
+people only.
+
+He has an income of £6,000 a year, and will tell you that nobody dies of
+starvation except in novels.
+
+He turns his head from wretches shivering with cold in the street, and
+is of opinion that a good Government should suppress paupers and all
+sorts of people who disturb the peace and happiness of the rich. His
+friends call him 'a good fellow.'
+
+The other type is execrable. The miseries of other people increase his
+happiness. When he sees a starving-looking man or a sick one, he returns
+thanks that he is rich and healthy.
+
+He does not avoid the unfortunate: he almost seeks them. The more
+horrible tales you tell him of poverty, sorrows, disease, wretchedness,
+the happier he is to feel that he runs no danger of ever encountering
+such calamities.
+
+Well wrapped up in furs in a good carriage, the sight of a beggar,
+benumbed with cold, sitting on the stone steps of an empty house,
+doubles his comfort. He finds his carriage better suspended, and his
+furs warmer.
+
+He almost believes that the abject poor were invented to make him
+appreciate his good fortune better. He is not unlike those fanatics of a
+certain school who believe that the greatest bliss reserved for the
+elect in heaven is to see their less fortunate brethren burn in hell. As
+I have said, this type of selfish man is execrable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
+
+THE RIGHT AND WRONG IN THE CASE OF A ROYAL PRINCESS
+
+
+Since the escapade of the Royal Princess of Saxony with the French tutor
+Giron, many have asked me, 'Do you approve or forgive her? Do you not
+think that a woman who can no longer endure life with a sullen and
+unsympathetic husband has a right to break away from the social
+conventionalities of life and go her own way in search of happiness?'
+
+The question is not easy to answer. There may be, or there may not be,
+extenuating circumstances in the conduct of a woman who deserts her
+husband, or a man who leaves his wife.
+
+First of all, let me say that I place the consideration of duty far
+higher than that of personal happiness. Therefore, a man or a woman who
+abandons a home where there are children of a tender age, children who
+require the protection of a father and the affection of a mother, which
+no one can replace, is a coward that should be placed under the ban of
+society.
+
+I don't care how much a woman may fall in love with a man, or a man
+with a woman, the duty of either is to remain by the side of their
+children, to watch over their education, and to see them launched in
+life. If they shirk this duty, there is no excuse, no atonement for
+their conduct, which closely borders on crime.
+
+When there are no children, I admit that there may be circumstances in
+which I would forgive a man or a woman who leaves a home in which life
+has become unendurable, in order to seek happiness in the company of a
+partner who has given proof of love, devotion, and disinterestedness. I
+might also be prepared to forgive if the children were grown up and able
+to support themselves.
+
+On no account, however, could I approve, or even forgive, a man who
+leaves a wife with whom life may have become as intolerable as you like
+without duly providing for her comfort, even if by so doing he should
+have nothing left for himself, and be obliged to start life afresh.
+
+I do not admit that anyone, man or woman, has a right to shirk
+responsibilities imposed by solemn promises. Let them set this right
+first of all. After that, let them solve the problem of happiness as
+best they can.
+
+No doubt there are drawbacks in holding royal honours, but I believe in
+the old motto, _Noblesse oblige_; and if _noblesse_ does, surely royalty
+should. Royalty nowadays is not of much use, except when it gives to
+the people over which it rules the example of all virtues, of all
+domestic virtues especially.
+
+When people are born in the purple, they are born with responsibilities.
+If they fling them to the four winds of the earth, there is no use for
+royalty: the reason for its existence has ceased to exist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+AMERICAN WOMEN IN PARIS
+
+
+Every year in Paris, in springtime, we see the American women reappear
+with the regularity of the swallow. We expect them, we watch for their
+arrival, and we are delighted when we hear them say, with their singing
+voices, that they have come for our season, which begins in April and
+goes on till 'The Grand Prix' is run during the second week of June.
+
+The American woman is not only received, but eagerly sought in our most
+aristocratic society. Her amiability and brilliancy have forced open the
+doors of our most exclusive mansions. She affords so much pleasure that
+she is indispensable. We are dull without her, because she is not only
+beautiful and a feast for the eyes, but she is bright, brilliant, witty,
+unconventional, and a feast for the mind. It is thanks to all these
+qualities, far more than to her dollars, that the American woman is
+to-day part and parcel of what is called 'Tout Paris.' And, indeed,
+there is no woman in the world so attractive as the fair daughter of
+Uncle Sam. Her physical, moral, and intellectual charms make her the
+most interesting woman one may wish to meet.
+
+The English woman is very often beautiful. Her freshness is exquisite,
+her figure excellent when she knows how to enhance its beauty by
+well-made garments. She is, perhaps, beyond competition when she is
+really beautiful, but her beauty is too often statuesque, and lacks
+lustre and piquancy. The French woman is supple and graceful, but she is
+more fascinating by her manner, by her chic, than by the beauty of her
+complexion, the regularity of her features, and the proportions of her
+figure. The German is often fine, but generally heavy, compact, and
+lacking elegance.
+
+The American woman is an altogether. She has the piquancy, the
+fascinating manner, the elegance, the grace, and the gait of the
+Parisienne; but, besides, she often possesses the eyes of a Spaniard,
+the proud figure of a Roman, and the delicate features of an English
+woman. If, during the Paris season, you walk in the Champs-Elysées
+district, where all the best Americans are settled, you will admire
+those women looking radiant with intelligence, cheerful, independent,
+who, you can see, have the consciousness of their value.
+
+The education which she has received has developed all her faculties.
+The liberty she always enjoyed, the constant attentions she has received
+from father, brother, husband, and all her male friends, have made her
+feel safe everywhere, and she goes about freely, with a firm step that
+stamps her American. Thanks to her finesse, her power of observation,
+her native adaptability, she can fit herself for every station of life.
+If one day she finds herself mistress of the White House or Vice-Queen
+of India, she immediately feels at home. She may be ever so learned, she
+is never a pedant. She is, and remains, a woman in whose company a man
+feels at once at his ease; a sort of fascinating good fellow, with all
+the best attributes of womanhood; a little of a coquette, with a
+suspicion of a touch of blue-stocking--but so little. She loves dresses,
+and none puts them on better than she does. English women, even the most
+elegant ones at home, seldom favour us, when they visit us, but with all
+the worst frumps and frippery they can find in their wardrobe. The
+American women are considerate enough to try and do their best for us,
+and we appreciate the compliment. And thus they brighten our theatres,
+our promenades, our balls and dinner-parties, our fashionable
+restaurants, and Paris, which loves them, could not now do without
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+WOMEN WHO WALK BEST
+
+
+A few weeks ago I was watching the church parade in Hyde Park, London,
+between the statue of Achilles and Stanhope Gate, when I met an American
+lady of my acquaintance. We walked together for awhile, and then sat
+down in order to watch the fashionable crowd more closely.
+
+It is said that, although Americans and Englishmen think a great deal of
+one another nowadays, you seldom hear American women praise the women of
+England, and more seldom still hear English women say a good word of
+American women.
+
+So I was tickled to know what my American lady friend thought of the
+crowd that was performing before us, and I asked her to give me her
+impressions.
+
+'Well,' she said, 'it is as good as, if not better than, anything that
+New York could produce. Possibly on some special occasion Fifth Avenue
+might turn out a few lovelier dresses, but the London average is above
+the New York average. You see fewer absolute failures here among the
+women, while the men are quite unapproachable--surely Londoners are the
+best-dressed men in the world.'
+
+'And the New Yorkers the most brand-newly dressed men,' I interrupted.
+'But you are right. I like to think that a coat has been worn just more
+than once. But please go on.'
+
+'The days when the London girl was really badly dressed are dead and
+gone. We have educated her, we Americans, until she has all but reached
+our standard. Just think what the London shops were fifteen and even ten
+years ago! Something awful! But now I can buy in them everything I want
+just as easily as though I were in Paris or New York.
+
+'I don't know whether the supply of pretty dresses and dainty _et
+ceteras_ made the demand, or whether it was the other way about, but, at
+any rate, there has been a change within the last decade that is almost
+a revolution. The London woman of to-day dresses quite as well as her
+sister across the Channel or the Atlantic.'
+
+I was getting sadly disappointed, for my lady friend is a critic and a
+wit, and I was expecting a few amusing remarks on English women. So I
+ventured:
+
+'So you think that now English women can obtain in London dresses just
+as pretty as women can in Paris and New York?
+
+'Certainly,' she replied. 'Yet they never look so well, because, you
+see, when they get these pretty dresses, these poor English women don't
+know how to put them on. The English girl's education is not yet
+completed. She has not learned how to carry herself as we have in
+America, both at home and at school. You know the splendid air and prima
+donna effects that American women can bring off when they choose. These
+young English women have hardly a suspicion of them.
+
+'In taste for the delicate things of dress the Londoner is now just
+about where she should be; but she has not yet learned how to wear a
+dress. A French woman or an American would make fifty per cent, more of
+it than the English woman knows how to do; and if this is to be
+remedied, English girls will first have to be taught how to walk and how
+to hold themselves.'
+
+And no doubt my American friend had hit on the national defect of
+English women--their bad way of walking and holding themselves.
+
+One's thoughts naturally fly to Spain, where every member of the
+feminine sex, from the little girl of four to the old woman, who in
+England would be bent and tottering, knows how to carry herself as if
+she were a queen.
+
+If it is true that this result is achieved by the Spanish custom of
+carrying everything on the head instead of on the back or in the hand,
+it is a pity the English do not make their girls begin at once to carry
+their school-satchels in a way that will make them hold their heads up
+instead of down, and accentuate gracefully their lines both behind and
+in front.
+
+When I was in South Africa I invariably admired the manner in which the
+Kaffir and Zulu women walked and held themselves. On watching them I
+often exclaimed: 'If English women could only walk and carry themselves
+as these women do, with their pretty faces and figures, with their
+beautiful skin and complexion, they would have few rivals in the world.'
+
+It is by walking barefooted and carrying everything on their heads that
+the women of Kaffirland and Zululand learn to walk so well, to hold
+their heads up, to bring their chests forward, to throw back their
+shoulders, and give to their gait that gentle swing which is so dainty
+and graceful.
+
+American women obtain the same result by being drilled at school, for it
+is incontestable, and, I believe, incontested, that they are the best
+walking women, and also those who, with the Parisiennes, know best how
+to put on their dresses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN
+
+
+Heller, who has collected the greatest number of instances of extreme
+long life, found 1,000 persons who lived from 100 to 110, 60 from 110 to
+120, 30 from 120 to 130, 15 from 130 to 140, 6 from 140 to 150, and one
+who lived to be 169 years of age.
+
+French writes that from 1881 to 1890, in Massachusetts, there were 203
+deaths of persons past the age of 100. Of these 153 were women and 50
+were men. Let us add that the parts of the world which have supplied, in
+proportion to their population, the greatest number of centenarians, are
+New England, Scotland, and Brittany.
+
+All these centenarians, without exception, have been found among the
+humbler classes, and most of them among peasants--that is to say, among
+the workers of the community who lead quiet, regular, and busy lives.
+
+It is worthy of note that just those very principles which were laid
+down by the Founder of the Christian religion as best for the eternal
+welfare of the soul have been proved by the passing years to be best for
+the body also.
+
+It is not those who are clad in purple and fine linen and fare
+sumptuously every day who are strong enough to climb to the clear
+heights of a great age. Neither titles nor wealth keep the feet from
+wearying of the uphill path of life.
+
+They who would have their days long in the land must honour their great
+mother, Nature. They must walk in her ways. Nature does not rejoice in
+sluggards, therefore they must work, and the more steadily they work the
+longer they live.
+
+Men of thought have always been distinguished for their age. Solon,
+Sophocles, Pindar, Anacreon, and Xenophon were octogenarians. Kant,
+Buffon, Goethe, Fontenelle, and Newton were over eighty. Michael Angelo
+and Titian were eighty-nine and ninety-nine respectively. Harvey, the
+discoverer of the circulation of the blood, lived to be eighty.
+
+Victor Hugo was over eighty. Gladstone, who worked every minute of his
+life, always in search of new subjects to master, and who took his
+recreation in bodily work--gardening, cutting down his trees--died at
+eighty-eight.
+
+Sidney Cooper, the English animal painter, whose work of last year will
+be exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, this year, died at
+ninety-nine, practically with his brushes in his hands.
+
+The preponderance of females over males in the matter of long life is a
+striking fact. It is also constant. All authorities agree in this, that
+more women than men live to be very old. The more fragile pitcher is
+not so soon broken at the fountain. Why?
+
+One would hardly expect woman, with all the dangers and sufferings
+attending motherhood, to last longer than man. Yet undoubtedly she does.
+
+I know in Brittany a peasant woman who is now ninety-seven. She does her
+sewing without spectacles; she walks a couple of miles every day; goes
+to bed at eight, rises at six in the winter and at five in the summer.
+
+She eats and sleeps well, and is in the enjoyment of perfect health. She
+had seventeen children. The healthiest trees are those which bear fruit
+every year.
+
+The reason for woman's longevity is not far to seek. Women lead more
+careful, regular, and sheltered lives than men. It is the man who has to
+fight daily with the world, and how hard and trying the fight often is
+none but the fighter himself can tell.
+
+He succumbs to more temptations than woman, because more come his way.
+It is the man who is often called upon to undermine his bodily vigour by
+earning his bread at unhealthy occupations. It is he who goes down the
+mines, to sea, and to the battlefield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+WOMEN MAY ALL BE BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+Nothing is more difficult to define than beauty. It is not something
+absolute, like truth; it differs according to times, countries, races,
+and individual tastes. Greek beauty is not Parisian beauty, English
+beauty is pretty well the opposite of Italian beauty.
+
+A European beauty might strike a Chinaman as very ugly, and a Chinese
+beauty would find no admirer in Europe, except, perhaps, among blasé
+people with the most fastidious tastes and ever in search of novelty.
+
+The Buddha of the Hindoos has nothing in common with the Jupiter of the
+Greeks. Ancient art differs entirely from modern art.
+
+In Antiquity, beauty consists in the harmony of the proportions, the
+purity of the lines, the nobility of form and attitude, the sobriety of
+the figure, and the coldness of the expression. In modern times, beauty
+consists in gracefulness, piquancy, intelligence, sentiment, vivacity,
+and exuberance of form.
+
+But there are two kinds of beauty in women: that which is natural to
+them, and that which they can acquire by carefully studying what suits
+them best to wear, and how they can use to advantage their style of
+face and figure.
+
+I have seen women absolutely transformed by the hands of a skilful
+dressmaker or a clever hairdresser.
+
+The natural beauty is that happy ensemble of lines and expression which
+attract and charm the eyes. It is not at all indispensable that this
+ensemble should be harmonious. On the contrary, contrasts are often less
+cold and monotonous than perfect harmony, and the statuesque beauty
+generally leaves us unmoved.
+
+The woman who looks amiable and cheerful is naturally beautiful--far
+more so than a woman with irreproachable sculptural outlines and
+features so regular that she makes you wish she had some redeeming
+defect or other. Perfection was attractive in ancient Greece; it is not
+now.
+
+Perfection seldom looks amiable and bright, and modern beauty must look
+intelligent--brilliant even. Ancient Greece would not have looked at a
+turned-up nose; but such a nose denotes gaiety, wit, spirit of repartee,
+and we like it.
+
+I hope I shall not offend that most talented of French actresses, Madame
+Rejane, or her admirers, by saying that Athens would have refused to
+look at her; but the Parisians, the descendants and successors of the
+Attic Greeks, love her, with her big mouth, square when it laughs, and
+her turned-up nose. To them she is the embodiment of liveliness, wit,
+and gaiety.
+
+A small, piquante brunette, with small, keen eyes, thick lips, thin,
+alert; a blonde dishevelled, like a spaniel, with glorious form, will
+excite admiration--both are beautiful.
+
+But the other beauty, the one that can be obtained of art, is at the
+disposal of every woman. In fact, the woman who knows how to put on her
+dress and do her hair well, who has on a becoming hat, pretty shoes, and
+neat gloves, who has good taste in furniture, who speaks pleasantly,
+smiles cheerfully and good-naturedly, who has elegance of manners and a
+pretty voice, who has a bright conversation--that woman will be declared
+pretty, even beautiful, far more readily and unanimously than the real
+beauty, one who fails to pay attention to her dress and manners, who has
+no consciousness of her power and her value, and who constantly forgets
+that good surroundings are to her what a handsome frame is to a picture.
+
+Practically every woman can obtain this result, and that is why I have
+entitled this chapter 'Women may All be Beautiful.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+WOMEN AT SEA
+
+
+Of all the pitiful sights, of all the pathetic figures in the world,
+there is none to compare to women at sea.
+
+Is it possible that these dejected, abject-looking bundles of misery
+only yesterday were the bright, proud, elegant, queenly fashion-plates
+whom I saw on Fifth Avenue? _Quantum mutatæ ab illis!_ What a
+metamorphosis!
+
+Poor things! Even the most terrible home ruler is satisfied with the
+lower berth, and gives her husband a chance to look down upon her. She
+is meek and grateful, she is submissive, and her imploring eyes beg the
+most hen-pecked husband not to take advantage of his temporary
+superiority.
+
+She arrived on board flamboyant, with her most bewitching finery on, or
+a most becoming yachting-suit. She meant to 'fetch' all the men on deck.
+She went radiant to the saloon and examined the lovely flowers which had
+been sent to wish her _bon voyage_. _Bon voyage!_ What irony!
+
+These flowers are the very emblem of all that is going to happen to
+her--bright, fresh, and erect as the boat starts; wet, withered,
+drooping, and dripping, with no life left, twenty-four hours later.
+
+She is present at the first meal, and declares to her neighbours that
+things at sea are not so bad as some people pretend, and the Atlantic is
+too often libelled. Besides, she is used to travelling, and she knows a
+remedy for sea-sickness.
+
+Before sailing she doctored herself. She took an infallible drug--a
+rather unpleasant one, it is true; but what is that compared to the
+benefit derived from it? Yes, an infallible remedy--at any rate, one
+that succeeds nine times out of ten. Alas! this time is going to be the
+tenth.
+
+You get outside the harbour, and leave Sandy Hook behind you. She has
+taken soup and fish. Somehow she now feels she has had enough. Her
+appetite is satisfied, and she goes on deck. When you see her again, she
+is lying on an easy-chair, packed as carefully and tightly as a valuable
+clock that is to be sent to the Antipodes.
+
+There she now lies, motionless, speechless, helpless, and hopeless,
+wondering if the infallible remedy is going to fail. The yachting-cap is
+no longer roguish and cocky, but hanging over her eyes, or her beautiful
+hat is replaced by a tam-o'-shanter. The damp air has already taken away
+all her curls, and her hair, straight as drum-sticks, is hanging in
+front and behind, and, worse than all, she doesn't care. Provided you
+don't speak to her, don't shake her, and don't ask her to move, she
+doesn't care.
+
+The boat is heaving. All the different parts of her anatomy go up with
+the boat, but they all come down again one by one, and she has to gather
+them together. She is at sea with a vengeance! Her husband is all right,
+the brute! so is pretty Miss So-and-So, who is chatting with him, the
+cat!
+
+Their smiles and insulting pictures of health are more than she can
+bear. She is a good Christian, but if only that girl could be sick, too!
+What business has she to be well?
+
+Of course, her husband has packed her up, tucked her in most carefully,
+and placed grapes and iced soda-water within her reach. He has done his
+duty, and now he makes himself scarce. Maybe he is flirting on the
+weather side, maybe he is in the smoke-room having a game of piquet or
+poker.
+
+Anyway, he is all right, having a good time. Why isn't he sick, too?
+
+For six or seven days, that bright American woman, who runs household,
+husband, children, and servants with one glance of the eye, is at the
+mercy of everyone who belongs to her, suffering agonies, tortures of
+body and mind, and you would imagine that a boat sees her on the
+Atlantic for the last time.
+
+You would think that all the beauties of American scenery, its
+seashores, lakes, and mountains, will attract her next season. Not a bit
+of it. In order to be seen at the dreary funereal functions of Mayfair
+and Belgravia, she will cross again. She goes where duty calls her. She
+has to be 'in it' first, in the hope of soon being 'of it.'
+
+And, in order to secure her social standing on a sure basis, twice a
+year she will pack her belongings and suffer death agonies. The pluck
+and power of endurance of women is perfectly prodigious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE SECRET OF WOMAN'S BEAUTY
+
+
+The secret of a woman's beauty is not to be discovered in her
+dressing-room, as cynics might intimate; it is not obtained by the use
+of cosmetics, pomade, magic waters, and ointments; by the application of
+red, white, and black, neither by painting nor dyeing; the real secret
+of woman's beauty lies in resplendent health and a cheerful mind.
+
+It was only a few days ago that I said to a lady, an intimate friend of
+mine, who has just been promoted to the dignity of a grandmother: 'Won't
+you make up your mind one of these days to look over thirty years of
+age?' My lady friend is very beautiful, and she knows it; but she
+carries her beauty without any affectation and bumptiousness.
+
+She is simplicity personified, and if you were to talk to her about her
+looks she would smile, and immediately beg you to kindly change the
+subject of conversation. But we are old friends, and when I asked her to
+tell me what she did, that I might tell others how she succeeded in
+remaining young, fresh, and beautiful, she allowed me to insist.
+
+'Well,' she said, 'let me tell you at once that I do not spend fifty
+shillings a year in perfumery. I have always retired and risen early; I
+have always done as much good as I have been permitted to do; I have
+always frequented cheerful and happy people, read cheerful books, and
+seen cheerful plays; I have always taken healthy exercise and indulged
+in plenty of fresh air by day and night.
+
+'But I should add: I have had the good luck of being born with a
+cheerful disposition, and of being brought up by cheerful and happy
+parents. I have always dearly enjoyed humour, and have always been able
+to appreciate it. I am a philosopher.
+
+'You say that I look thirty--well, I am forty-five; but if my body is
+young, my mind is younger still, and I am perfectly sure that, when I am
+a great-grandmother, I shall enjoy playing with a doll as much as any of
+my little great-grand-daughters.'
+
+And she went on giving me advice in minute details. Here are a few hints
+which my lady readers might hear with profit:
+
+
+HINT NO. 1
+
+_Never expose your shoulders and arms to cold. When you leave a hot room
+to go out in the open air, cover them most carefully so as to create on
+your body an increase of temperature exactly equal to the difference
+there exists between the indoor temperature you leave and the outdoor
+one._
+
+
+HINT NO. 2
+
+_Avoid beds too soft and too much bed-clothing, which cause nightmares,
+develop nervous irritation, and conduce to stoutness. Never have round
+your beds curtains, except as an ornament, if you like, at the head; but
+draw them in such a way that fresh air can circulate freely round your
+head. Renew the air of your bedroom several times a day, and during the
+night, however cold it may be, have one window slightly open, even if
+you should be compelled to keep a fire all night._
+
+
+HINT NO. 3
+
+Your bedroom should never be at a temperature above sixty-five degrees.
+
+
+HINT NO. 4
+
+_A woman enjoying good health should sleep eight hours, nine at most,
+and never less than seven. Sleep is a repairing balm which gives rest to
+the muscles, the nerves, and all the organs. Late evening and night
+sleeps are refreshing, but not so the sleep you may indulge in in the
+morning, or the nap you may have in the afternoon. What you want is
+uninterrupted sleep from eleven at night till seven in the morning. No
+other sleep will keep you fresh and well._
+
+
+HINT NO. 5
+
+_Never go to bed hungry, although you wait till your indigestion is well
+over. If you are hungry take some very light refreshment that you will
+digest at once and without any difficulty._
+
+
+HINT NO. 6
+
+_No sleep is thoroughly sound and good unless your face assumes a
+perfectly serene expression. To attain this end, do not allow your brain
+to work at night, or your mind to be besieged by painful thoughts. Do or
+read nothing exciting. Go to bed with pleasant thoughts and a quiet
+mind._
+
+I am sure my lady friend is right; for, consulting advice on hygiene in
+a book written by a famous physician, I see that this great doctor
+advises the following:
+
+  Substantial and digestible meals at regular times.
+  Very little liquids at meals, if any.
+  Well-aired rooms and cool bedrooms.
+  Plenty of fresh air and cold water.
+  Warm but light clothing.
+  Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
+  A contented mind.
+  A cheerful disposition.
+  Indulgence in deeds of generosity and charity.
+  Plenty of genial occupation.
+
+Such is certainly the secret of health and cheerfulness, and the secret
+of beauty, which is the reflection of both.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE DURATION OF BEAUTY
+
+
+Descartes, Montesquieu, Scribe, Stahl, and many other famous writers of
+modern times, not to speak of philosophers of antiquity, have decried
+beauty, and warned mankind against its illusions, and especially its
+short duration, without succeeding, I must say, in disgusting the world
+out of it. True, beauty does not last for ever; but who would think of
+singing the praises of ugliness because it does last? And, for that
+matter, I am of opinion that beauty does last. I have known men quite
+handsome at sixty, and women quite beautiful at the same age. And even
+if it did not last, what of that? Are we not to admire the sun because
+it is followed by night and obscurity? Are we to despise spring because
+it is followed by winter one day?
+
+Wise parents say to young men: 'Be sure you do not marry a woman for the
+sake of her beauty. Marry a woman for her lasting qualities, not for
+such an ephemeral one as beauty.' Upon my word, to hear some people
+talk, you would imagine that the beauty of a woman is a thing that lasts
+a year at most. The beauty of a happy woman who loves and is loved
+lasts thirty years at least, and the beauty of some women is such that
+if it only lasted a year, it would be sufficient to leave about a man
+for his life a fragrance that all the roses of the world put together
+could give but a faint idea of.
+
+Nobody complains that peaches are not as big as pumpkins, and therefore
+do not last so long. Some peaches arrived at their full maturity are so
+excellent that, although they only make two 'swallows,' you not only
+enjoy eating them, but you long remember the beautiful taste they had.
+
+I must say that nobody is the dupe of all the diatribes which are hurled
+at beauty, women still less than men. It has always been, and still is,
+and always will be, the wish of women to be beautiful, and the wish of
+men to see women beautiful. Even Ernest Renan, whom nobody would have
+ever accused of frivolity, joined the ranks, and said that the first
+duty of woman was to try and look beautiful. Let a woman hear that, in
+speaking of her, you have said that she was bad-tempered, giddy, silly,
+extravagant, everything you like, but that you have acknowledged that
+she was exceedingly beautiful, and I will warrant that you have not made
+an enemy of that woman. She may keep a grudge against you, but not for
+long. But let that woman hear that you have owned that she was sweet,
+dutiful, clever, devoted, and possessed of all the domestic virtues, but
+that she was far from being beautiful, you will discover you have made
+a bitter enemy for the rest of your natural life.
+
+The great attributes of a woman are the beauty of her face and figure,
+the brilliancy of her mind, and the qualities of her heart. But when a
+woman is not beautiful, other women will never discuss the good opinion
+you may have of her mental attainments and sweet disposition. They will
+leave her in peaceful possession of all these qualities; but if you
+praise her beauty in terms of ecstasy before them--lo, they will form
+the square and fight until the last cartridge is used. It is beauty, not
+cleverness or virtue, that makes women jealous of other women. And when
+the beauty of a woman is perfectly indisputable, and it is almost
+impossible for them to find the slightest fault either with her face or
+her figure, then they declare that, unfortunately, her beauty is one
+which will not last. The dear women! how they wish they could possess
+that beauty, were it but for a day!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE WOMAN 'GOOD FELLOW'--A SOCIETY TYPE
+
+
+The woman who belongs to the 'jolly good fellow' type is frank and
+sincere, and as steady in her friendships as the most perfect gentleman.
+In love, she is disappointing, if not absolutely a fraud. Indeed, the
+idea of her possibly falling in love would seem to her quite as funny as
+it would to other people. She is of a cool temperament.
+
+In friendship, her heart is set in the right place; in love, it is deaf
+and dumb.
+
+She is fond of good living and of gaieties of all sorts, both in town
+and country. She prefers the society of men to that of women. She is no
+coquette, but has no objection to flirting--in fact, she enjoys it, and
+all the more that she knows it cannot make her run the least danger. 'It
+amuses men,' she thinks, 'and it doesn't hurt me.'
+
+She sleeps, eats, drinks, dresses, rides, drives, dances, smokes, talks,
+laughs, and throws her money out of every window from the garret to the
+cellar.
+
+People enjoy her society because she is cheerful and gay, a bright
+conversationalist, generally pretty, always elegant and fashionable,
+and most exquisitely dressed. She is unconventional, and the men like
+her for it; she seldom indulges in silly gossip, and the women are
+grateful to her for it. In fact, she is popular with men and women
+alike, because neither of them has anything to fear from her. The hearts
+of men and the reputations of women are safe in her hands; she does no
+damage to either.
+
+Most people think that this type of woman is the happiest. As a girl,
+yes, perhaps; but not after twenty-five. The woman 'jolly fellow' very
+often makes all that noise in order to shake off her thoughts. If her
+heart is unable to speak and unable to hear, the reason often is that it
+is dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE WOMAN 'GOSSIP'
+
+
+Men and women who retail slander, whether it has any foundation or not,
+ought to be unmercifully boycotted by all decent people; and, to be
+just, I will say that there is as much gossip, and of the worst kind,
+too, going on in men's club smoking-rooms as there is at afternoon
+tea-gatherings. Great, though scarce, is the woman who can keep other
+people's secrets as safely as her own. And how watchful women should be,
+and constantly be on their guard, always mindful that not more than one
+man out of ten can keep a secret. I mean _his own_.
+
+There are many women who gossip and retail scandal, not out of
+wickedness or with the intention of hurting anyone, but for the mere
+sake of being entertaining at the dinner-table or round the tea-tray.
+When she makes her appearance people welcome her, and say: 'Oh, here is
+Mrs. A----; she is so amusing; we'll hear some good story.' Knowing that
+she has a reputation to sustain, she prepares her stories before
+starting on her visits, and gives them an artistic and piquant finishing
+touch that will make them go down successfully. Being fairly
+good-hearted, she begins by warning you that she is only repeating what
+is 'going on,' and 'does not know for certain.' She only wishes to be
+amusing and entertaining, you understand, and does not mean to do injury
+to any woman. Oh dear, no! she is a bit of an actress in an amateurish
+sort of way, and if she exaggerates she asks you to put it down to the
+account of Art. As long as people are entertained by gossip there will
+be people to gossip for their benefit. Now, men and women who repeat
+scandal which is true do harm enough, goodness knows, but the most
+dangerous ones are those who repeat what they have heard, which gossip
+will be repeated and 'improved' until it gets to gigantic proportions.
+
+Slander generally takes refuge behind such platitude as, 'Of course, I
+have not seen it; I only repeat what I have heard.'
+
+Who says those things?--Why, everybody.
+
+Everybody?--Everybody; that's enough.
+
+Please mention a name.--Well, I am afraid I can't.
+
+But where have you heard such a thing?--Everywhere.
+
+Can't you be precise? Is it in a private house?--I forget.
+
+In a restaurant?--I don't know.
+
+At a café? At a club? Perhaps in a theatre?--Yes, I think it was in a
+theatre.
+
+What a cure--temporary, at least, if not to last for ever--to look the
+'gossip,' man or woman, straight in the face, and say: 'Scandal-mongers
+are the most despicable parasites and scoundrels of society!' and you
+may be sure that, at least, is a statement which the 'gossip' will not
+repeat.
+
+There is a law of libel practically in every civilized country to
+protect people against having their character stained at the will and
+for the pleasure of their fellow-creatures, but for the life of me I
+cannot see why libel should be libel, and thus punishable by law, only
+when it is published in a newspaper or written on a postcard. The worst
+libel, the one that does most injury, is the one that goes from house to
+house by word of mouth. To say a libellous thing is quite as bad as to
+write it down; it is even worse, because what is written often escapes
+notice, and the law should reach the libeller whether he has committed
+the offence with his mouth or with his pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
+
+
+We all of us have heard of people falling madly in love at first sight,
+men especially. No doubt there are men who are exceedingly susceptible,
+passionate, artistic, and ardent natures, who may take a violent fancy
+for a woman on seeing her for the first time; but I decline to call such
+a fancy love, and woe to the woman who marries such a man, for there is
+no guarantee for her that he will not many times again take such violent
+fancies for other women; indeed, there is every probability that he
+will.
+
+I would always advise a woman, or at all events always wish her, to
+marry a lover and admirer of her sex, but a man who madly falls in love
+with women at first sight, never. There is no steadiness in that man, no
+solidity, no reliability, no possible fidelity in him. He is erratic and
+unmanly. He may be a good poet, a talented artist, a very good actor,
+but certainly he will never be a good husband, not even a decent one.
+
+There are women who are proud to say that they inspired ardent love at
+first sight. They should not be proud of it, for it is only the love of
+a reflecting, lofty man that should make a woman proud. Men may feel
+immediate admiration for a woman.
+
+In the presence of certain beautiful women I have felt ready to fall
+into ecstasies of admiration, as I have in the presence of Niagara
+Falls, Vesuvius in eruption, the Venus of Milo, or any other grand
+masterpiece of nature and art; but I have never felt that I could, or
+must, right away implore them to marry me or let me die at their feet.
+To fall in love at first sight is a great proof of weakness of mind, of
+utter absence of self-control, and of wretched unmanliness. I believe I
+may affirm, without the fear of contradiction, that love at first sight
+has never proved to be love of long duration.
+
+How can we imagine that a solid affection can be the result of a caprice
+felt for a person whom you had never seen before, and of whose character
+you are absolutely ignorant? In certain cases affection may follow a
+first impression, but only when she can inspire as much affection by her
+merit as she could produce a good impression by her charms. Only in this
+case can love become sincere and profound. To form at once a charming
+impression of a woman is not to fall madly in love with her.
+
+How much preferable is that love gradually increasing through the better
+knowledge of the beloved one! It is no longer an ephemeral fancy, but a
+solid affection. In order to love well and truly, you must know well and
+thoroughly. There must be between people in love that blind confidence,
+that complete _abandon_, which can only be born of the sweet habit to
+constantly see each other and to understand each other better and better
+every day. With such love you can brave all obstacles, but with a
+caprice it vanishes at the first violent storm.
+
+Sincere, serious love is never love at first sight. When one look--and
+the first one, too--binds a man and a woman, you may be sure that one
+single word will soon be sufficient to unbind them. Lasting love comes
+slowly, progressively. Heart alone has never been particularly
+successful unless in partnership with that sober and wise counsellor
+that is called Reason. No love is placed on a solid basis which is not
+governed by reason as well as by the heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN
+
+
+I have just digested a most interesting book by M. Novicow, entitled
+'L'Affranchisement de la Femme.' This is a very serious subject, and I
+feel sure that I need not apologize for treating it with all the
+earnestness of which I am capable.
+
+In a society organized in conformity with the nature of things, woman
+will be brought up, from infancy, with the same object in view as
+man--that is to say, in order to learn how to live by her work. And so
+it should be, since work is the universal law of biology. Every living
+creature, from the invisible microbe to the most powerful animal, works
+unceasingly to assure its existence. Work being the law of Nature, to
+remain idle is to resist that law and to be immoral.
+
+Woman must become an independent economic unity. There is nothing
+revolutionary in this; on the contrary, it is a most conservative idea.
+The leisure class does not represent one-thousandth part of society, and
+999 out of every 1,000 women have, or should have, to work to support
+themselves or help to support their families.
+
+From time immemorial women have worked in families, in manufactures,
+offices, in the fields, either as mistresses of houses, as helps, or as
+servants.
+
+If woman has to be recognised as an independent economic unity, her
+education should enable her to earn her living, and, whether she gets
+married or not, she ought always to be ready to support herself without
+the help of man. Knowledge of every description should be placed at her
+disposal by the State, as well as at the disposal of man.
+
+This is not all. Not only should she receive an education enabling her
+to make a livelihood, but also one enabling her to direct her steps in
+life in the right direction. She should be told the mysteries of life,
+and the rôle she is called upon to play in life. In our times the ideal
+young girl is the one who knows nothing. This ideal is absolutely false,
+and creates the greatest source of danger in existence that stares women
+in the face. This ideal was created by the monstrous selfishness of man,
+who reserved to himself the satisfaction, the pleasure (only a rake's
+pleasure) of teaching her in one moment what, little by little, without
+shock, she should learn without astonishment.
+
+It is innocence that disarms women and hands them over, defenceless, to
+the most odious and revolting attempts to corrupt them. When we suppose
+nowadays that a girl knows too much of the mysteries of love, we think
+she is depraved; but degradation does not come from the knowledge of
+certain things--it comes from the mysterious and unhealthy way in which
+that knowledge is sometimes imparted.
+
+If she were told openly, in full daylight, all she should know of the
+rôle Nature has given her to play, she would not be depraved.
+
+When a young girl shall have received from a rational society an
+education that will enable her to live independently by her work, and to
+behave to the best of interests, what will she do?
+
+Well, she will do exactly what men do. The rich ones will manage their
+own fortune, and will engage in pursuits, civil, political, and
+intellectual. They will embrace professions, be writers, lawyers,
+artists, doctors, professors, and so on. All the careers will be open to
+them. In humbler stations of life, she will be clerk, shop-woman,
+work-woman, servant, labourer, etc. In fact, no woman will be prevented
+from entering a career for which she has aptitude, and, by so doing, no
+intellectual force will be lost to society.
+
+For instance, we have lately heard, in Europe, of a young American girl
+passing a brilliant examination for naval engineering, who presented the
+model of a ship far superior to anything known up to date. With the new
+system a woman will not be prevented from building ships for the State
+because she is a woman. This will not only be justice to woman, but
+justice to society, which has a right to benefit by the genius of all
+its members, whether they be men or women.
+
+Now let us examine what will become of society if all these
+transformations take place. When all the liberal professions and
+political functions are exercised by men and women alike, women will be
+members of Parliament, of chambers of commerce, of literary and
+scientific academies, and will sit by the side of men, as, in America,
+at schools and colleges, girls sit by the side of boys. On this account
+America will be the first country to get quickly reconciled to the new
+state of things.
+
+The activity of women will be as indispensable to nations and their
+success as that of men. But I see other consequences. Women being no
+longer dependent on men, people will be no more concerned about the
+private life of an unmarried man. A woman who has committed
+indiscretions will not be called a woman with a past, but, may be, one
+with experience.
+
+It is even just possible that men will feel more flattered to be chosen
+by them. They will repeat the word of Balzac, that a woman loves any
+first man who makes love to her, and that there is nothing in this to
+make a man feel proud; and Alphonse Karr goes as far as Ninon de Lenclos
+when he says that the only love that a man may feel proud of is that of
+a 'woman of experience.'
+
+Another thing, and a very important point. Woman, in this future system,
+will be so busy with her occupations as a bread-winner that she will
+have very little time to devote to love.
+
+'Woman lives by love and for love' will be thought an absurdity. She
+will come across love in her way through life. She will stop or pass on,
+according to her fancy, just as man does at present. She will not be
+taught early that woman was born to be a mother, and that she has
+constantly to keep her artillery in good order so as to bring down a
+man.
+
+For that matter, it is just possible that, in those days, it will be
+women who will propose to men. I should not regret to see it for the
+sake of the happiness of mankind, because I maintain that woman is a far
+keener individual than man, and that a woman is much better able to
+choose the right husband than a man the right wife.
+
+Of course, the frivolous woman, the doll, will have ceased to exist, and
+the woman will cease to be considered what she is in Turkey and Persia,
+an instrument of pleasure.
+
+The author assures us that when his system is put into practice, it will
+work so well that society will discover that it has reached a climax,
+the advent of happy and perfect civilization.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, if it does, all I can say is that what consoles me for getting old
+is the thought that I shall not be there to see it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+SHALL LOVE BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY?
+
+
+This momentous question has been asked, and is daily answered, in a
+Paris paper called _La Fronde_, on the staff of which all the writers
+are women. This is a very delicate question to ask, and I am not sure
+that it is particularly politic to do so on the part of women.
+
+That women take love more seriously than men is a fact which, I believe,
+is incontestable; but what would become of women if men were to decide
+in the negative and answer that love should not be taken seriously?
+
+Their only protection, their only weapon would be taken away from them.
+See what happens in countries, not civilized, I must quickly add, where
+men do not take love seriously.
+
+In these countries there is practically no difference between a woman
+and a slave, and even a beast of burden. The Arab, the Kaffir, the Zulu,
+the Soudanese, can be seen on horseback, or walking majestically with a
+blanket slung over his shoulder, while his womankind are following,
+carrying a baby on their backs, a pail of water or a cask of beer on
+their heads, and the rest of the burden in their hands.
+
+These primitive creatures find all this quite natural, men as well as
+women, and their greatest source of amusement is to see a white man
+carry his wife's umbrella. How they pity and scorn that poor white man!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+They look at him, and seem to say: 'Aren't you a man?' The more these
+men treat their women as inferior beings, the more highly the women
+think of the men, and the more respect they feel for them. And we would
+probably do the same if love, which we men do take seriously, did not
+subject, and even enslave, us to women.
+
+Indeed, this would be our right--our Divine right--and women, I repeat,
+are very impolitic to compel us to remind them of what happened at the
+beginning.
+
+We men have a Divine right to rule over women, and if we use that power
+given to us only with the greatest moderation, it is because we love
+women seriously.
+
+This love for you, ladies, is your only safeguard. See how imprudent of
+you it is to come and ask us if we take love seriously.
+
+Not only do we take love seriously, but I believe that there is nothing
+else in this world that is taken so seriously.
+
+Love is the only universally serious thing in the world. Ask scientists
+what they think of actors. They will tell you that there is no such
+despicable profession in the world. Yet actors--and rightly, too--take
+their art seriously.
+
+Literature and music appear to those who cultivate them the most
+absolutely serious things in existence, yet men of business, whose chief
+object in life is money-making, shrug their shoulders, and feel ready to
+say, like a London Lord Mayor to his son, who wanted to devote his life
+to literature: 'I will be very much obliged to you if you will decide on
+choosing an honest and respectable calling.'
+
+What is serious to some is not to others. There is nothing in this world
+which is universally serious--that is to say, recognised as serious by
+all the civilized members of the human race, except bread and love.
+
+The mission of man is to keep it alive with bread, and we perpetuate it
+with love. When we have eaten and when we have loved, we have fulfilled
+our mission. All the rest is accessory, and only more or less serious.
+
+Poets and artists, who help make life beautiful, are not indispensable;
+they are not serious. Scientists, who make great discoveries, help make
+life more comfortable; they protect us against disease; they drug us;
+they cure us, but they are not indispensable--the world would go on
+without them; they are not serious.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Only as long as there is bread and there is love will the world go on
+and the earth continue to be inhabited by the human race; bread and love
+are serious.
+
+I fear that I may have offended many people who think that they are
+indispensable and that their vocation is serious. Well, I am very
+sorry--very sorry indeed--but I cannot help it. The world was made thus,
+and when it was made I was not consulted.
+
+Put aside a few men and women, most of them to be found in the leisure
+class or among the parasites of society, for whom love is a pastime, and
+you will find that love is taken very seriously by men, if not quite in
+the same way as it is taken by women, who are more delicate and refined
+psychologists than men generally are.
+
+But, my dear ladies, as long as we men are only too proud and happy to
+fight the battle of life for you, to live for you, and, when occasion
+arises, sometimes die for you, please thank the progress of
+civilization, which has made us forget the origin of our relations
+toward each other; do not give us reasons for reminding you of it, and,
+for Heaven's sake! when we have spent years working twelve hours a day,
+providing you with all the comforts, and often the luxuries, of life,
+reared and settled in the world a large family of boys and girls, do not
+come and ask us if we take love seriously. You are adding insult to
+injury. Yes, indeed, we take love seriously, and matrimony too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+ARE MEN FAIR TO WOMEN?
+
+
+'You are often writing about women,' fair correspondents keep writing to
+me, 'sometimes praising them, often criticising them. Couldn't you now
+and then tell us something of what you think of men, especially in their
+relations with women? We know you to be fair, sometimes generous, always
+good-humoured. Now, do have a try.'
+
+The invitation is tempting and intended to be pleasant, and I yield to
+it, not only without any reluctance, but with a good deal of pleasure.
+
+To plunge _in medias res_, Are men fair to women? The laws, which are
+made by men, the usages--everything is calculated to cause men to reduce
+to a minimum the qualities, the intelligence, and the influence of
+women.
+
+For instance, let a woman make a reputation in art or literature, and
+men begin to smile and shrug their shoulders: they dispute her talent.
+
+I maintain, without much fear of contradiction, that a woman, in order
+to succeed in a profession, must have ten times more talent than a man,
+inasmuch as a man will have friends and comrades to help him, and a
+woman only difficulties put in her way by man to surmount.
+
+Man receives encouragements from all sides. If he is successful, he even
+knows that his talent will receive official recognition. In France he
+may become a member of the French Academy; in England, of the Royal
+Academy. Orders will be given him by rich patrons, and 'orders'
+conferred on him by sovereigns and statesmen.
+
+Why should not women get all this? Why, simply because man, being both
+'verdict' and 'execution,' has kept everything for himself. Personally,
+I have no great liking for female genius--to my prejudiced mind a female
+genius is a freak; but what I like or do not like is quite out of the
+question. Here I state facts, and why women should not have as much
+chance to prove their genius as men I should like to know.
+
+Everybody knows that the famous School of Alexandria, in the fifth
+century, had as orators and teachers the greatest philosophers and
+theologians of the time, such men as St. Jerome, St. Cyril, etc.
+
+Among these sublime intellects rose a young girl, twenty years old,
+pure, radiantly beautiful, who modestly said to them:
+
+'Please make room for me--hear me. I want my place in the glorious sun.'
+
+She ascended the famous chair and began to explain before an
+enthusiastic crowd the works of Plato and Aristotle. Her talent, her
+learning, her eloquence astonished the people who thronged to hear young
+and fair Hypatia, daughter of Theo.
+
+Now, do you believe that all those learned, bearded philosophers and
+theologians encouraged her, applauded her? No. History tells us they lay
+in wait in a street where she used to pass, and when she appeared in her
+chariot, resplendent with youth, beauty, and glory, acclaimed by the
+crowd, they--St. Cyril and his companions--seized her, killed her, cut
+her body in hundreds of pieces, which they threw to the four winds of
+the earth.
+
+Now, modern Hypatias are not treated quite so roughly by men, who
+content themselves with turning them to ridicule, although I have heard
+of some who did not hesitate in disposing of successful women's
+reputations as the learned doctors of Alexandria disposed of the body of
+Hypatia.
+
+Women, perhaps unfortunately, cannot all be intended to be mothers, or
+spend their lives mending socks and attending to spring house-cleaning.
+Such women, who have received a high education, may not feel inclined to
+be shop-girls, ladies'-maids, or cooks. If they feel that they have
+talent, and can paint or write successfully, every man ought to give
+them a helping hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+A PLEA FOR THE WORKING WOMAN
+
+
+'There are too many men in the world,' once exclaimed H. Taine. This
+was only a joke, but there is a great deal of truth in it. There are,
+in France especially, far too many men engaged in official Government
+offices, in professional occupations, and in stores; too many doctors
+without patients; too many lawyers without briefs; too many
+functionaries, each doing little or nothing, and the others seeing that
+he does it; too many men in stores showing women dresses, silks, and
+gloves.
+
+And the woman hater exclaimed: 'No wonder men cannot find a living to
+make; all the occupations that once were filled by men are now
+monopolized by women. The hearth is deserted, the street crowded--that's
+the triumph of modern feminism.'
+
+On the other hand some feminists, more royalist than the King, exclaim:
+'Woman should be kept in clover, the protégée of humanity, and never be
+allowed to work.'
+
+And, taken between two fires, poor women are ready to shout at the top
+of their voices, 'Save us from our friends as well as from our enemies!'
+It is a fact that at a recent congress of Socialists an orator declared
+himself in favour of the suppression of work for women.
+
+But women do want to work, and many of them married, too. If what
+husbands earn is not enough to maintain the family or keep it in
+comfort, they are partners, and they wish to contribute to the revenue.
+
+If they are not married, they want to support themselves or help to keep
+aged parents. Many of them prefer their independence to matrimony, which
+not uncommonly turns out to be about the hardest way for a woman to get
+a living.
+
+Women have a right to work as they have a right to live, and every work
+which is suitable for women should be open to them. And when I see
+Lancashire make girls work in the coal-mines I may ask, 'What work is
+there that women cannot do?'
+
+God forbid that I should be in favour of women working in the mines, but
+this is not necessary. There are so many men who do a kind of work that
+women should do, and could do just as well, if not better, that there
+should be no question of any kind of work done by women which men could
+do better.
+
+The earth was meant to keep her children, and she would if everybody,
+man or woman, was in his or her right place. The supply is all there and
+all right, but it is its distribution which is all wrong. The same may
+be said of work.
+
+There should be in this world work for all and bread for all, men or
+women, only the poor inhabitants of this globe have not yet been able to
+obtain a proper division of the goods which they have inherited from
+nature.
+
+Thanks to the discoveries of science and the openings of new markets,
+opportunities for work increase every day, but men and women are like
+children in a room full of toys--they all make a rush for those which
+tempt them most, and fight and die in order to obtain them. In the
+presence of all the careers open to them, they rush toward the most easy
+to follow or the most brilliant.
+
+Agriculture is forsaken by men who prefer swaggering in towns with
+top-hats and frock-coats, instead of imitating in their own country the
+virile, valiant men of the new worlds who fell forests, reclaim the
+land, and are the advanced pioneers of civilization. They prefer being
+clerks or shop assistants.
+
+Instead of taking a pickaxe, working a piece of land and making it their
+own, they prefer taking a pen and adding from 9 a.m. till 5 or 6 p.m.
+pounds and shillings which do not belong to them. The result is that
+they overcrowd the cities, and women can often obtain no work except on
+condition that they accept it for a smaller remuneration than would be
+offered to men, or, in other words, submit to being sweated.
+
+Is it a manly occupation to be assistant in a draper's store, to be a
+hairdresser, copyist, to make women's dresses, hats, corsets? When I see
+in dry goods stores a great big man over six feet high measure ribbons
+or lace, instead of tilling the soil or doing any other kind of manly
+work, I want to say to him, 'Aren't you a man?'
+
+Europe is full of men doing such work. I know America is not, although I
+have many times seen in the United States positions filled by men which
+would be filled equally well by women, and often better.
+
+Many writers maintain that woman was intended to tread on a path of
+roses, to be tended, petted--I may have been myself guilty of holding
+views somewhat in this direction--but women are not all born in
+'society'; millionaires are very few, and people whom you may call rich
+form after all but a very small minority in the whole community. The
+path of roses can only exist for the very few, and, besides, there are
+women whose aim in life is not to be petted. In fact, some absolutely
+object to being petted.
+
+I tell you the time is coming, and coming at giant strides, when every
+child--boy or girl--will be made early to choose the kind of work he or
+she best feels ready to undertake to make a living. The time is coming
+when no poverty will stare in the face the woman who can and is willing
+to work.
+
+Maybe the time is coming when a woman who bravely earns a good living
+will be considered not only most respectable--she is that now--but will
+be envied for her 'social standard' by the frivolous, useless women who,
+from morning to night, yawn and wonder how they could invent anything to
+make them spend an hour usefully for their good or the good of their
+fellow-creatures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
+
+
+The women's-righters are so often accused, and justly, too, of trying to
+disturb the equilibrium of happiness in family life, that they should
+immediately be praised when they do something likely to establish it on
+a firmer basis.
+
+In Paris they have just succeeded in starting, under the best and
+happiest auspices, schools where girls will be taught how to bring up
+babies and how to keep house. When it is considered that, out of about a
+million children which are born annually, over 260,000 die before the
+age of five, it calls for the utmost care in the watchfulness and habits
+of parents with regard to young children.
+
+Of all European countries, it is perhaps in France that mortality among
+babies is largest. France is being depopulated, or at least is not
+increasing her population. Enough children are born, but not enough are
+brought to grown-up age. This problem, over the solution of which our
+legislators are very anxious, is vital to France. It will not be solved
+by laws enacted, congresses held, and leagues founded. It will be
+solved by a reform in the manners and habits of the people, by making
+marriage easier, by marrying for love more often, and by teaching French
+women that the first duty of a mother is to raise her children herself,
+and the second to know how to do it. This new school, just established
+in France, will help in the right direction.
+
+The teaching of household duties will also tend to make marriages
+happier by enabling wives to be more clever and economical. If we
+consider that in England and France, which each has a population of
+about 40,000,000, only about 100,000 men in each country have an income
+of more than £500 a year, it will soon be clear that the great problem
+of happiness can only be solved by the good management of wives.
+
+Girls will be taught family hygiene, domestic economy, and the art of
+cooking, including that of utilizing the remnants of a previous meal.
+They will be taught how to 'shop' intelligently; that is to say, to
+distinguish good material from shoddy, and thus obtain the worth of
+their money. They will, I hope, also be taught how to make a bargain, a
+talent which I must say is practically inborn in every French woman of
+the middle and lower classes. No woman in the world knows as she does
+how to bring down the price of things to what she wants it to be, in
+Paris especially.
+
+Perhaps they will advise her to do what I would advise every visitor to
+Italy. I take it that you do not speak Italian. Never mind that; three
+words will serve your purpose perfectly. When you are in an Italian
+shop and you ask the price of an article you wish to buy, say to the man
+'_Quanto_?' (how much?); as soon as he has named it, say '_Troppo_' (too
+much). Then he will say something else. Just remark '_Mezzo_' (half
+that), and then pay, and you will find that the shopkeeper has still 40
+or 50 per cent. profit.
+
+When I consider that women's-righters, as a rule, complain bitterly of
+men for being of opinion that the only thing which young girls should
+think about is to prepare to become one day good wives and mothers, I
+believe that great credit should be given to them for having had the
+idea of starting schools where young girls will be taught all the duties
+of attentive mothers and economical wives.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+I had the privilege of being present at one lecture on the training of
+children, and among all the good things which I heard on the occasion I
+will quote the following, which may be of great use, even to my English
+readers.
+
+1. Never threaten children with punishments you may not be able or feel
+inclined to carry out. Don't let your 'yea' mean 'nay,' nor your 'nay'
+'yea.' You must never be fickle or wavering in your dealing with them,
+but always firm, just, and reliable, though kind and indulgent. Don't
+punish them, and then regret it, and afterwards fondle them as if to ask
+for their pardon. If you do, you will run the risk of having your child
+say to you: 'Ah, you see, mamma, you are sorry for what you have done.
+Instead of scolding me, I think you ought to thank God for giving me to
+you!'
+
+2. Don't make mountains of molehills, or be constantly down upon
+children for little breaches of every-day discipline; don't be fidgety
+and fussy. Never offer them a piece of candy, a bun, or an orange as a
+reward for virtues, or as a bribe to cease being naughty.
+
+Then came a few pieces of advice of a higher order, and which I thought
+were sound in their philosophy. Among these I cull the following:
+
+1. Do not expect your children to become a joy to you in your old age if
+you have failed to be a joy to them in their early life and training. Do
+not expect them to support you when you are old. You had a fair start of
+them in life, and you should be able to provide for yourselves. They
+will very likely have families of their own. Children are often sadly
+thrown back through having to look after parents who, had they taken
+time by the forelock, would have been able to look after themselves, and
+to have given their children a nudge onward into the bargain. For that
+matter, never have to be grateful to your children, except for the
+happiness they may procure you by their affection and the successes
+which they meet with in life, thanks to the education, money, advice,
+and what not which you may have given to them.
+
+2. Don't let your vanity cheat you into the belief that your children
+are wonders and exceptional phenomena, and that Nature's ordinary rules
+are not applicable to them.
+
+In the nursery lecture on baby culture I retained two or three pieces of
+advice which seemed to me remarkably good, although my ignorance would
+not have enabled me to give them. Young mothers, please listen:
+
+    1. Don't squeeze your baby's head.
+
+    2. Never allow your child to go to bed in a bad temper.
+
+    3. Never encourage it to gaze into the fire, and never tell it
+    ghost stories, at night especially.
+
+    4. Do not allow a rocking-horse before the age of five.
+
+    5. Never startle a child by sudden shrieks or any other noises.
+
+    6. In fact, quiet and diet will be the making of a child strong
+    in mind and body.
+
+I could fill several pages of this book with all the good things I heard
+on the occasion of my visit to that useful school.
+
+Maybe, one day such schools will be started in other countries. I
+recommend this to the women's-righters of the United States.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE WORST FEATURE OF WOMEN AS A SEX
+
+
+Only a few days ago, while calling on a lady of my acquaintance, the
+conversation fell on a lady singer whom the public admired and applauded
+for many years, and whose private character made her also a great
+favourite in society. She left the operatic stage a good many years ago,
+and went on the concert platform under the management of her husband,
+who was a well-known _impresario_. One day her voice failed her, and so
+did her husband, who, realizing there was no more money in his wife,
+thought that the best thing he could do now was to leave her. With this,
+however, he was not satisfied. A so-called London society paper, having
+published a paragraph to the effect that he had left his wife without
+any provision, this unspeakable cur wrote to all the papers denying that
+he had ever been married to that beautiful woman, who for years had
+loved him, who had not only been faithful to him and devoted to him, but
+had entirely supported him.
+
+People in England were so indignant that I remember the man had
+immediately to leave all the clubs he was associated with, and that
+the beautiful and talented woman, who had been so shamefully deceived,
+inspired such keen sympathy that she was more than ever sought in
+society, where her reputation was so firmly established that the letters
+written to the papers could not put a stain on her character. In spite
+of my reminding my lady friend of all the incidents of the case, the
+only sympathy I could extract from her was the following remark, 'She
+should have expected all this,' almost to the tune of, 'She only got
+what she deserved.' Then, starting to philosophize, she added: 'A woman
+should know that the man who wickedly wrongs her does not mean to marry
+her; and if a woman will live with a man without being his wife, she
+must be prepared to bear the consequences of her folly, and to be one
+day left in the lurch.'
+
+'But,' I rejoined, 'do you mean to tell me that a woman who, purely out
+of love, devotes her life to a man, has not a right to expect that man
+to devote his life to her, to protect her, to make her future safe, and
+all the more so because they are not married? I am afraid that what
+makes those acts of desertion so frequent is the leniency shown by
+society towards them, and the supreme contempt which women who are
+legally married have for those who are not, and who are just as
+respectable as they are, and very often a good deal more so.'
+
+I am in business with many people who always had such confidence in me,
+and I such confidence in them, that there were never any contracts
+signed between us, and I do not think they are more afraid of my
+breaking my engagements with them, because they have not my signature,
+than I am of their breaking their promise to me, because I have in my
+hands no contract duly signed, stamped, and witnessed.
+
+Men who deceive men, who break with them contracts made only by word,
+are ostracized from society. Why should men who deceive women be
+received by it with open arms?
+
+There are men of honour in the world, thank Heaven! and if men are
+expected to act honourably towards their fellow-men, can you explain to
+me why women should be found who think it quite natural that these same
+men should not behave honourably, not even decently, towards women who
+have placed their trust in them to the extent of not exacting their
+signature on a contract?
+
+The worst feature of women as a sex is the absence of free-masonry among
+them. They stick together only for the redress of more or less imaginary
+grievances; perhaps the only one really momentous to their sex--I mean
+the desertion of trusting women by treacherous men--scarcely appeals to
+them. The woman who has fallen through love and confidence will get no
+sympathy from women, not even from the one who should give it to her--I
+mean the one who has given herself to a man, not because she loved him,
+but because he offered her money and matrimony.
+
+Women who have in hand a contract of marriage signed, stamped, and
+witnessed, are so inexorable towards their sex that they will--I am
+ashamed to say it for them--rather take the part of men betrayers than
+that of poor women betrayed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+IS HOMOEOPATHY A CURE FOR LOVE?
+
+
+Since the publication of 'Her Royal Highness Woman' and 'Between
+Ourselves,' some people, I am afraid, have somehow been under the
+impression that I keep open a sort of Dr. Cupid's office, in which I
+hold consultations on questions referring to love and matrimony; and I
+have received many letters--far too many to answer--in which fair
+correspondents in trouble have written for advice.
+
+Only quite recently I received a letter from a lady, who writes: 'I am
+madly in love with a man whom I cannot marry, but whom I have to see on
+business almost every day; what should I do to be cured? Should I marry
+another man who is now seeking my hand, who can offer me a very good
+position, but whom I do not love?'
+
+Now, here is a problem if you like: Can matrimony be administered as an
+antidote? If so, in what doses?
+
+To tell you the truth, I rather believe in homoeopathy--that is to
+say, in the cure of the like by the like. You want to be cured of your
+love for a man--why, love another; it is as simple as possible. Yes,
+but the lady tells me she cannot love that other, yet she seems
+inclined to 'swallow' him as an antidote. At any rate, she suggests that
+she might do so, and I suppose she wants me to tell her whether she is
+likely to be successful, if the cure will be effective and lasting.
+
+Of course, there is more chance of happiness in a marriage which is
+contracted between a man who loves a woman and a woman who does not love
+him than in one contracted between a woman who loves a man and a man who
+does not love her. Under the circumstances, a man, after entering
+matrimonial life, is much more likely to win his wife's love than a
+woman her husband's. I believe this to be so true as to be almost taken
+for granted.
+
+But, my dear lady correspondent, are you going to tell that man honestly
+on what terms you are going to marry him? Are you going to trust to his
+intelligence, his tact, his love, his devotion, to win your affections?
+And are you going to do your utmost to help him? Surely you are not
+going to deceive him, let him think you love him, and prepare for him
+and for yourself a life of misery and wretchedness, and thus build your
+married life on contempt and deceit, which will lead you to hate your
+husband.
+
+But enough of awful suppositions, for, between you and me, I can declare
+that your case is much more hopeful than you think. The disease from
+which you suffer--or, rather, from which you imagine that you
+suffer--is quite curable, and is cured every day without having to
+resort to such extreme measures as you suggest, for, dear lady, do you
+not say to me that you love that man 'madly'?
+
+Fireworks, shells, volcanic eruptions, and mad love have this in common:
+they may do harm, cause suffering, but they last a short time only. And,
+pray, why do you see the man on business every day? Is he your
+confessor, your doctor, your music-teacher, your dancing-master? Has a
+royal escapade of recent date, like a 'penny dreadful,' created a
+disturbance in your otherwise well-balanced mind?
+
+And why can't you marry him? Oh, I see, he is married already.
+
+Now, are you aware that we never fall in love madly except with people
+whom we cannot marry? You say you did not know that. I tell you you have
+no idea how simple your case is, and how common.
+
+By the way, would not, perchance, that man be the 'juvenile lead' who
+acts in the romantic drama which is being played every day in your city?
+Oh, you matinee girl! Are you aware that matinee girls invariably love
+madly? Yes, as madly and as idiotically as do in the play the heroes
+whom they worship.
+
+Now, do not take tragically, or even seriously, such little clouds as
+'mad love.' Do not use big words for very little things. Mad love is the
+easiest love to cure. Change your doctor or your dancing-master, or--if
+I have otherwise guessed right--patronize another theatre. Go and see
+'Hamlet'--that will cure you of 'Romeo.'
+
+Then look more carefully at that very sensible man who offers you
+marriage and a good position, and if you realize that you can make him
+happy, and you are sure you are not madly in love with him, marry him.
+And if you study him very closely and discover in him qualities and
+attainments that may lead you to fall in love with him madly, don't tell
+him: he might believe you.
+
+Men are so silly!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+DOMESTIC TYRANTS AND THEIR POOR WIVES
+
+
+The domestic tyrant has redeeming features. As a rule he does not beat
+his wife.
+
+He feeds her well, clothes her decently, and is faithful to her. When
+she is ill he sends for the doctor, and does not grumble unless her
+convalescence should last too long. He does not want her to die, because
+she consents to be his housekeeper without wages and allows him to get
+out of her all the work that can possibly be extracted from one being
+who does not claim the protection of the 'eight-hour' law.
+
+He has enough self-control to resist the temptation of insulting her. He
+treats her coolly, patronizingly, and keeps her at a respectful
+distance, lest she should take liberties with him.
+
+He is dull, solemn, conceited and selfish. When he joins the family
+circle, wife and children have to be busy and silent, the only noise
+allowed being the rustling of the newspaper he reads. He takes the lamp,
+the only one on the table, and places it just behind his shoulder, so as
+to light his paper well. His wife--poor cat! who has to see in the
+dark--goes on with her sewing as best she can. The children remain
+motionless and speechless until it is time to go to bed. Then they
+smile, say good-night, and run away like culprits.
+
+When he goes out the children speak above a whisper, and the women of
+the family breathe and express an opinion among themselves, an act of
+audacity which they would never think of indulging in in his presence;
+and life goes merrily until someone, with a face a yard long, rushes in
+and announces 'Father is coming!' The domestic tyrant is invariably
+called 'Father' by the wife as well as by the children, and the word is
+spelt with a capital 'F,' and the 'a' is sounded as if there were a
+dozen French circumflex accents on the top of it.
+
+The domestic tyrant is neither a lazy man nor a drunkard, nor anything
+that is bad. On the contrary, he is a moral man. As a rule he does not
+even smoke, and that is what makes him so powerful against reproach.
+What can you say to a man who is steady, sober, intelligent,
+hard-working, stingy perhaps, but asks forgiveness for that on the plea
+that he has a large family to secure the future of? Outside of his house
+he has a very good reputation; he is invariably called a good husband
+and a good father. He invariably speaks well of his wife. Before
+strangers, before friends and relatives, in her very presence, he will
+sing her praises and extol her virtues, and will constantly repeat that
+for industry he does not know a woman who could compete with her. That
+is the way he encourages her in the path of duty. The domestic tyrant
+is particularly great on duty, and when he and his wife are alone, and
+there is nobody else to hear him, he tells her that he fulfils his
+duties, and that surely he can expect 'females' to perform theirs. For
+him, women are 'females.' His wife alone can tell you what he really is,
+and on the subject this is the information you will receive from her:
+
+'I have to be his slave for twenty-four hours a day, work for him,
+humour him, and, most especially, I must never complain of being ill,
+or even mention that I am tired. I have never had from him a word of
+pity, of condolence, or even of sympathy. I have never received
+encouragements. I have never heard a word of praise from his lips.
+
+'On the other hand, it takes very little to discourage him and make him
+lose his high spirits. If anything has gone wrong with his business
+during the day, he comes home frowning, snarling, quarrelsome, looking
+for more trouble and grievances. He does not use me as a consoling
+companion in the hour of misfortune or as a comforter in moments of
+annoyance. No; he looks upon me as a target at which he can aim all his
+bitterness.'
+
+And she will tell you much more than that. She will probably tell you
+that the larger the family gets, the more he is pleased, because it
+gives her less and less chance of finding time to leave her home.
+
+He goes out when he likes, where he likes, and would never think of
+asking her, 'Won't you come along?' You never see them out together.
+Poor thing! life would be tolerable to her if they were never in
+together.
+
+It would never enter the domestic tyrant's mind to ask his wife if she
+is able to do her work alone, whether he can help her in this or that,
+or simply inquire, in a sympathetic manner, whether she doesn't feel
+tired after her day's work.
+
+If he should hear complaints from her he has a beautiful phrase ready
+for an answer: 'What did my mother do? What did your mother do? I am
+sure you are not worse off than they were.'
+
+This moral man, the domestic tyrant, is not uncommonly dyspeptic, and
+bad digestion has been the cause of more unhappy marriages than all the
+immorality of the world put together.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+RAMBLES IN MATRIMONY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ADVICE TO YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE
+
+
+The great art, the great science of happiness, in matrimony especially,
+is never to expect of life more than it can give. Therefore, prepare
+your nest in such a way that the provisions will not be exhausted in a
+few weeks. From the very beginning, put on the brake, or the car will go
+too fast, and will get smashed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Economize your caresses, rule your passions so as never to make more
+promises than you can keep. You cannot always work unless now and then
+you take a rest, a holiday; neither can you always love unless you
+proceed quietly and occasionally take a holiday. Be sure that a holiday
+is as necessary to make you enjoy blissful times as it is to make you
+endure hard ones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Do not for a moment believe that happiness in matrimony can go on for
+ever and ever without calculation, without a great display of diplomacy
+on the part of both husband and wife. Avoid being too constantly the
+lover of your wife, because the lover-husband is such a revelation to a
+woman that when the day arrives--the fatal day!--on which the husband
+remains alone and the lover has ceased to exist, your wife will forget
+everything you may have done for her: your constant attentions, your
+assiduity to your profession or business, your forethought for her
+future and that for her children--all that will count for nothing when
+she realizes that the lover is gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Never allow a third person to interfere with your private affairs. Never
+confide your little troubles and grievances to anybody. Beware of the
+advising lady who would say to you: 'If I were in your place, I would
+not allow him to do this or to do that.' First of all, she is not in
+your place; secondly, she cannot be in your place, because she is
+neither in your heart nor in that of your husband.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You are the best judge--in fact, you are the only judge--of what is best
+for you to do in the presence of the many little difficulties that arise
+in married life. Whether you are happy or unhappy, keep the secrets of
+your married life to yourself; neither your happiness nor your
+misfortune will cause you to increase the number of your friends.
+Indeed, if you are perfectly happy, it is only by remaining silent
+about it that you will get people to forgive you your happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Accept a life of abnegation and devotion. There is in devotion a bliss
+which is unsurpassed. Devotion is perhaps the most refined and lofty
+form of selfishness; it raises you so much in your own estimation! It
+enslaves so surely the hearts of those whom you love! Devotion is not a
+sacrifice; it is a halo.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If I were a woman, I would give all the pleasures of life to witness the
+smile of my husband on a sick-bed as I entered the room to come and sit
+by his side with his hand in mine. In health, the man loves to feel that
+he is the protector of his wife; in sickness, there is no such arbour
+for him as the arms of the woman he loves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MATRIMONIAL PROBLEM
+
+
+From inquiries which I have made right and left I have arrived at this
+conclusion--that, out of a hundred couples who have got married, fifty
+would like to regain their freedom after six months of matrimonial life,
+twenty have come to the same opinion after a couple of years, ten more
+after a longer period, and about twenty are satisfied, though, in the
+last case, it often amounts to making the best of it. Not ten of them
+spend their leisure time in returning thanks that they got
+married--perhaps ten, but certainly not more.
+
+And I will add this--that, among my friends and acquaintances, the
+couples who live most happily together are, without exception, those who
+made up their minds to be married most quickly, and did not attempt,
+during years and years of engagement, to try and learn how to know
+something of each other. I do not give this as a piece of advice to
+those about to marry. I simply state a fact, although I am prepared to
+admit that long engagements have never been the proper way of preparing
+for matrimony.
+
+In my opinion, the majority of marriages will have a chance of turning
+out happily when the following will have become customs and laws:
+
+1. Before a man makes love to a woman with the intention of asking her
+to become his wife, and before a woman allows a man to speak love to
+her, certainly before she accepts his offer of matrimony, both will have
+ascertained that there is no disease, moral or physical, of an
+hereditary nature in either family; that the man has been a good and
+devoted son, a cheerful brother, and an honest man in all his dealings,
+well spoken of by his employers or his acquaintances; that the girl is
+not an extravagant woman, and has, among her friends, the reputation of
+being amiable, cheerful, and a favourite at home; that both will have
+sufficient means to support themselves.
+
+I will go further. I will say that it should not only be a custom to
+make inquiries about the antecedents of the parties, and their financial
+position, but a law, and a strict law, too, that would prevent couples
+from marrying who were likely to present society with undesirable
+children, or become a burden to the community. I believe that no
+emigrant is allowed to land in America who cannot prove that he
+possesses some means of existence. No couples should be allowed to enter
+the 'State of Union' who cannot prove that they possess means to support
+themselves, and are healthy in mind and in body.
+
+2. Girls will be told, like in the past, that their destiny is to be
+one day wives and mothers, but they will be intelligently prepared for
+both noble vocations. They will come out of school able to keep a house,
+cook a good, palatable meal, and make their own dresses. They will know
+how to get their money's worth when they go a-shopping. They will have
+learned how to attend to babies, and have played with live dolls. They
+will have listened to, and profited by, lectures on hygiene. They will
+know all these things, besides possessing the accomplishments which are
+only meant to be dessert in matrimonial life.
+
+Boys who have never been once told that their destiny is to become one
+day husbands and fathers will be prepared to be tolerably good ones.
+They will be taught the consideration that man should always show to
+woman. They will be taught to take off their hats to women and young
+girls, and advised to do the same one day to their own wives when they
+meet them. When they get to be eighteen or twenty, they will be informed
+of women's characteristic traits. They will be told that a woman who
+accepts an offer of matrimony does a man more honour than he conferred
+on her by making the offer.
+
+When men and women shall by early training be made, the former less
+selfish and conceited, the latter less frivolous and extravagant, the
+chances of happiness in matrimony will be greatly increased.
+
+Still, the problem will not be solved.
+
+You will never prevent matrimony being a lottery. Take your ticket
+and--your chance.
+
+After all, matrimony is like a mushroom. The only way to ascertain
+whether it is the genuine article or poison that you have got is to
+swallow it--and wait.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WOMEN SHOULD ASSERT THEMSELVES IN MATRIMONY
+
+
+A cynic once said that in this world men succeed through the qualities
+which they do not possess. By this he meant to say that to cope with the
+pushing crowd, you must not be too scrupulous, or you will let everybody
+pass before you.
+
+A worse cynic, one of the blackest type and deepest dye, went as far as
+to say: 'The way to succeed is to have unbounded impudence, popular
+manners, absence of scruple, and complete ignorance of everything.'
+
+But, then, take it for granted that this cynic was only a disappointed
+failure. You will constantly hear the man who has failed in life
+exclaim: 'Oh, if I had not always wished to remain perfectly honest, I
+could have succeeded like many others I know.'
+
+Just as you hear women who fail to get engagements on the stage or the
+concert platform remark: 'If I had had no objection to obtaining
+engagements in the way some women do, I would have made my mark--but I
+am not one of that sort.'
+
+At the risk of appearing paradoxical, and even cynical, I will venture
+to say that in love, and in matrimony especially, certain great
+qualities are more detrimental to the happiness of women than many of
+their defects. And if this is a correct statement, to what shortcoming
+of man are we going to attribute it?
+
+I know that on reading this some women will exclaim: 'Shame on you to
+say such a thing!' Very well, will you listen to me? Look around you,
+among all your circles of friends and acquaintances, of relatives even,
+and tell me if, as a rule, the young girl who is vain, selfish,
+coquettish, a flirt even, has not better chances of marriage, and is not
+sought after rather than the simple, unaffected, devoted, intellectual
+girl? Tell me if the bumptious rose does not generally carry the day
+over the modest, retiring violet?'
+
+Of course, I know that you will say to me, 'You may be right; men--I
+mean most men--are caught, like mackerel, by shining bait; but when a
+man is married, surely he is not slow to recognise which of the two is
+the right one to have as a wife, and to appreciate all the qualities and
+virtues of the second one.'
+
+Well, you are wrong--wrong as can be. Look around you again, study now
+the married couples that you know, and you will have to confess that the
+wife who is coquettish, frivolous, clever, will know how to make herself
+respected, and even feared, by her husband much more than the other.
+
+That husband will pay to her his best attentions, will be proud of her,
+and will work like a slave in order to meet all the expenses required
+for the adornment of her beauty without once venturing to make a
+remark.
+
+I tell you that if I had a marriageable daughter, whom I wanted to get
+rid of, I would tell her to put all her retiring ways in the cloak-room
+and to assert herself, and, after the wedding ceremony, I would whisper
+in her ears:
+
+'My dear child, never make yourself the slave of your husband; be good,
+faithful and devoted to him, but do not forget that man is a strange
+animal, who seldom appreciates what he does not pay for. In this respect
+men are like those people who listen breathlessly to music in a hall or
+theatre where they have paid a guinea for their seats, and who, as
+guests in a drawing-room, take the very best music as a signal for
+entering into general conversation. If you want your husband to listen
+to your music, make him pay for his seat.'
+
+The poor little woman who follows to the letter all the lectures she has
+heard on matrimony, at home and at church wedding ceremonies, will soon
+find the irreparable mistake she has made. In this rôle of devoted slave
+she will lose her beauty, her intelligence, her very mind, and will
+wither rapidly.
+
+Devoting herself, body and soul, forgetting herself always in order to
+increase the welfare of her husband she will work, wear herself out,
+until, when her beauty is gone, her husband will feel for her nothing
+but indifference, if not, alas! sometimes contempt.
+
+If one of the two must endure a privation in order that the other may
+have more comfort, it should be the man, always the man: first, because
+hard work and privations do not hurt a man as they can hurt a woman,
+physically and mentally; secondly, because a woman is far more apt to
+appreciate self-abnegation in a man than a man in a woman.
+
+All this does not mean that men are all brutes--no; although it must be
+admitted that there is something brutal in their very nature which is
+ever fascinated by what is piquant, and never excited by a devotion
+which they feel is, above all, the duty of the stronger toward the
+weaker.
+
+Let women gently, diplomatically, but firmly, assert themselves on the
+very threshold of matrimony, or all the concessions which they make at
+the beginning will soon be considered by their husbands as their due. In
+matrimonial life, as in the government of nations, you can never take
+back concessions or privileges granted too quickly and without enough
+consideration.
+
+Women who start married life as slaves will never be able to assert
+themselves or enjoy the slightest influence over their husbands; and
+bear in mind that no marriage has ever proved to be happy where the
+influence of woman, though sweet and gentle, has not been paramount.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--I
+
+
+I have many times been asked the question, Who are the best subjects for
+matrimony? I believe (kindly mark that I do not say I am sure) that the
+best subjects for matrimony are people with simple tastes, equable
+tempers, no very great aspirations, satisfied with doing little and
+being little. These, at all events, are the kind of people most likely
+to be happy in matrimony, far more likely than, say, for instance, the
+'intellectuals,' who are ever in search of the pathway that leads to the
+higher walks of life, who have ambitions to satisfy and many inducements
+to divert their minds from the peaceful ways of contentment and happy
+matrimony. Little things please little minds, and those couples, whom we
+have all met in life, who know nothing, who dream of nothing above what
+they have got, who are perfect mutual admiration societies, are the best
+subjects for matrimony. These people, snoring under the same curtain,
+eating out of the same plate, as it were, having the same tastes,
+persuaded that no one is blessed with such children as they have,
+satisfied with all they do, sure that the religion they follow is the
+only true one in the world, spend a peaceful and happy life in the
+exchange of familiarities which, for them, constitute love. They respect
+and enjoy each other; they echo each other's sentiments; and their
+beings are coupled together, trotting along, like two dogs well looked
+after. Their discussions at home are never on any higher questions than
+whether green peas are better with duck than Brussels sprouts. They are
+cheerful, smiling. She calls him Smith or Brown, and he never speaks of
+her but as 'my good lady.' Before the children they call each other
+'father' and 'mother.' They may be grocers, fruiterers--I don't care
+what they are; they are happy, perfect subjects for matrimony.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+What divers and strange unions are sanctioned by matrimony, to be sure!
+By the side of resigned couples, harnessed together and painfully
+dragging the plough, those who have never been able to understand each
+other, through want of space, because they were too near to make proper
+observations; those who, alas! understand each other too well; sweet,
+amiable women of poetic dispositions, chained to matter-of-fact, brutal
+men; honest, saving, hard-working men fastened for life to silly,
+thoughtless, extravagant women; romantic women married to men who see no
+difference between Vesuvius in eruption and the smoking chimneys of
+Pittsburg or Birmingham; women of a keen, humorous disposition living
+with dullards unable to see a joke; Wagnerians having for wives women
+who prefer the music of 'The Casino Girl' to that of 'Lohengrin':
+almost everywhere tragedy or comedy.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Matrimony is a very narrow carriage. If you want to be comfortable in it
+you have to be careful, or one will soon be in the way of the other. To
+put yourself to a little inconvenience now and then is the only way of
+making the other comfortable. To believe that love alone, without
+careful study, will resist all the shocks and will be all the more
+durable that it is ardent is the greatest mistake one can make in the
+world. Violent passion may be compared to Hercules, who might have
+enough strength to raise a palace on his shoulders, but not enough to
+stand a cold in his head. It is the thousand and one little drawbacks of
+matrimonial life that undermine it. Love will survive a great
+misfortune, but will be killed by the little miseries of conjugal
+partnership. In matrimony it is the little things that count and which,
+added up, make a terrible total. The waning love of a wife will not be
+revived by the present of a thousand pound pair of ear-rings, but it may
+be kept up by the daily present of a penny bunch of violets, which
+reminds her that you think of her every day of your life. It is not the
+great sacrifices that appeal to her as do constant little concessions.
+Many men would sacrifice their lives who would not give up smoking or
+their too frequent visits to their clubs for their wives. Many women
+will be the incarnation of devotion and self-abnegation who will not do
+their hair as their husbands beg them to.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Surely matrimony ought to procure happiness, for the greatest bliss on
+earth should be to love in peaceful security with the guarantee of the
+morrow. Matrimony is all right. So are the symphonies of Beethoven--when
+they are performed by orchestras who play in time and in tune.
+
+The worst--indeed, the only serious--drawback to matrimony is that it is
+an everyday meal which, palatable as it may be, runs the risk of
+becoming insipid, and of making fastidious the people who have to
+partake of it. True, but then let people who are intelligent and
+thoughtful supply seasoning which will whet the appetite and combat
+Habit, that demon which is their deadliest enemy.
+
+It is folly, rank folly, to believe that it is wise, even prudent, to
+exhaust all at once the sum of happiness, illusion, and love with which
+one enters the state of matrimony, and to give one's self body and soul
+until, soon satiated and by-and-by tired of each other, both will turn
+their heads away in disgust, and may, later on, lose them in despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--II
+
+
+There was a time, and I can remember it myself, when men as well as
+women wore wedding-rings. It was, I think, a very pretty custom. The
+wedding-ring ought to be worn by both husband and wife, not only as a
+constant reminder of faith sworn, but also as a talisman; it should be a
+cherished jewel given to the husband by the wife, as well as one given
+to the wife by the husband, and given in each case with a loving,
+earnest kiss impressed upon it. The wedding-ring is such a priceless
+jewel in the eyes of loving women that I have heard of some who became
+insane on losing it. Why should it not be priceless in the eyes of a man
+who loves his wife?
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Every time that two beings who live together are not of the same opinion
+or of the same taste, a concession on the part of the one or of the
+other has to be made, or trouble will follow. This is a rule without
+exception. In conjugal parlance Concession is another name for Duty.
+Concessions should even be made in everyday conversation, and long
+discussions most carefully and invariably avoided. Discussions are
+generally useless; they never lead to conviction, and may cause you to
+run a dangerous risk--that of losing your control over your good temper.
+In a wild desire to prove that he is right, a man will blurt out words
+that he will be sorry to have uttered, betray thoughts which he always
+meant to keep to himself, and when the discussion is over those words
+remain and the harm is done.
+
+The moment a discussion takes too lively a form, one of the two should
+have enough self-control to stop adding fuel to it and remain silent,
+even at the risk of letting the other suppose that his (or her)
+arguments are unanswerable. Of course, this silence should be kind,
+discreet; not that odious silence of ill-assorted couples, which is a
+silence of disgust and hatred. If both man and wife are quick-tempered
+and unable to avoid a heated discussion, they should leave off at once;
+they should even separate and go, he to light a cigar in his library or
+in the garden, she to touch her piano or take up a novel, until both
+have forgotten all about it.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A mistake made by a great many married couples is to avoid speaking of
+money matters. But the most loving couples cannot altogether live on
+love and the air of the atmosphere; it is not given to all of them--in
+fact, it is given to only very few of them--to spend without having to
+count. A man and a wife are two friends, two partners, who should
+constantly hold pleasant little committee meetings of two in order to
+discuss all matters of pecuniary interest and balance their budget of
+receipts and expenditure. Once a week at least, they should employ an
+hour in this way, hand in hand, like the best of friends. Thus it is
+that by mutual confidence each will encourage the other to think of the
+future, and little by little both will soon find themselves possessing
+the nucleus of a small fortune, in which they will take more and more
+interest, and which one day, to their surprise, will be found quite snug
+and bearing an interest that will add considerably to their annual
+revenue.
+
+A married woman should never consent to receive so much a week for
+household expenses, so much a month for her dress, and to be treated, so
+to speak, as a dependent person. It should be left to her to decide
+whether, considering what the financial situation is, she can afford two
+new hats or one only. The suggestion, much less the order, should not
+come from her husband, but from herself.
+
+I like the French system, where a man consults his wife in all important
+matters of financial interest, such as the investment of savings, etc.;
+but from the day she is married, the French wife begins to be taught by
+her husband the details of his profession or business, and the best and
+safest investments of the day, and she immediately and invariably is
+appointed by him secretary of the treasury--among the masses of the
+people, anyway--and that is why I have not the least hesitation is
+asserting the fortune of France is so stable and steady. It is because,
+thanks to the influence of the wife, French families have their money
+invested in the safest Government securities. So long as they can work,
+they are satisfied with a very small interest for their capital, in
+order to be quite sure that when the days of rest will become a
+necessity, that capital will be there to keep them, if not in wealth, at
+all events in comfort and complete independence.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When married couples have nothing better to do, they should amuse
+themselves making all sorts of plans for the future. They should plan
+journeys to distant countries, build castles in the air, buy country
+houses, and consult each other and decide how they shall furnish them
+and lay out the grounds. These plans are like barricades--they mask the
+future; besides, they cause you amusement and cost nothing. And--who
+knows?--among those many plans perhaps there will be one of your
+predilections that you will actually be able to realize. What happens
+then? Plans are akin to caresses--they go together hand in hand; they
+are the gratuitous pleasures of sweet intimacy.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Young married people should avoid being too demonstrative, not only in
+public, but in private, in the first years especially. They should
+constantly remember that they enter the state of matrimony with a
+certain capital of love. They must not squander that capital, but live
+on the interest of it only.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+There are young people who too often feel the want of manifesting their
+love by exaggerated proofs of tenderness, such as the administration to
+each other of names of birds and pet quadrupeds, of showers of kisses,
+of little pats on the face. The exaggerated frequency of such acts
+produces a reaction, and often a slight sensation of enervation, that
+should never be born of caresses. And as these outward shows of love run
+the risk of diminishing in number and fervour, there is danger of their
+thus becoming a sign or a proof of decline in tenderness.
+
+In public these demonstrations are ridiculous and vulgar; they put other
+people ill at ease, who smile and sneer, and even remark, 'They will
+soon get over it.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY--III
+
+
+To marry a beautiful woman for the mere love of her beauty is to
+undertake to dwell in a country that has a temperature of 100 in the
+shade without being provided with clothes that will enable you to stand
+a winter of 50 below zero when it comes.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In the relations between men and women it is, after all, beauty that
+makes woman particularly attractive to man. For this reason, the love of
+a man is more sensual, more jealous, than that of a woman, which is more
+affectionate, more confiding, and more faithful. As a rule, the passion
+of a husband goes on diminishing as that of his wife goes on increasing.
+A man exacts of his wife her first love; a woman exacts of her husband
+his last. Only the select few can manage their matrimonial affairs with
+such clever diplomacy as to make these different elements of happiness
+and sources of danger work together with success.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Married people would live more happily together if they could now and
+then forget that they are tied together for life. Any little scene that
+may help them to forget it should be enacted by them.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Happiness in matrimony is more solid when it is founded on friendship
+through thick and thin than when it is merely on love.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In love a moment of bliss is nothing; it is only the morrow which
+purifies and sanctifies it. How many married couples would be happy if
+they would only think of the morrow!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The husband who knows how to always keep something in store for his wife
+has solved the great problem of happiness in matrimonial life.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Cupid introduces men and women into that enclosure which is called
+matrimony, and then discreetly and almost immediately retires. What a
+pity it is he does not make their acquaintance later, in order to remain
+with them for ever!
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Marriages would be very much happier if women preferred marrying men who
+love them to those whom they love.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Matrimony would be a glorious institution if women would take as much
+care of themselves for their husbands as they do when they expect guests
+at their dinner-parties and receptions.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Women should devote all their best attentions to learning how to grow
+old in time and gradually, and in remembering that tears make them
+unattractive, and angry looks hideous.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+One of the greatest dangers to happiness in matrimony is not want of
+love, but too much of it, at the beginning especially. Love dies of
+indigestion more quickly than of any other disease. Never satiate your
+wife--or your husband--with love. Do not live on £10,000 the first year
+of your married life, and be obliged to reduce your income by £1,000 or
+£2,000 every year. Begin gently, quietly, and let your revenue, like
+your love, slowly but steadily increase. There lies your only chance.
+With self-control you have it at your disposal.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+All vocations require preparation and apprenticeship. Matrimony is the
+only one which men and women can enter into without knowing anything
+about it. Alas!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE START IN MATRIMONY, AND ITS DANGERS
+
+
+In matrimony it is not 'All is well that ends well'; it is 'All is well
+that begins well, but not too well.' Starting from this principle, I
+have often advised young husbands to control themselves, and to be
+careful to avoid putting all their smartest dialogue and strongest
+situations in the first act of the comedy of matrimony, for fear lest
+the interest should go on flagging steadily to the end.
+
+I have advised them to see that their wives do not get their own way in
+everything at once, and not to make themselves their abject slaves,
+because, just as no government has ever been known to successfully
+suppress, or even reduce, any liberty or privilege previously granted to
+the people, just so will no husband be able to recover one inch of the
+ground he has surrendered if he capitulates on the threshold of
+matrimony.
+
+In fact, let young husbands and young wives behave toward each other in
+such a way that their friends will not smile and say: 'Lovely, but too
+good to last, I'm afraid.'
+
+The dangers against which I have attempted to warn men exist for
+women--devoted, loving women who wish to start matrimony by trying to do
+the impossible in order to please their husbands, or, if not the
+impossible, at all events, what it may not be in their power to do for
+ever, or even for a long time.
+
+One of these dangers is that of economy.
+
+'My dear,' remarked a shrewd friend to a bride of a few weeks' standing,
+'you will make a terrible mistake if you let your husband think that you
+can keep house on nothing.'
+
+Young wives are sometimes pitifully anxious to be credited with
+remarkable cleverness as house-mistresses. The more they love their
+husbands, the less they like the idea of their toiling and moiling.
+Hence they are keenly anxious to prove themselves helpmeets in the
+literal sense of the word.
+
+Not only will they name a far smaller sum as housekeeping money than
+their husbands can well afford to give them, but they will actually save
+out of that sum enough for their own clothes and petty cash expenses.
+
+All this self-sacrifice is not only charming, but beautiful, when there
+is necessity for rigid economy. Young couples who wisely marry on small
+incomes, instead of wasting the sweetness of their youth over an endless
+engagement, must make a study of ways and means, and the wife who will
+cajole a shilling into doing duty for a five-shilling piece is a jewel
+beyond price.
+
+Again, when times are bad, when the bread-winner falls ill, and the
+treasury runs dry, there is no more pathetic and lovely sight than the
+brave little wife who struggles and succeeds in keeping the wolf out of
+the house.
+
+But in instances where no serious demand of this kind need be made upon
+a wife's ingenuity, she is a very short-sighted woman indeed who does
+not see the dangers and realize the evils of overzealous economy.
+
+There would be fewer complaints of marriages that result in the wife
+being merely an unpaid servant or housekeeper, who cannot give notice to
+leave, if brides began as they meant to go on, for no one save those who
+have lived through the process knows how difficult it is to introduce a
+new régime when once its opposite had been inaugurated and accepted.
+
+'You said you would find £3 10s. a week ample a month ago. Why in the
+world do you want £5 now?' asks the husband, whose wife has been
+foolishly anxious to impress him with her cleverness as an economist,
+and finds she cannot keep up the farce beyond the limit of a few weeks.
+
+Economy may be carried too far from choice. There are women who simply
+love saving. They neglect their intellectual life, and abandon all
+attempts to keep in the movement, all in order to grind down the weekly
+bills. No reward awaits them.
+
+The women who believe themselves perfect because they are economical,
+and consider the spring-cleaning of their house the greatest event of
+the year, grow old before their time, and are never the companions
+modern wives should be to their husbands.
+
+Be good, but never overdo it, I will say to any woman who has the sense
+of humour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+'OMELETTE AU RHUM'
+
+
+When you are dining with an intimate friend, and an _omelette au rhum_
+is served, what do you do? Without any ceremony, you take a spoon, and,
+taking the burning liquid, you pour it over the dish gently and
+unceasingly. If you are careless, and fail to keep the pink and blue
+flame alive, it goes out at once, and you have to eat, instead of a
+delicacy, a dish fit only for people who like, or are used to have,
+their palates scraped by rough food. If you would be sure to be
+successful, you will ask your friend to help you watch the flame, and
+you will even ask him to lift the omelette gently so that the rhum may
+be poured all over it until the whole of the alcohol contained in the
+liquor is burned out.
+
+This _omelette au rhum_ is a fairly good symbol of matrimony.
+
+In the earliest stage of married life the eggs have just been broken,
+beaten, and strewn with sugar, a light has been set, and everything is
+burning and perfectly beautiful. The young partakers of the matrimonial
+repast are intoxicated with their new life, their new emotions, their
+new sensations; they require no indulgence toward each other, no
+special cleverness or diplomacy to please each other; there are no
+concessions to make--neither of them can go or do wrong; the flame burns
+of itself.
+
+I do not mean to say that the flame can be kept burning for ever and
+ever--alas! no, not any more than life can be made to eternally animate
+your body. The flame must go out one day, as some illness must one day
+end your life. But, just as hygiene teaches how to keep our good health
+prolonged by precautions of all sorts, just so does common-sense, aided
+by diplomacy and skill, help us to keep alive the flame of love between
+the man and the woman who have kindled it.
+
+And let no woman accuse me of manly conceit if I say that, clever and
+attentive as the man must be, the woman has to be more clever and
+attentive still, and that simply because it is a fact--an uncontradicted
+fact (call it psychological if you like, or physiological if you
+prefer)--that the love or passion of a woman goes on naturally
+increasing in married life, whereas that of a man goes on just as
+gradually and steadily decreasing.
+
+In marriage the flame of love has been known to keep long alive through
+the intelligence of the wife, and even without any effort in that
+direction on the part of the husband; but the contrary has never been
+known to be successful.
+
+Woman is a divine delicacy who has to tempt the appetite of man; but the
+most exquisite delicacy may become insipid if served every day with the
+eternally same sauce. This is plain common-sense, and let me tell you
+this: that no married life (not one) has a shadow of chance to be happy
+for long unless the woman clearly understands and quickly realizes that,
+if moral duties are the same for men and women, Nature has made their
+temperaments absolutely different.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+COQUETRY IN MATRIMONY
+
+
+No coquetry in matrimony? Who is the Philistine who dares utter such
+blasphemy? Good heavens! if half the curling-pins, which are used by
+women at night in order to be beautiful the following day and attract
+the attention and admiration of strangers, were used by them in the
+morning, so that they might be beautiful the same day, and draw the
+attention and admiration of their husbands, there would be happiness in
+matrimony, and the world would go much better than it does.
+
+The greatest, the most dangerous enemy of happiness in matrimony is
+habit which engenders monotony. You get too much accustomed to each
+other, and love fades, as a flower which falls off its stem before it
+has lived its natural life, owing to some insect which destroys it.
+
+That insect in matrimony is habit, which devours everything without your
+being aware of its presence. Destroy that insect before it has had time
+to do any harm, and you will have saved your dual happiness.
+
+A grave error committed by many women is to believe that they must look
+their best for the friends, acquaintances and strangers who visit them,
+but that they need not take much trouble for their husbands.
+
+But the fact is that a woman ought to ever appear before her husband
+at her very best, whether it is in a morning negligée or in a full
+afternoon or evening toilette.
+
+Your husband, my dear lady, ought to see in you more than he could see
+in any other woman. All comparisons ought to be to your advantage. It is
+not at all necessary that you should have an expensive gown on at
+breakfast-time. Your hair well fixed, and a nice-fitting dressing-gown
+may make you look as attractive as a beautiful ball-dress.
+
+It is not clothes that make a woman fascinating; it is the way she puts
+them on.
+
+In fact, never allow yourself to be seen by your husband in any other
+state than that in which you would allow yourself to be seen by the male
+portion of your acquaintances, not even in illness. As long as your
+strength permit, remain coquettish and jealous of your appearance. Yes,
+I say, even on a sick-bed.
+
+The part you have to play consists in spraying a perfume of poetry
+around you. Fill your husband with remembrances of you, so that, even
+when you are not visible, you are present before his eyes.
+
+Allow him the most complete liberty, and never ask him questions on what
+he has done, where he has been.
+
+Take it for granted that he has done nothing which he should not have
+done, that he has been nowhere where he should not have been, and it is
+that perfect confidence which you show you have in him that will always
+keep him in the path of faithfulness, unless he is, which is only
+exceptional, an absolutely bad man.
+
+If clouds are gathering over your happiness, it is for you women to
+clear them away. You are the guardian angels of the home, which is your
+kingdom. If you have trials, strain every nerve to appear smiling, and
+if sometimes tears stifle you, shed them in secret, even should the
+cause of your trial be the inconstancy of your husband.
+
+You will not bring him back to you with reproaches, tears and scenes.
+You will thus keep him away for good. Remember that Nature, which has
+treated you so ungenerously, makes you ugly when you weep and hideous
+when you make a scene.
+
+You will bring back an erring husband by your kindness, your sweetness,
+your devotion, and your intelligence. The only infallible way to get a
+husband attached to you is to let him believe that you never suspected
+him, much less accused him, even when he was guilty. Call to your aid
+whatever resources are at your disposal--resources of intelligence, of
+beauty, of abnegation--and, if your husband is not a brute, he will
+return to you, and he will be all the more ashamed of the way in which
+he neglected you for a time that, by your behaviour, you seem to
+consider he had never for a day ceased to love you.
+
+Never make an allusion to the fatted calf which you killed on the
+return of the prodigal heart. Be as merciful in your victory as you were
+in your temporary defeat.
+
+Do not be satisfied with forgiving; forget, and make him forget
+everything. Use scales: on one side place his years of devotion to you,
+his industry, his forethought in securing your future and that of your
+children; on the other his faults; and even if these scales should
+incline to remain horizontal, with a gentle touch of your finger make
+them go down in favour of what he has done for you.
+
+The supreme coquetry of a woman is to know how to reign, even when her
+husband governs. Her very weakness is the best weapon in her hands. Her
+husband should be the motive of all her actions. Before thinking of
+appearing beautiful to the indifferent, she should think of appearing
+beautiful to her husband.
+
+If she is admired, she should feel proud of it for his sake, and make
+him understand that only crumbs are for strangers; that he alone is
+invited to the whole meal of her beauty, her love, her boundless
+devotion.
+
+And let me add that there is not, in this chapter, a single word of
+advice which I give to women in their dealings with husbands which I do
+not endorse and give to men in their dealings with their wives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+RESIGNATION IN MATRIMONY
+
+
+According to characters and circumstances, resignation is the virtue of
+the weak or the virtue of the strong. A woman resigns herself to her
+fate in married life, sometimes because she has not enough strength of
+will, sometimes because she does not deign to revolt, oftener still
+because she discovers that her rebellion could only make matters worse
+for herself, and especially for her children.
+
+If her husband is good, her resignation will soon bring him back to her;
+if he is bad, her rebellion will make him much worse.
+
+If you cannot sympathize with your husband, or adopt his views and
+manner of thinking, resign yourself, keep your views for yourself, and
+do not transform your married life into an eternal French public
+meeting, where, instead of striking pebbles together in order to obtain
+light, they throw them at one another's faces.
+
+Fulfil your duties. Never complain. Never exact what is not offered to
+you, unless it be respect. So long as your husband treats you with
+respect, at home as well as in public; so long as he is the thoughtful
+father of your children, and carefully and industriously attends to his
+profession or business, respect him and inspire in your children the
+respect for him, and especially do not make your children the confidant
+of your grievances; that is your foremost duty.
+
+I cannot say to you: Try to force yourself to love your husband. This is
+not in your power. But I will say: Be irreproachable, and thus make
+yourself the superior of your husband. Devote yourself to your family.
+If you are rich, do with your money all the good that you can. The
+greatest possession is self-esteem. You can rise so high that the
+offences committed against you may appear infinitely small. After all,
+we get in this world the place that we know how to make for ourselves.
+
+Never let the outside public know the details of your private life.
+Receive your friends and your guests with a smile on your lips. If your
+husband is a gentleman, he will show you before them the greatest
+consideration, and if you are a lady you will treat him in a like
+manner.
+
+If your husband is unable to offer you his love--I mean a lover's
+love--do not commit the mistake of refusing his friendship, for it is
+just possible that this man, who has not in him the power to love you as
+a lover, would still be ready to give his life for you.
+
+He would certainly be still ready to give it for his children, _your_
+children. Surely that friendship is worth having. Of course, the young
+wife, who discovers after only a few years of marriage that the dream of
+love has vanished, is to be pitied, supposing that it has not been
+through her fault that the dream has had such a short life; but the
+woman who for twenty or more years has had a faithful lover-husband is
+conceited and ridiculous beyond measure when she does not almost
+cheerfully resign herself to the inevitable crisis in matrimony; and if
+she has children that she takes in her confidence, and thus estranges
+from their father, her vanity is not very far from criminal. At all
+events, she deserves the sympathy of no one.
+
+Resign yourself to the inevitable. Let the days of love, happiness, and
+devotion count in the final reckoning, and, in turning over a new leaf,
+be sure you bring forward devotion, and soon happiness may have to be
+added again.
+
+Put on a cheerful face always, and remember that it pays to excite envy,
+never to excite pity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TIT FOR TAT
+
+
+There is more joy in heaven, we are told, for one sinner who repents
+than for a hundred righteous people who keep straight on the narrow ways
+of salvation.
+
+And, I should add, there must be more joy in hell for one good man who
+goes wrong than for a hundred sinners who persevere in their wicked
+ways.
+
+There should be more joy in the heart of a woman for a man who remains
+in love with her than for a hundred others whose admiration she may
+obtain.
+
+There are some women who may love a man ever so much, and be loved by
+him to their hearts' content, who will use all their artillery to bring
+down strangers to their feet, but who will make little or no effort to
+look their best for the man who loves them and is devoted to them. For
+such women their beauty is an altar erected to unknown gods.
+
+Married life would be an everyday bliss and an eternal one if men never
+thought of doing to or before their wives what they would never dream of
+doing to or before any ladies of their acquaintance, and, of course, if
+women did the same; but such is not always, even often, the case. Hence
+the trouble.
+
+How many men have taken their wives to a ball, women whose radiant
+beauty and brilliant toilettes have caused the admiration of all men
+present, and also the envy of many women?
+
+How many men have felt that, if the said wives had made as much
+preparation for them as they had for all the strangers present at that
+ball, they could have fallen at their feet and worshipped them?
+
+On returning home, however, Madame has immediately retired to her room,
+ordered her maid to quickly remove and pack away the lovely attire, and,
+an hour later, prepared for the night's rest, she appeared before her
+husband with her hair all prepared for the next day, her hands carefully
+gloved so that they may be as white as snow--also for the next day--and
+wrapped up and as inaccessible as a valuable clock that is going to be
+shipped to the other end of the world.
+
+That is the lot of many men--may I not even say of most husbands? Then a
+bold husband will venture to make some remarks. He will say, 'Now, my
+dear, I hear you practise your scales and exercises, but seldom do you
+treat me to a piece of music, which I only hear when I have guests or we
+go out. Everyone--at the ball--has admired your beautiful hair and your
+lovely gown, but for me, all I see is hairpins and curlers and a
+dressing-gown.'
+
+And Madame will answer more or less sourly, 'Is it because I am your
+wife that I must grow ugly? Do you want my hair to fall over my neck and
+shoulders to-morrow like weeping willows? Do you want my hands to be red
+and chappy? Are you sorry I am careful of my clothes and have them put
+away, well folded in tissue-paper, when I have no need of them?
+
+'Do you reproach me for doing you honour and being at the same time
+careful? Will you tell me, is there any way to please you? And do you
+think that, after enjoying herself and receiving compliments during a
+whole evening, it is very pleasant for a woman to return home and hear
+nothing but rebuffs, reproaches and the like?'
+
+The poor man feels he is beaten, that he is a brute, and he says nothing
+more, until one night when it is time to retire, he prepares a surprise
+for his wife.
+
+'What's all this?' exclaims the wife when she realizes what has
+happened.
+
+'Nothing, dear,' he replies. 'To tell you the truth, I go hunting
+to-morrow morning, and I shall have to rise very early. My hunting-boots
+are new, and in the morning my feet are always a little swollen, so I
+keep them on to save trouble. You must excuse my spurs, too, dear, but I
+prefer these, which are fastened to the boots. I shall be most
+comfortable to-morrow.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE IDEAL HUSBAND
+
+
+There are qualities which most women admire in men, and there are
+qualities which practically every man admires in all women; but if you
+were to ask of a hundred men, 'What is the ideal wife?' and of a hundred
+women, 'What is the ideal husband?' you would get a hundred opinions all
+different one from the other.
+
+_Quot capita, tot sensus_, which, in the case of women, I should like to
+translate, 'So many pretty heads, so many different opinions.' This,
+however, is as it should be. Only there remains that terrible problem
+for every man and woman to solve: Find your ideal if you can, and when
+you think you have found it, see that you are not disappointed.
+
+I have of late interviewed a good many Parisiennes on the subject, and I
+will give some of the answers which I have received.
+
+One said to me: 'The ideal husband is the one who devotes his life to
+his wife, who makes her the first consideration in all his thoughts and
+acts, who understands that she is the aim of everything which he
+undertakes, and that he should use all the resources that Nature has
+placed in his mind and Fortune has put in his hands in order that she
+may be happy and remain long beautiful.'
+
+I need not say that this was the opinion of a young girl who had only
+just made her début in society. Nor do I need say that the following
+came from the lips of a married woman--one, however, whom I guarantee to
+be in the possession of all the womanly virtues likely to make a husband
+most satisfied with his lot.
+
+'The ideal husband,' she said, 'is the one who lets his wife alone, who
+does not interfere with her household duties or any of her little
+womanly fads, who is not always paying her compliments or besieging her
+with advice, and who is not always by her side or behind her back, who
+seldom addresses her reproaches, and never reminds her of what he has
+done to deserve her gratitude, who is not fussy, fidgety, or a bore of a
+model of propriety and virtue.
+
+'When I was a young girl I dreamed of matrimony as a sweet state of
+slavery. Now I shout for liberty--liberty for him and liberty for me. I
+do not mean to say, of course, that man and wife should live apart and
+not care one what the other does. No, no; but I firmly believe that we
+should remain at a respectful distance from the objects which we want to
+see to advantage and admire.
+
+'A woman should never allow even the most loving and beloved of husbands
+to be constantly making love to her. One may suffer from abundance of
+wealth. A great deal of discretion and a certain amount of respect
+between married people are sure to secure the duration and the solidity
+of their affection. Those who live at too close quarters are sure to
+part one day or the other.'
+
+Here is another, with less philosophy, but a good deal of what I might
+call paradoxical psychology:
+
+'The ideal husband,' said to me a woman married to a French painter on
+the road to celebrity, 'is the one who is not a man of genius. Nothing
+monopolizes a man like a great talent for writing, painting, or even
+business; he belongs to his muse, his art, or his figures. His thoughts
+are absorbed, and he has very few, if any, left for the little creature
+who lives with him, not in the clouds, but by his side on this earth.
+
+'When he returns from his dreams, he throws at her--poor inferior
+being!--a glance of pity, if not of contempt. My ideal husband is a man
+who can live for me as I am ready to live for him, and who can do
+without a mistress, whether that mistress be called Literature, Art, or
+Commerce. I love great men, great poets, great painters or sculptors,
+but I would not have a great man for a husband; nay, furthermore, I
+should like to have a husband jealous of all the great men of my
+predilection in the world of fiction.'
+
+A piquant little woman, not a bit beautiful, but absolutely charming and
+the embodiment of amiability and cheerfulness, said to me:
+
+'The ideal husband shall not be a handsome man, but a gentlemanly one,
+with a keen sense of humour, cheerful, a laughing philosopher, and a man
+with a magnanimous turn of mind, who would never take advantage of a
+little trouble in which I might find myself entangled to say to me, "I
+told you so," but get me out of it quickly.'
+
+Of course, all my fair friends, without exception, have insisted on the
+ideal husband being indulgent, generous, manly, sincere, loyal, and
+above middle height. Strange to say that none of them ask him to be
+handsome, much less insist on it. One of them even went so far as to
+say:
+
+'A husband should not be handsome. First of all he is never very
+beautiful, since he is a man. But he might be worse; he might think he
+is beautiful, and then Heaven help his wife!'
+
+'The ideal husband,' remarked a lady, 'is a man who should never be
+ridiculous, never make a fool of himself, and never for a moment believe
+that women took notice of him. A woman's love may survive any defect in
+her husband, but ridicule never.'
+
+The fact is that words or acts of a man ridiculous enough to make his
+wife wish she were a mile deep under the floor will lower him so much in
+her estimation that she will never be able to look up to him again; and
+no woman has ever been known to drop her love--she sends it up always. I
+will conclude with the opinion of an American lady:
+
+'The ideal husband should never part with any of his most refined
+manners in his home, where he should endeavour ever to appear at his
+best, in dress, language, and behaviour, in the presence of his wife,
+who is his queen.'
+
+I expected as much from her supreme and magnificent majesty, Mrs.
+Jonathan, Queen of the United States.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MARRYING ABOVE OR BELOW ONE'S STATION
+
+
+It is said in England that, of all men who occupy high positions in
+professional life, judges are those who oftenest marry below their
+station.
+
+Many are even said to have married impossible women, and on these
+women many amusing stories are related in the smoke-rooms of London
+clubs--stories which, I have no doubt, are of the _se non è vero, è ben
+trovato_ type, and as faithful to truth as the stories that are told on
+the feet of the Chicago women or the intellect of the Boston girls.
+
+
+CHORUS-GIRL MARRIAGES
+
+However, it must be admitted that fools are not the only men who marry
+women that are greatly inferior to them in manner, education, and social
+standing; the cleverest men and the most aristocratic ones have often
+been known to do the same.
+
+Dukes, marquises, and earls have married chorus-girls and shop-girls;
+great literary men and artists have married uneducated girls, and have
+led very happy lives with them. Of course, I pass over the aristocracy
+who marry among the common people in order to get their coats of arms
+out of pawn. If they are poor and marry rich girls, you can hardly call
+this a case of _mésalliance_, since the superiority of birth in the man
+is compensated by the superiority of fortune in the woman.
+
+Of course, _mésalliances_ appeal to people, because they always suggest
+marriages for love, and novelists of all countries have worked this
+theme for all it is worth. In real life they very seldom work well, for
+the simple reason that matrimony places a man and a woman on absolutely
+equal footing, and that happiness for them, in the case of a
+_mésalliance_, is only possible on condition that one goes up to the
+level of the superior, or the other comes down to the level of the
+inferior.
+
+
+EDUCATING ONE'S WIFE
+
+Marriages that have the greatest chances of success are those in which
+the two partners bring the same amount of capital in social position, in
+education, in fortune, in character, and I will even add in stature and
+in physical beauty, with perhaps a slight--a very slight--superiority to
+the credit of the man in all these conditions, except that of beauty,
+which is an attribute that woman can possess in any degree without
+making the happiness of her husband and herself run any risk.
+
+Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, in one of her novels, makes a barrister fall in
+love with a girl who works in the coal-mines of Lancaster (another case
+of the legal profession going wrong). The man has the girl sent to
+school to learn manners and get educated, then marries her, and all is
+smooth ever after.
+
+I have heard of this being done in real life with less success. The
+behaviour of the man in a case like this should create gratitude in the
+heart of the woman, and gratitude does not engender love. On the
+contrary, Cupid is a little fellow so fond of his liberty and so wilful
+that anything that tends to influence him--worse than that, to force
+him--has on him the contrary effect to that which should be expected.
+
+Yet, I say, it is the only way to bring an uneducated woman to the level
+of an educated man--before matrimony. After marriage the woman is
+acknowledged, proclaimed the equal of her husband, and she will stand no
+hint as to her being inferior to her husband in any way.
+
+If she loves him and is not conceited, any act on his part, however
+kindly performed, that would suggest to her that she might improve
+herself in language, behaviour, etc., would cause her unhappiness and
+even pangs of anguish.
+
+If, on the other hand, she did not love him and was conceited, or even
+only of an independent character, she would soon give him a piece of her
+mind on the subject of her improvements, and let him hear the great
+typical phrase of democracy, 'I'm as good as you.'
+
+
+DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTS
+
+No, no; he must put up with the situation, and make the best of it. In
+that case men console themselves with the thought that their wives are
+pretty, or that they are good housekeepers, good cooks. After all, a man
+gets married to please himself, not for what the world has to say of his
+wife.
+
+Still, you have to succeed in the world, and if you despise the opinion
+of the world the world turns its back on you. And you must remember
+this: however big you are, or you think you are, the earth can go on
+running its course round the sun without your help.
+
+French and American women have a keen power of observation and native
+adaptability. Better than any other women in the world, they can soon
+adapt themselves to new surroundings and new ways, and learn how to
+talk, walk, dress, and behave like the leading women of any new social
+circles they may have entered. Witness the American women that are to be
+seen at the courts of Europe.
+
+However, the experiment of a _mésalliance_ is always a dangerous one to
+make. Nine times out of ten the rabbit will always taste of the cabbage
+it was brought up on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+PREPARE FOR MATRIMONY, BUT DO NOT OVERTRAIN YOURSELVES
+
+
+I'll tell you what the trouble is with most women in connection with
+matrimony--they expect too much out of it. Not only do they expect too
+much, but, in their goodness, they prepare themselves to do too much, to
+give too much; in fact, they overtrain themselves.
+
+The moment a woman is in love and becomes a fiancée she cultivates the
+growing of her wings, and orders a halo for her head--in fact, she sets
+herself to rehearse the part of an angel.
+
+But see the 'cussedness' of things! Man is a strange animal, who prefers
+women to angels, and the result is that things go wrong. The dear soul
+is persuaded that she is going to marry a hero, a demi-god, and very
+soon she discovers that, after all, she has married only a man. How few
+of us can stand comfortably and long on the pedestals that our admiring
+friends have erected for us!
+
+When that woman engaged herself she did not go straightway to her
+parents, as she should have done, and ask them for information on man
+and matrimony. Her father might have gently disabused her on the
+subject of many illusions. Certainly her mother would. No, she did not
+do that. She kept to herself, read poetry, invented poetry, filled
+herself with poetry.
+
+Boys dream of military life. To them it means gorgeous uniforms, a
+sword, a life of adventure, battle and glory. Girls dream of married
+life. To them it means beautiful dresses and jewels and a life of
+love-making. But soldiers do not always fight, and husbands do not
+always make love, and that is why military life and married life are
+often so sadly disappointing.
+
+The dear little woman has prepared herself to be loving and devoted
+every minute of her life. She has stored provisions of all the best
+resolutions and virtues under the sun and above. She arrives in her new
+home ready to yield in everything, even ready to run the house and dress
+on nothing a year. How she loves that man! Her whole being is given up
+to love. By-and-by she discovers that the most loving couples require
+one or two meals a day, and that fig-leaves are much more expensive than
+they were when they were first worn. Her husband, who, like all men, is
+an idiot as far as the knowledge of housekeeping is concerned, begins to
+grumble when she asks for a reasonable sum to allow her to keep things
+going decently. Remarks pass, lectures are delivered, faces frown, and
+frowning faces don't go well with halos.
+
+Why will young girls leave it to their imagination to find out what
+married life is? Why do they not consult and listen to the advice of
+married lady friends, choosing those who are happy, of course?
+
+They would hear the voice of common-sense.
+
+'If you want your husband to love you and be happy, my dear,' some old
+stager will tell her, 'follow _Punch's_ advice--feed the brute. Never
+expect him to be loving while he is hungry. The way to his heart is
+through the portion of his anatomy that lies just under it.'
+
+Another will say to her: 'Don't start married life by keeping your house
+on nothing a year, because your husband will find it quite natural, and
+will get used to it.'
+
+Let that girl frankly confess to her sweetheart that she is not an
+angel, and the probability is that, if he is a man, he will say to her:
+'Never mind the angels, dearie; be a woman: that's quite good enough for
+me.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ACTRESSES SHOULD NOT MARRY
+
+
+'Are you married?' once asked an English magistrate of an actress who
+had been summoned for assault. She had flung a pot of cold cream in the
+face of her manager.
+
+'No, sir,' replied the lively lady, 'nor do I wish to be.'
+
+'That is fortunate for your husband,' remarked the judge, who probably
+had Irish blood in his veins.
+
+The actress--I do not mean the mere woman on the stage--is made by her
+profession unfit for matrimony. If she is fit for it, she is not, and
+never will be, a great actress.
+
+I know that you will at once tell me that Mr. and Mrs. Kendal and Mr.
+and Mrs. Cyril Maude (Winifred Emery) have been married a good many
+years and lived most happy lives together. I even imagine that you will
+easily be able to name others, but I will still maintain that they are
+only exceptions, and you will please remark that in the exceptions I
+have named the husbands have, as actors, quite as high a reputation as
+their wives, which may be the very explanation of those exceptions.
+
+The actress is a heroine, partly owing to the rôles that she plays, and
+partly to the talent which she displays in them, and no heroine can be a
+good wife to a man unless he be a hero himself. A woman can never drop
+her love, and she never does; she gives it only to a man she can look up
+to.
+
+But there are a great many other reasons. An actress wants perfect
+freedom of action. She cannot be bothered by household duties, hampered
+by the bringing up of children, mindful of the attentions required, or
+at least expected, by a husband.
+
+Her soul and her very nervous system have to be stirred by the whole
+gamut of sentiments, sensations, and even passions, or she will never be
+able to stir the soul of her audience.
+
+Can you imagine Lady Macbeth, Camille, Fedora, Phedre, La Tosca,
+Brunnehilde, played by young innocent virgins or by attentive and
+devoted wives who mend their husbands' stockings and make the puddings?
+Perhaps you will tell me that Mrs. Kendal does all that, and if you do,
+my reply will be, 'Will you please leave me alone with Mrs. Kendal?'
+
+However, since we have mentioned the name of that great actress, I will
+quote her, and repeat what she said to me one day: 'It is a general rule
+with me never to engage married couples in my company; whenever I have
+done so I have had trouble. I want both men and women to act in my
+plays without having to mind what their wives or husbands may look like
+in the wings while they are making love on the stage.'
+
+The husband of an actress is nine times out of ten an intolerable bore.
+He is jealous when she rehearses, he is jealous when she plays, he is
+jealous when the audience applauds her, he is jealous when she receives
+bouquets, he is jealous and suspicious if the manager increases her
+salary, he is jealous during the intervals, he makes scenes to her when
+she returns home, and, if he does not, he sulks, which is worse, because
+the man who consumes his own smoke is far less bearable than the one who
+'has it out' and has done with it. Even if he is not all that, he has
+that feeling, which we can quite understand, that his wife belongs to
+the authors of the play, to the manager of the theatre, to the public,
+to the critics--in fact, to everybody except himself.
+
+No, actresses should certainly not marry unless they marry actors, but
+as a rule they do not, and will not.
+
+The actor may be a hero to the susceptible matinée girl, who sees him as
+Othello, Hamlet, Romeo, Henry V., d'Artagnan, or some other romantic
+swashbuckler, but he is no hero to the woman who dwells in the
+dressing-room next to his, and who knows that he is putting on his wig,
+smearing his face with grease-paint, making-up his eyes, and covering
+his face with violet-powder with a puff, which he handles in ladylike
+manner. The actor loses in the eyes of an actress all the prestige which
+is due to mystery and imagination, and which constitutes the primary
+and fundamental element of the attraction of one sex for the other. I
+have never met actresses of standing who had admiration for actors as
+men, much as they might praise them as members of their profession.
+
+Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the marriage of an actress is a
+mistake, a remorse, or an act of folly. An actress, in order to
+interpret the works of dramatists, should love, love passionately,
+dream, suffer even terribly, in order to be able to incarnate love,
+voluptuousness, suffering, and despair. The drama is the reflection of
+humanity; the art of the actress should be the reflection of all the
+different passions that have stirred her own heart and soul.
+
+Another thing: The public takes a greater personal interest in a woman
+who is not married than in one who is. Actresses know this so well that,
+when they are married, they insist on having their names put on the
+bills as Miss So-and-So. When they do not, managers make them do it.
+
+For art's sake, for her own sake, and, remembering the remark of the
+magistrate, I will add, for her husband's sake, an actress should not
+marry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A MATRIMONIAL BOOM
+
+
+There is quite a boom in the French matrimonial market just at present,
+and not marriages of convenience either, but real good love matches.
+Young girls elope with respectable young men holding good positions in
+order to compel their parents to give their consent. Sons now inform
+their fathers and mothers that they have, without their help or even
+their meddling, chosen wives for themselves. It is an open state of
+rebellion against the old state of affairs in France.
+
+Hitherto there were practically only two kinds of marriages among the
+upper classes and the good bourgeoisie of France: the marriage of
+convenience from which love was excluded, and the marriage for love,
+which, nine times out of ten, was a _mésalliance_. And, to do justice to
+the old system, let me say that, as a rule, the marriages of convenience
+turned out to be much happier than _mésalliances_, which generally
+consisted in marrying mistresses--that is to say, according to Balzac,
+in changing tolerably good wine into very sour vinegar. However, in
+these marriages of convenience, arranged by families, the social
+position of the bridegroom and the dot of the bride were the first
+considerations, and these couples, after being married, often discovered
+they were made one for the other, and more than one husband won his wife
+by courting, and really fell in love with her. In cases of
+_mésalliance_, after the hours of passion had gone, the husband
+discovered that all his prospects in life were destroyed through being
+married to a woman he would never be able to make acceptable to the
+people of the set he belonged to, and often despair followed disgust,
+for woe to married people if either of them has the slightest cause for
+being ashamed of the other!
+
+But things are being changed, and a splendid sign of the times it is,
+too. Young Frenchmen now seek wives among the families of their own
+stations in life, court them, and make up their minds to marry them,
+and, what is best of all, parents begin to realize that, after all, it
+is their sons, and not themselves, who marry, and that it is they who
+should make their choices.
+
+I believe that this new state of things, which I hope, for my country,
+will last, and even yet improve, is greatly due to the influence of the
+Anglo-Saxons, English and Americans, whose freedom in matrimonial
+matters is getting more and more familiar to the French through reading
+and travelling.
+
+Like the Anglo-Saxons, they begin to see the practical side of
+matrimony. The young Frenchman says to himself: 'I do not send my father
+to my tailor to choose the clothes I am to wear, and I do not see why I
+should allow him to go and choose for me the girl I am to marry.'
+
+There are other reasons which may also be due to the ever-increasing
+influence of Anglo-Saxon manners and customs on France. The French girl
+is every day getting freer. She is no longer cloistered, as it were, at
+home and at school. She now frequents the society of young men, gets
+better acquainted with them, and on more intimate terms than before. She
+is more independent, feels more confidence in herself, knows more of
+life than before, and the consequence is that she is better able to
+provoke the love which she desires to inspire in a man of her choice.
+
+There may also be an economical reason which incites young Frenchmen to
+seek love in matrimony instead of outside of it. They have been
+observing their elders, and come to the right conclusion that real love
+and respectable women are much more within their means than sham love
+and disreputable women. A charming companion, who is at the same time a
+sweet mistress and counsellor, a careful housekeeper and a devoted wife,
+appears to them in her true light--the best article in the market.
+Besides, they realize that the man who is married has a social advantage
+over the one who is not. The man who marries a girl of his own society
+can now explain that he married her simply because he loved her, without
+thinking that he has to apologize for his action by mentioning what a
+good stroke of business he has made.
+
+Most men of the preceding generation avoided matrimony as they would
+have avoided ridicule. The part of husband and father struck them as
+unpleasant and too _petit bourgeois_. Literature and the drama helped to
+fill them with this notion; but now literature and the drama are getting
+optimistic. We are getting over the period of problem novels and plays,
+in which all the morbid diseases of the heart were dissected. The heroes
+of novels and plays begin to get married without ceasing to be
+interesting, and the result is that the present generation of France is
+getting more healthy and more cheerful. This is most hopeful for France,
+for the regeneration seems to take place in every class of society. The
+friends of France will rejoice in this evolution. I have always
+maintained, and still maintain, that it is the educational system that
+explains the prosperity of the Anglo-Saxon race, and that absolute
+freedom for men to marry the women they love explains its strength and
+its marvellous vitality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LOVE WITH WHITE HAIR
+
+
+Don't smile. If there is a love absolutely beautiful, almost holy, it is
+love with white hair. If conjugal tenderness deserves at all the name of
+love, it is at that time of life when it becomes idealized and purified.
+If two hearts can, in this world, beat in perfect unison, it is the two
+hearts of old married couples united by a whole life of tender intimacy.
+Love, in getting old, does not become repulsive--like an old beau, who,
+with dyed hair and moustache perfumed, thinks he can pass for a handsome
+young man. In those kisses, which are no longer given on the lips, but,
+with sweet reverence, are discreetly given on the hand or on the
+forehead, in the effusions of an old married couple, I see the most
+profound and most holy of human tenderness.
+
+They are no more lovers, but they are friends who cannot for a single
+moment forget that they were lovers, and who spend the winter of their
+lives in sweet remembrance of the beautiful spring, the glorious summer,
+and the restful, sober autumn they enjoyed together.
+
+This final sublime love may be rare, but it does exist; it is the reward
+of concessions made and of faults forgiven; the reward of cheerfulness,
+the result of long years spent together, sharing the same joys, the same
+sorrows, and the same dreams. Tactful, refined, they are at this very
+moment as thoughtful as they ever were before. Each one is the first
+consideration in the world to the other. The refinement of their
+courtesy to each other is a constant avowal of the esteem they feel; in
+their old intimacy they keep the same scruples, the same delicacy as
+they did in the first days of their married life. They do not call each
+other 'love,' 'darling,' not even, perhaps, by their Christian names,
+but 'dear friend'--and they lay on 'dear' an emphasis that shows how
+sincere the expression is.
+
+I tell you that there is no love in which you can find as much poetry as
+in the love of those dear couples who for forty or fifty years have
+walked side by side loving, respecting, helping each other, dreaming,
+praying, suffering together, and whose actions, words, and thoughts have
+each added an item to that treasure which they can now count piece by
+piece. This long community of hearts, this habit of sharing everything,
+has even established between them a physical likeness which would almost
+cause you to take them for brother and sister rather than for man and
+wife.
+
+And how children do love these dear old couples! how they feel attracted
+toward them! There is a wonderful affinity between very old people and
+very young children. Both are alike in many ways: the former have lost
+their strength, the latter have not yet got theirs. The world goes in a
+circle, and at the end of his career the old man meets the child. They
+have sympathy for each other, they understand each other, and the past
+and the future are the best of friends. Old people play with children
+with their hearts and souls in absolute earnest, without any of those
+signs of condescension which children are so quick to detect and to
+resent; and I am not prepared to say that the young children enjoy the
+play more keenly than do the old ones.
+
+Oh, if people would early prepare to become old, what pleasures would be
+kept in store for them!
+
+In the peaceful winter of a well-spent life, love with white hair is an
+evening prayer that soars to the abode of the seraphs.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+RAMBLES EVERYWHERE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+LITTLE MAXIMS FOR EVERYDAY USE
+
+
+It would do most of us a great deal of good to always keep in mind, or
+to be now and then reminded of it, lest we should forget it, that, when
+we are gone, the earth will not stop, but will continue her course
+around the sun. No one is indispensable in this world.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+In order to be successful, the cruet-stand should be used with a great
+deal of discretion: a little salt always, never any pepper, vinegar very
+sparingly, and oil always in plenty.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Never in your dealings with a man let him suppose that you take him for
+a fool. If he is not one, he will appreciate your consideration; and if
+he is one, he will go about singing your praises. Either way, you will
+probably win; at any rate, you can't lose, and that's something.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When you have seen a man enjoying himself telling you a story, never
+tell him that you have heard that story before, and, above all, never
+tell him that you know a much better version of it, and proceed with it.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Remember that the acknowledged best conversationalists are those who
+have the reputation of being good listeners. You will be called
+brilliant according to the way in which you will give others a chance to
+shine.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+People who tell you all the good things that are said of you teach you
+nothing new. Listen to criticism, especially that which is fair and
+kind; then you may learn something and profit by it.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When there is something nasty said about you in a newspaper, you never
+run the slightest risk of not seeing it. There is always a friend, even
+at the Antipodes, who will post it to you, well marked in blue pencil at
+the four corners. He takes an interest in you, and feels that the
+paragraph may not do you any harm in the way of antidote. It doesn't.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+When you hear that a man has taken such and such a resolution, take it
+for granted, when you feel ready to criticise him, that you are not the
+only person in the world who knows what he is about.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The most valuable gift of nature to man is not talent, not even genius,
+but temperament and character. If you have both talent and character,
+the world will belong to you, if you succeed in making talent the
+servant, and not the master, of your character.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The successful man is not the one who seeks opportunities, but the one
+who knows how to seize them by the forelock when they present
+themselves. The great diplomatist is not the one who creates events, but
+the one who foresees them and knows best how to profit by them.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+A man may be very clever without being very successful. This happens
+when he has more talent than character; but when a man is very
+successful, never be jealous of him, for you may take it for absolutely
+granted that he possesses qualities which account for his success.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Envy is the worst of evils, the one that pays least, because it never
+excites pity in the breast of anyone, and because it causes you to waste
+lots of time concerning yourself about other people's business instead
+of spending it all minding your own.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+Watch your children most carefully, for when they are ten or twelve
+years of age you may detect in them signs of defects, or even vices,
+which, if developed, instead of checked at once, may prove to be their
+ruin.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The key to success in life is the knowledge of value of all things.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+It often requires a head more solidly screwed on the shoulders to bear a
+great success than to stand a great misfortune.
+
+     *   *   *
+
+The knowledge of the most insignificant thing is worth having.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DO THE BEST WITH THE HAND YOU HAVE
+
+
+It would be absurd to say that there is no such thing as luck. Of
+course, there is luck, and fortunate is the man who knows how to seize
+it at once by the forelock.
+
+For instance, it is luck to be born handsome, strong, and healthy; it is
+luck to be born rich, or of generous parents who spend a little fortune
+in giving you a first-class education.
+
+What is absurd, however, is to say that you are always unlucky. You
+cannot always be unlucky any more than you can always be lucky. When a
+man says to you, 'I am pursued by bad luck,' or, 'This is my usual bad
+luck,' you know that he is lazy, quarrelsome, unreliable, foolish, or a
+drunkard.
+
+You may be unlucky at piquet a whole evening--even, though seldom, a
+whole week; but if you go on playing a whole year every day, you will
+find that, out of 365 games, you have won about 180 and lost about 180.
+I take it for granted, of course, that you are as good a player as your
+opponent.
+
+There is no more constant luck or constant bad luck in life than there
+is at cards, but there is such a thing as good playing with either a
+good or bad hand, and in life such a thing as making the best of
+fortunate and unfortunate occurrences. A man is bound to have his
+chance, and his 'luck' consists in knowing how to avail himself of it.
+
+Practically every officer has had a chance to distinguish himself one
+way or the other, and therefore to be noticed by his chiefs and obtain
+promotion. Every artist has seen something which may reveal his talent,
+his genius, if he has any. Every good actor is bound to come across a
+part which may make his fortune.
+
+The same may be said of literary men and journalists. Every man in
+business, if he keeps a sharp look-out, has a chance for a good
+investment that will be the nucleus of his fortune if he knows how to
+watch and nurse it carefully. What most men call bad luck is not that
+chance does not present itself to them, but simply that they let it go
+by and miss it.
+
+If you want to be lucky in life, force luck and make it yourself.
+Believe in yourself, and others will believe in you.
+
+Rise early, be punctual, reliable, honest, economical, industrious, and
+persevering, and, take my word for it, you will be lucky--more lucky
+than you have any idea of.
+
+Never admit that you have failed, that you have been beaten; if you are
+down, get up again and fight on. Frequent good company, be sober,
+constantly take advice, and refrain from giving any until you have been
+asked for it. Be cheerful, amiable, and obliging. Do not show anxiety to
+be paid for any good turn you may have the chance of doing to others.
+When you have discovered who your real friends are, be true to them,
+stick to them through thick and thin.
+
+Do not waste time regretting what is lost, but prepare yourself for the
+next deal. Forget injuries at once; never air your grievances; keep your
+own secrets as well as other people's; get determined to succeed, and
+let no one, no consideration whatever, divert you from the road that
+leads to the goal; let the dogs bark and pass on. According to the way
+you behave in life, you will be your greatest friend or your bitterest
+enemy. There is no more 'luck' than that in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BEWARE OF THE FINISHING TOUCH
+
+
+'Leave well enough alone,' as the English say, is a piece of advice
+which may be followed with benefit in many circumstances of life.
+
+How many excellent pictures have been spoiled by the finishing touch!
+How often have I heard art critics, after examining a beautiful
+portrait, exclaim, 'H'm, léché!' Well, I cannot translate that French
+art expression better than by 'Too much retouched--too well finished!'
+This is a fault commonly found in women's portraits.
+
+How many fortunes have been lost because people, instead of being
+satisfied with reasonable profits, waited for stocks to go still higher,
+and got caught in a financial crash!
+
+Even in literature I see sad results, when authors follow too closely
+that principle laid down by Boileau for the elaboration of style:
+'Polish and repolish it incessantly.'
+
+Alas! how many stilted lines are due to the too strict obedience to this
+advice! What is too well finished often becomes far-fetched and
+unnatural.
+
+How many sauces have been spoiled by cooks trying to improve what was
+already very good!
+
+How many wings have been singed for not knowing how to keep at a
+respectful distance from the fire or the light!
+
+No doubt there is such a thing as perfection; but who is perfect and
+what is perfect in this world, except that ineffable lady who, some
+weeks ago, took me severely to task for having written an article in
+which I advised my readers to be good, but not to overdo it?
+
+The firmaments are perfect, some flowers are perfect, but these are not
+the work of man. Nature herself seems to have divided her gifts so as to
+have no absolute perfection in her creatures. The nightingale has song,
+but no plumage; the peacock has plumage, but his voice makes you stop
+your ears.
+
+And the women! Well, yes, the women--let us speak of them.
+
+Which of us, my dear fellow-men, has not admired a woman of ours whose
+toilet was finished? We thought she looked beautiful then, we admired
+her, and we put on our gloves proudly, saying:
+
+'She is coming.' Yet she did not come. True, her hat was on and fixed
+when we saw her, and we thought that she was ready. Not a bit of it. She
+was not.
+
+After she has finished dressing, and is absolutely ready to go out, she
+will begin to fret and potter about in her room for another hour. She
+goes from looking-glass to looking-glass. That is the time when she
+thinks of the finishing touches.
+
+She pulls her hat a little more to the right, then a little more to the
+left, in order to ascertain how that hat can be improved. She touches
+and retouches her hair.
+
+Her complexion is beautiful, a natural rosy pink, for which she ought to
+return thanks, all day long, to the most generous and kind Nature who
+gave it to her. But, at the last moment, she thinks that this, too,
+might be improved.
+
+So she rubs her cheeks and puts more powder on them. The rubbing makes
+her cheeks so red that she has to subdue the colour. She works and
+works, and now takes it into her head that, being warm, her nose must be
+shining.
+
+She takes the puff and puts powder on it. An hour before she was a woman
+who, in your eyes at all events, could not very well be improved.
+
+Now she is ready, and emerges from her apartment. Her hair is undone
+behind and ruffed in front, her hat is too straight, and her face looks
+made-up. The rubbing has changed her lovely pink complexion into a sort
+of theatrical purple red.
+
+You feel for her, because, being very proud of her complexion, you do
+not want your friends--you do not want anybody--to say: 'Oh, she is
+made-up.' And you own that she looks it, and altogether she does not
+look half so well as she did when she had finished dressing, and had not
+begun the finishing touches.
+
+Beware, ladies! Many a most beautiful woman has been spoiled by the
+finishing touches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SELFISHNESS OF SORROW
+
+
+Real sorrow is no more expressed by the correctness of a mourning attire
+and the despair written on a face than true religious fervour is
+expressed by the grimaces that are made at prayer-time.
+
+Just as we are told in the Gospel to look cheerful and not to frown and
+make faces when we pray, just so, I believe, those who have gone before
+us would advise us not to advertise the sorrow we feel at their loss,
+but keep it in restraint, and not surround ourselves, and especially not
+compel those who are living with us to be surrounded, with gloom.
+
+The outward signs of sorrow are often exaggerated and not uncommonly
+nothing but acts of selfishness. The memory of the departed is better
+respected by control over the most sincere sorrow, and children, young
+ones especially, who cannot at their age realize the loss they have
+sustained, have a right to expect to be brought up in that cheerfulness
+which is the very keynote of the education of children.
+
+The real heroine is the woman who leaves her grief in her private
+apartments and appears smiling and cheerful before her children. The
+best way to serve the dead is to live for the living. There is no
+courage in the display of sorrow; there is heroism in the control of it.
+
+Great hearts understand this so well that many of them, like the late
+Henry Ward Beecher, desire in their wills that none of their relatives
+should wear mourning at their death. There is a great difference between
+being in mourning and being in black, and I often suspect that the more
+in black a person is the less in mourning he or she is.
+
+To be able to attend minutely to all the details of a most correct
+mourning attire almost shows signs of recovery from the depth of the
+sorrow.
+
+But even when our sorrow is deeply felt and perfectly sincere is it not
+an act of selfishness on our part to impose it, to intrude it, on
+others--even on our nearest relatives?
+
+I admire the Quaker who, quietly, without attracting the attention of
+anyone at table, silently says grace before taking his meal.
+
+How favourably he compares with the host who invites every one of his
+guests to bend their heads, and to listen to him while he delivers a
+long recital of all the favours he has received from a merciful God, and
+of all the favours he expects to receive in the future!
+
+The first is a Christian, the second a conceited Pharisee. There is as
+much selfishness in an exaggerated display of sorrow as there is in any
+act that is indulged in in order to more or less command admiration.
+
+The truly brave and courageous people are modest in their countenance;
+the truly religious are tolerant and forgiving; the truly great are
+forbearing, simple, and unaffected; the truly sorrowful remember that
+their griefs are personal; before strangers they are natural and even
+cheerful, and before their children they are careful to appear with
+cheerful and smiling faces.
+
+After all, the greatest virtue, the greatest act of unselfishness, is
+self-control. Sorrow gives man the best opportunity for the display of
+this virtue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE RIGHT OF CHANGING ONE'S MIND
+
+
+A woman's prerogative, it is said, is the right of changing her mind.
+How is it that she so rarely avails herself of it when she is wrong?
+
+It should be the prerogative of a man also. 'What is a mugwump?' once
+asked an American of a Democrat. 'It's a Republican who becomes a
+Democrat,' was the answer. 'But when a Democrat becomes a Republican,
+what do you call him?' 'Oh, a d---- fool!' quickly rejoined the
+Democrat.
+
+We forgive people for changing their opinions only when they do so to
+espouse our views, otherwise they are, in our eyes, fools, scoundrels,
+renegades, and traitors.
+
+To my mind the most dignified, praiseworthy, manly act of a man is to
+change his opinions the moment he has become persuaded that they are
+wrong. To acknowledge to be in the wrong is an act of magnanimity. To
+persist in holding views that one knows to be wrong is an act of
+cowardice. To try to impose them on others is an act of indelicacy. The
+successful man is the opportunist who does what he thinks to be right at
+the moment, whatever views he may have held on the subject before.
+
+When, in full Parliament, Victor Hugo and Lamartine declared that they
+ceased to be Royalists, and immediately went to take their seats on the
+Opposition benches, their honesty and manliness deserved the applause
+they received.
+
+Gladstone, who died the greatest leader of the Liberal party, began his
+political life as a Tory Member of Parliament. Disraeli, Earl of
+Beaconsfield, who for years was the chief of the Tory party, began his
+public career as Radical member for Maidstone.
+
+Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, to-day practically the leader of the
+Conservative party, not only was an advanced Radical, but a Republican.
+Up to about eighteen years ago, the comic papers never failed to
+represent him with a Phrygian cap on.
+
+Every man can be mistaken in politics as well as in science, just as he
+can for a long time be mistaken in his friends.
+
+The more you study, the more independence of mind you acquire. Events
+take a new aspect, and strike you in a different light. With age,
+judgment becomes more sober: you weigh more carefully the _pros_ and
+_cons _of all questions, and you often arrive at the conclusion that
+what you honestly believed to be right is absolutely wrong. And it is
+your duty to abide by your conclusions.
+
+The greatest crimes in history were committed by irreconcilable men who
+lacked moral courage and dared not admit that they were not infallible.
+Philip II. of Spain was one.
+
+That irreconcilable Imperialist, M. Paul de Cassagnac, wrote the other
+day: 'When a statesman, a leader of men, perceives that he has made a
+mistake, he has only one thing left for him to do: disappear altogether
+from the scene, for, having deceived himself, he has been guilty of
+deceiving others.'
+
+The aim of man--of the leader of men especially--is to seek truth at any
+price.
+
+Some men proudly say at the top of their voices: 'I swear by the faith
+of my ancestors, what I thought at twenty I think now. I have never
+changed my opinions, and, with God's help, will never change them.'
+
+Those men believe themselves to be heroes; they are asses, and if they
+are leaders of men, they are most dangerous asses.
+
+To live and learn should be the object of every intelligent man whose
+eyes are not blinded by conceit or obstinacy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+WHAT WE OWE TO CHANCE
+
+
+Pascal once said that if Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch shorter
+the face of the world would have been changed. If we read history, or
+even only use our own recollections, we can get up an interesting and
+sometimes amusing record of more or less important events which are
+entirely due to chance or most insignificant incidents.
+
+To begin with my noble self. On August 30, 1872, I went to the St.
+Lazare station in Paris to catch a train to Versailles. At the foot of
+the stairs I met a friend whom I had not seen for a long time. He took
+me to the café, and there, over a cup of coffee, we chatted for half an
+hour. I missed my train; but fortunately for me I did, for that train
+which I was to have caught was a total wreck, and thirty lives were lost
+in the accident.
+
+A lady whom I knew many years ago once eloped with a young man she had
+fallen in love with. Now, this was very wicked, because she was married.
+It was on a cold December day. When both arrived at the hotel where they
+were going to stay, they found no fire in their apartment, and ordered
+one to be made at once. While this was going on they both caught a cold,
+and were seized with an endless fit of sneezing. They thought that they
+looked so ridiculous--well, the lady did, at any rate--that she ordered
+her trunk to be taken to the station immediately. She caught the next
+train to Paris, and never did I hear that she was guilty of any escapade
+ever after. But for that fire that was not lit, all would have been
+lost.
+
+At the inquest which a few days ago was held over the body of Mrs. Gore,
+the American lady who was shot accidentally while in the room of her
+Russian friend, it was discovered that the bullet had struck the eye
+without even grazing the eyelid. The experts came to the conclusion that
+if she had been murdered, or had committed suicide, she would have
+blinked, and her eyelids would have been touched by the bullet. But for
+this marvellous occurrence, the young Russian would have been tried for
+murder, and perhaps found guilty.
+
+An Australian of my acquaintance some years ago wrote to his broker
+ordering him to sell 500 shares in the Broken Hill Mining Company. The
+servant to whom the letter was given mislaid it, and only screwed up his
+courage to tell his master two days later. In the meantime the shares
+had gone up, and, so seeing, the Australian waited a little longer
+before selling. Then came the boom. Two months after the day on which he
+had ordered his broker to sell the 500 shares at 40s. apiece these
+shares were worth £96. He sold, and through the carelessness of his
+servant became a rich man. This is luck, if you like.
+
+The late Edmond About, the famous French novelist, came out first of the
+Normale Supérieure School. As such he was entitled to be sent to the
+French school at Athens for two years before being appointed professor
+in some French Faculty. About had a humorous turn of mind. Instead of
+studying ancient Greece at Athens, he studied the modern Greeks. After
+his two years he returned with the manuscripts of two books,
+'Contemporary Greece' and 'The Mountain King,' which were such successes
+that he immediately resigned his professorship to devote his time to
+literature. If, instead of coming out first, he had come out second, he
+would never have been sent to Athens, and About would probably have
+spent his life as a learned Professor of Greek or Latin at one of our
+Universities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WE NEEDN'T GET OLD
+
+
+'When my next birthday comes,' once said to me Oliver Wendell Holmes, 'I
+shall be eighty years young.' And he looked it--young, cheerful, with a
+kind, merry twinkle in his eyes.
+
+'And,' I said to him, 'to what in particular do you attribute your
+youth? To good health and careful living, I suppose?'
+
+'Well, yes,' he replied, 'to a certain extent, but chiefly to a cheerful
+disposition and invariable contentment, in every period of my life, with
+what I was. I have never felt the pangs of ambition.'
+
+'You needn't,' I remarked. 'The most ambitious man would have been
+content with being what you have been--what you are.'
+
+'Happiness, which has contentment for its invariable cause, is within
+the reach of practically everyone,' the amiable doctor asserted. 'It is
+restlessness, ambition, discontent, and disquietude that make us grow
+old prematurely by carving wrinkles on our faces. Wrinkles do not appear
+on faces that have constantly smiled. Smiling is the best possible
+massage. Contentment is the Fountain of Youth.'
+
+That same evening he was the guest at a banquet given by a Boston club,
+to which I had been kindly invited. When he rose to make a speech, they
+cheered and applauded to the echo. His face was radiant, beautiful.
+After he sat down, I said to him:
+
+'Are you not tired of cheers and applause, after all these years of
+triumphs?'
+
+'No,' he replied; 'they never cheer loud enough, they never applaud long
+enough to please me.'
+
+Oliver Wendell Holmes was right; he had found the key to happiness.
+
+The philosophers of all ages have deservedly condemned that universal
+discontent and disquietude which runs through every rank of society and
+degree of life as one of the bitterest reproaches of human nature, as
+well as the highest affront to the Divine Author of it.
+
+If we look through the whole creation, and remark the progressive scale
+of beings as they rise into perfection, we shall perceive, to our own
+shame, that every one seems satisfied with that share of life that has
+been allotted to it, man alone excepted. He is pleased with nothing,
+perpetually repining at the decrees of Providence, and refusing to enjoy
+what he has, from a ridiculous and never-ceasing desire for what he has
+not.
+
+He is ambitious, restless, and unhappy, and instead of dying young at
+eighty, dies old at forty. He misses happiness which is close at hand
+all his lifetime. The object which is at a distance from him is always
+the most inviting, and that possession the most valuable which he cannot
+acquire. With the ideas of affluence and grandeur he is apt to associate
+those of joy, pleasure, and happiness.
+
+Because riches and power may conduce to happiness, he hastily concludes
+that they must do so. Alas! pomp, splendour, and magnificence, which
+attend the great, are visible to every eye, while the sorrows which they
+feel escape our observation. Hence it arises that almost every condition
+and circumstance of life is considered preferable to our own, that we so
+often court ruin and do our very best to be unhappy.
+
+We complain when we ought to be thankful; we weep when we ought to
+rejoice; we fidget and fret. Instead of smiling, which keeps the cheeks
+stretched and smooth, we frown, which keeps them contracted and engraves
+wrinkles on them.
+
+Instead of looking at the rosy side of things, which makes the eyes
+clear and bright, we run after the impossible or the unlikely to happen,
+which makes us look gloomy. In short, I may say that old age is of our
+own make, for youth is placed at our disposal for ever and ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SECRET OF OLD AGE
+
+
+The organs of man are like the works of a clock. If they are not used,
+they rust; and when, after a period of rest, it is attempted to set them
+in motion again, the chances are that the human machine will work badly,
+or not at all.
+
+Therefore, wind up your clock always and regularly, and it will keep
+going. This does not apply only to your bodily clock, but to your mental
+one as well.
+
+Persons who work regularly, and, above all, in moderation, especially
+those who maintain the activity of their physical and mental faculties,
+live longer than those who abandon active life at the approach of old
+age.
+
+Do not stop taking bodily exercise. Go on having your walk and your
+ride; go on working steadily; go on even having your little smoke, if
+you have always been used to it, without ever abusing it--in fact, if
+your constitution is good, forget that you are advancing in age; go on
+living exactly as you have always lived, only doing everything in more
+and more moderation. Busy people live much longer than idle ones.
+Sovereigns who lead a very active life live long.
+
+See the Pope! Moltke, Bismarck, Disraeli, Carlyle, Victor Hugo,
+Gladstone, Ruskin, Littré, Darwin, De Lesseps, Renan, Pasteur--all great
+workers--died nearly eighty or over eighty years of age.
+
+It is not work, but overwork, that may kill; it is not smoking, but
+inveterate smoking, that hurts; it is not a little drinking that does
+any harm, but too much indulgence in drink which kills.
+
+Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who died only a short time ago, was writing
+brilliant articles for the New York _American_ only a few days before
+her death; maybe, she was writing one an hour before it.
+
+Her death at the age of eighty-seven may furnish a moral lesson to those
+who desire a long life. She died in complete possession of her mental
+and physical faculties.
+
+At eighty-five, Gladstone was felling trees in his garden and writing
+articles on Homer and theology as a rest from his political labours. At
+eighty-two, De Lesseps was riding three hours every day in the Bois de
+Boulogne. At ninety-eight, Sidney Cooper was exhibiting pictures at the
+Royal Academy.
+
+Yes, so long as the human machine is kept well oiled and regularly wound
+up, it goes; and not only do active bodies and minds who go on working
+live long, but they live happily and die peacefully, and they also make
+happy all those who live with them.
+
+It was a lovely sight to see De Lesseps ride and drive with a troop of
+grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The youngest and most boisterous
+member of the party was the old gentleman, and all that band of joyous
+youngsters adored him.
+
+The man of healthy body and active mind, who abandons work at fifty,
+even at sixty, prepares himself for a life of mere vegetation.
+
+Let him stop remunerative work, if he does not find it congenial, and
+has enough or more than he wants to live upon, but let him immediately
+trace out for himself a programme of life that will enable him to keep
+his body and mind active, or let him look out for dyspepsia, gout,
+rheumatism, paralysis, stiffness of the joints, and the gradual loss of
+his mental faculties.
+
+'I am sorry to be getting an old man,' once remarked Ferdinand de
+Lesseps, 'but what consoles me is the thought that there is no other way
+of living a long time.'
+
+It is activity, it is work, that keeps you young, healthy, cheerful, and
+happy; it is work--thrice blessed work--that makes you feel that you are
+not a useless piece of furniture in this world, and makes you die with a
+smile on your face. Work, work again, work always!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ADVICE ON LETTER-POSTING
+
+
+1. When you go out with the intention of posting a letter, be sure you
+do not put it in your pocket, or the odds are ten to one that you will
+return home with it.
+
+2. Always address the envelope before you write a letter.
+
+3. If you write love-letters to two different women, be careful to
+enclose the first one in its properly addressed envelope before you
+begin writing the second one, or Maria may receive the letter intended
+for Eliza, and _vice versâ_.
+
+4. Do not apologize in your postscript for having forgotten to stamp
+your letter. It might get you found out.
+
+5. If you have written an important letter, or one containing money, put
+it in the letter-box yourself. If anything wrong happens to it, you will
+have no one to accuse or suspect.
+
+6. When you send currency by post, do not let anyone know it by having
+the letter registered. Money stolen through the post has always been
+abstracted from registered letters. I have never heard of one letter of
+mine not being delivered in Europe and in America. People never take
+their chance. They never open a letter unless they know there is money
+in it. How can they know if you are careful in concealing paper money
+under cover? Never label your letters, 'There is money in it.'
+
+7. If you post a letter, which you do not want anybody to read except
+the person to whom it is addressed, do not forget to write your name and
+address on the back of the envelope, so that, if not delivered, or
+mislaid, it may be returned to you unopened.
+
+8. If you want an important letter to be delivered in New York at a
+determined time, take my advice: Post that letter, in the city,
+twenty-four hours before the said determined time.
+
+9. Never, or very seldom, in some exceptional cases, answer a letter by
+return post, even if the request be made. Always take twenty-four hours
+for consideration. Besides, it will give you the appearance of being a
+very busy man, which is always a splendid advertisement.
+
+10. When you enclose a bill or a cheque in a letter, pin it to the
+letter, that it may not drop when the envelope is opened, and before
+posting it feel the letter-box inside to see that it is not choked.
+
+11. If you write a letter of a private nature--words of love that you
+would be sorry for everyone to read except the lady you are addressing,
+put a blank sheet of notepaper around the letter. Most envelopes are
+transparent, and may disclose your secrets.
+
+12. Always read twice the address you have written on your envelopes.
+Apply the same process to your letters; your time will not be wasted.
+
+13. When you write to a friend, do not inquire about his health and that
+of his family after your signature. It would look like an afterthought.
+
+14. Ladies, whose minds are full of afterthoughts, generally write the
+most important part of their letters in the postscript. I once received
+a letter, in a woman's handwriting, the signature of which was unknown
+to me. At the end of sixteen pages of pretty prattle there was a
+postscript: 'You will see by my new signature that I am married.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ON PARASITES
+
+
+Steer clear once for all of useless people and parasites of all
+sorts--bores, who make you waste your time; indelicate people, who
+borrow money when they do not know whether they will be able to return
+it; swindlers, who know perfectly well they will never pay you back a
+penny. Elbow your way out of all those frauds--poseurs, spongers,
+leeches, fleas, and bugs--who try to fasten themselves to you.
+
+Be generous, and help a friend in need; devote a reasonable portion of
+your income to the hospitals, charitable institutions, and the sufferers
+from public calamities; after that, attend to yourself and to all those
+who live around you and depend on you for their comfort and happiness.
+
+Bang your door in the face of people who, in your hour of success, come
+to treat you with a few patronizing sneers in order to take down your
+pride. Kick down your stairs, even if you live on the tenth floor, the
+man with an alcoholic breath who calls to tell you that, as you are a
+fortunate man, it is your duty, and should be your pleasure, to help
+those who have no luck.
+
+Life is too short to allow you to play the part of a friend to the whole
+human race. Concern yourself about interesting and deserving people;
+cultivate the friendship of pleasant men and women, who brighten up your
+life, and that of useful ones, who may occasionally give you the lift
+you deserve. Attend to your business; carefully watch over the interests
+of those who have a right to expect you to keep them in comfort, and
+dismiss the rest, even from your thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ADVICE-GIVING
+
+
+Advice is a piece of luxury thoroughly enjoyed by the one who gives it.
+If you want to be popular with your friends, do them all the good turns
+you can. Lend them your money if you have a surplus to spare, and which
+you can comfortably make up your mind to the loss of, but give them
+advice when they ask you for it.
+
+People who are lavish of advice are seldom guilty of any other act of
+generosity. If, however, you cannot resist the temptation of
+advice-giving, be sure, at least, that you give it in time. People who
+keep on saying to their friends, 'I told you so,' are the most
+aggravating bores in the world.
+
+If a little boy wants to venture on a dangerous piece of ice, give him a
+warning and advise him not to go, but if he disregards your advice and
+falls into a hole, rescue him and wait until he is quite well again
+before you say to him, 'I told you so.'
+
+Of all your best friends, your wife is the last person to whom you
+should say, 'I told you so.' These four words have killed happiness in
+matrimonial life more than any number of blasphemous words put
+together.
+
+A wife forgives a few hot words uttered in moments of bad temper or
+passion, but there is something cold, sneering, provoking, blighting,
+assertive, presumptive in 'I told you so,' which gives you an unbearable
+air of superiority and self-satisfaction.
+
+When you are already upset, dissatisfied with yourself, ready to take
+your revenge out of anyone who takes advantage of your awkward and
+unenviable position, 'I told you so' is the drop that causes the cup to
+overflow.
+
+The amateur advice-giver is a nuisance, a fidget, a kill-joy, and an
+unmitigated bore. Men avoid him, women despise him, and children mind
+him until he is out of sight. To the latter he sets up as a model, and
+always begins his admonitions with the inevitable 'When I was a boy.'
+Then they know what is coming, and giggle--when they do not wink.
+
+Advice given by old folks to children sows as much valuable seed as do
+sermons on congregations, with this difference to the advantage of
+congregations, that they can close their eyes during a sermon in order
+to take it in better, whereas children cannot do the same for fear of
+being called rude and of being punished for it.
+
+Among other advice-givers whom I have in my mind's eye, I remember the
+one who calls on me the day after I have given a lecture in order to
+make suggestions which 'I might use with advantage the next time I give
+this lecture.' Also the one who calls to advise me to introduce a
+'reminiscence of his,' which I might use on the platform to illustrate
+a point, and which 'reminiscence of his' I have heard for twenty years
+and know to be part of a classic on the subject.
+
+The chairman who, before I go on the platform, advises me how to use my
+voice in order to be well heard by all the members of the audience, a
+piece of advice which I thoroughly appreciate, as I have lectured only
+3,000 times--well, over 2,500 times, to be perfectly exact.
+
+I even remember one who criticised my pronunciation of a French word in
+my lecture, and suggested his as an improvement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ON HOLIDAYS
+
+
+Holidays are an institution established to keep you reminded every year
+that one is really happy and comfortable at home only. Oh! the board and
+lodging, advertised comfortable and moderate, which you leave with
+pleasure because the board was the bed! Oh! the little house with
+creepers from which you 'flee' because you discover that the creepers
+are inside! And the sofas and chairs stuffed with the pebbles from the
+beach, and the bad cooking, and the smiles of the head waiter, of the
+waiters, of the chambermaid, of the hall porter, of the baggage porter,
+all of whom have to be tipped! And the extras on the bill! How you rub
+your hands with delight when at last you are in the train on the way to
+that dear home of yours, where you are going to sleep in your lovely
+bed, sit on your comfortable chairs, stretch on your soft sofa, eat the
+appetizing, simple, and healthy meals of your good cook, where, on a
+rainy day, you will go and take down a favourite book from the shelves
+of your library; where you are going to be all the time surrounded by
+your own dear belongings, able to look at your pictures, at your china;
+where you are going to put again in their usual places the photographs
+of all your friends; in fact, where you are going to live once more,
+after an interval necessary to your health, perhaps, through the rest
+from work and the change of air it has afforded you, but for all that an
+interval, nothing but an interval in life.
+
+The only enjoyable holidays that I know are either those spent in a
+house of your own which you may possess in the country or by the sea, or
+those spent in travelling, making the acquaintance of new, interesting
+and picturesque countries; but these holidays are only within the reach
+of the privileged few.
+
+Very often loving couples, fearing they should get too much accustomed
+to each other, part for a few days, just for the sake, epicures that
+they are, of experiencing the ineffable joy of meeting again and of
+proving to themselves that each one is absolutely indispensable to the
+other--a fact which, although they may be well aware of it, is always
+pleasant to be reminded of. The holidays are to the home what the
+parting for a few days is to the loving couples--a reminder of the
+priceless treasure which you possess, and which you do not always
+sufficiently appreciate.
+
+Think of your children, too, especially of those young boys who are
+boarders at school or college and can only know the joys of home life
+during their holidays. How they would prefer going to their own homes,
+playing with their own things, looking after their animals, to being
+trotted out and taken to a hotel where children are not tolerated to do
+this or allowed to do that! When parents live in a house of their own,
+and in the country, it is absolutely wicked of them not to let their
+children enjoy their holidays at home. They should remember that if
+their children at school long for holidays, it is not because they are
+tired of their work, it is because they are homesick.
+
+And young people just married always think that the best way of
+beginning the matrimonial journey is to have a holiday and travel,
+although, maybe, the thoughtful bridegroom has prepared a delightful
+nest for his bride.
+
+'Where should I spend my honeymoon?' I have often been asked by young
+men not rich enough to go and spend it in the expensive resorts. I have
+invariably answered, 'Go home and spend it there, you idiot.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE DICTIONARY OF A CYNIC
+
+(_After Jules Noriac_)
+
+
+ALABASTER--Kind of beautiful white marble, so much used in novels for
+ladies' necks and shoulders that very little is left for ordinary
+consumption. Very rare now in the trade, still very common in poetry.
+
+ALIBI--An aunt for wives; the club for husbands.
+
+ARDOUR--Heat, extreme and dangerous. Those who gamble with ardour ruin
+their families; those who work with ardour ruin their health; those who
+study with ardour go to a lunatic asylum; those who love with ardour get
+cured more quickly than others.
+
+ARGUS--Domestic spy. Juno gave him a cow to look after. With his hundred
+eyes he did not find out that the cow was no other than a woman, Io.
+
+ATTRACTION--Force which tends to draw bodies to each other. Isaac Newton
+thought he had discovered the principle of universal attraction when he
+watched an apple fall. Eve had discovered it five thousand years
+earlier.
+
+AUSTERITY--Self-control which enables a man or a woman to receive a call
+from Cupid without inviting him to stay to dinner.
+
+BOUDOIR--From the French _bouder_ (to sulk). Coquettish little room
+where women retire when they have a love-letter to write or any other
+reason for wishing to be left alone.
+
+CANDOUR--A virtue practised by women who do not understand what they
+know perfectly well.
+
+COLLECTION--Hobby. Men collect flies, beetles, butterflies. Women
+collect faded flowers, hair, letters, and photographs.
+
+DUENNA--Old woman who watches over the good conduct of young Spanish
+girls and of married women. In the second case, her wages are higher.
+
+EGOTISM--Piece of ground on which Love builds his cottage.
+
+LOVE--A disease which mankind escapes with still more difficulty than
+the measles. It generally attacks men at twenty and women at eighteen.
+Then it is not dangerous. At thirty you are properly inoculated; it is,
+as it were, part of your system. At forty it is a habit. After sixty the
+disease is incurable.
+
+TO LOVE--Active verb--very active--the most active of all.
+
+MYSTERY--The principal food of love. This is probably why elevated souls
+have raised love to the level of religion.
+
+NEST--Sweet abode made for two. He brings soft moss, she a few bits of
+grass and straw; then both give the finishing touch by bringing flowers.
+
+PASSION--Violent affection that always finishes on a cross.
+
+PLATONIC (LOVE)--A kind of love invented by Plato, a philosopher who sat
+down at table only to sleep. Advice: If ever Platonic love knocks at
+your door, kick him down your stairs unmercifully, for he is a prince of
+humbugs.
+
+RESOLUTION--A pill that you take every night before going to bed, and
+which seldom produces any effect.
+
+RESPECT--A dish of which women are particularly fond in public, and
+which they seldom appreciate in private. How many women would be happier
+if their husbands respected them less and loved them more!
+
+SERVITUDE--Most bitter and humiliating state when it is forced upon us
+by poverty; most sweet when it is imposed on a man by the woman whom he
+loves.
+
+TACT--The quality that, perhaps, of all, women admire most in men. The
+next is discretion.
+
+VEIL--Piece of lace which women put over their faces to excite the
+curiosity of the passers-by. Women get married with a white veil, but
+they always flirt with a black one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+VARIOUS CRITICISMS ON CREATION
+
+
+I shall never forget the dry way and pitiful manner in which Robert
+Louis Stevenson passed a funeral oration on Matthew Arnold. It was on a
+Sunday evening, in the early spring of 1888, at a reception given at the
+house of Edmund Clarence Stedman, whose poetry and scholarly attainments
+excite as much admiration as his warm heart excites love in those who,
+like myself, can boast of his friendship. Someone entered and created
+consternation by announcing that a cablegram had just reached New York
+with the news that Matthew Arnold was dead. 'Poor Matthew!' said
+Stevenson, lifting his eyes with an air of deep compassion; 'heaven
+won't please him!'
+
+And it is true that on many occasions that great English writer had
+hinted that if the work of the Creation had been given to him to
+undertake, it would have proved more successful than it has been. For
+that matter, many philosophers of a more or less cynical turn of mind
+have criticised the work of Creation.
+
+Voltaire said that if he had been Jehovah 'he would not have chosen the
+Jews.' My late friend, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a Voltairian to the
+core, said that if he had been consulted 'he would have made health, not
+disease, catching.' Ninon de Lenclos, the veriest woman that ever lived,
+said that, had she been invited to give an opinion, 'she would have
+suggested that women's wrinkles be placed under their feet.'
+
+'Everything is for the best in the best of worlds!' exclaims Dr.
+Pangloss in Voltaire's famous novel, 'Candide,' but few people are as
+satisfied with the world as that amiable philosopher. There are people
+who are even dissatisfied with our anatomy, and who declare that man's
+leg would be much safer and would run much less risk of being broken if
+the calf had been placed in front of it instead of behind. Some go as
+far as to say that man is the worst handicapped animal of creation--that
+he should have been made as strong as the horse, able to run like the
+stag, to fly like the lark, to swim and dive like the fish, to have a
+keen sense of smell like the dog, and one of sight like the eagle. Not
+only that, but that man is the most stupid of all, the most cruel, the
+most inconsistent, the most ungrateful, the most rapacious, the only
+animal who does not know when he has had enough to eat and to drink, the
+only one who kills the fellow-members of his species, the only one who
+is not always a good husband and a good father.
+
+'Man, the masterpiece of creation, the king of the universe!' they
+exclaim. 'Nonsense!' There is hardly an animal that he dares look
+straight in the face and fight. No; he hides behind a rock, and, with an
+engine of destruction, he kills at a distance animals who have no other
+means of defence than those given them by nature, the coward!
+
+There is not the slightest doubt that the genius of man has to reveal
+itself in the discovery of all that may remedy the disadvantages under
+which he finds himself placed. Boats, railways, automobiles, balloons,
+steam, electricity, and what not, have been invented, and are used to
+cover his deficiencies. Poor man! he has to resort to artificial means
+in every phase of life. Even clothes he has to wear, as his body has not
+been provided with either fur or feathers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE HUMOURS OF THE INCOME-TAX
+
+(A WARNING)
+
+
+I have often heard Americans say that the future may keep in store for
+them the paying of income-tax, and, as a warning to them, I should like
+to let them know how this tax is levied in England.
+
+In theory the income-tax is the most just of taxes, since it compels, or
+seems to compel, the people to contribute to the maintenance of their
+country in proportion to the income they possess. In reality this tax,
+levied as it is in England, is little less than the revival of the
+Inquisition.
+
+And, first of all, let me point out a great injustice, which I trust no
+Government will ever inflict on the American people or any other, and
+which is this: The income derived from property inherited, or any other
+which the idlest man may enjoy without having to work for it, is taxed
+exactly the same as the income which is derived from work in business,
+profession, or any other calling.
+
+I maintain that if I have a private income of, say, £2,000, and my work
+brings me in another £2,000, the first income ought to be taxed much
+more heavily than the second.
+
+I maintain that if a man enjoys a private income, and does no work for
+the community in return for the privilege of the wealth he possesses, he
+ought to pay a larger percentage than the man who has to work for every
+shilling which he amasses during the year.
+
+But this is discussing, and in this article I only wish to show how the
+free-born Briton is treated in the matter of income-tax.
+
+A fact not altogether free from humour is that the salary of the English
+tax-collector is a percentage of what he can extract from the tax-payer.
+
+He asks you to send him the amount of your income, and warns you that
+you will have to pay a penalty of £50 if you send him a false return. I
+have it on the authority of Mr. W. S. Gilbert that every Englishman
+sends a false return and cheats his Government; but now a good many men,
+I am sure, cannot cheat the Government--those, for example, in receipt
+of a salary from an official post, and many others whose incomes it is
+easy to find out.
+
+Of course, some cannot be found out; so that those who cannot conceal
+their real and whole income have got to pay for those who can.
+
+A merchant sends his return, and values it at £10,000. The collector
+says to him, if he chooses to do so: 'Your return cannot be right. I
+will charge you on £20,000. Of course, you can appeal.'
+
+The merchant is obliged to lose a whole day to attend the Court of
+Appeal, taking all his books with him, in order to prove that the return
+he sent is exact.
+
+Very often he pays double what he owes, so as not to have to let
+everybody know that his business is not as flourishing as people think.
+But the most amusing side of the whole thing is yet to be told.
+
+If you sell meat in one shop and groceries in another, and you make
+£5,000 in the first shop and lose £3,000 in the second, you must not
+suppose that you will be charged on £2,000, the difference between your
+profit in the first business and the loss in the second. Not a bit of
+it. The two businesses being distinct, you will have to pay on the
+£5,000 profit made in the first, and bear your loss in the other as best
+you can.
+
+As an illustration, I will give you a somewhat piquant reminiscence.
+Many years ago I undertook to give lectures in England under my own
+management. My manager proved to be an incompetent idiot, and I lost
+money.
+
+When I declared my yearly income, I said to the income-tax collector:
+'My books brought me an income of so much, but I lost so much on my
+lecture tour; my income is the difference--that is, so much.'
+
+'No,' he said; 'your books and your lectures are two perfectly different
+things, and I must charge you on the whole income you derived from the
+sale of your books.'
+
+Then I was struck with a luminous idea, which proved to me that I was
+better fitted to deal with the English tax-collector than to manage a
+lecture tour.
+
+'The two things are not at all distinct,' I replied; 'they are one and
+the same thing. I gave lectures for the sole purpose of keeping my name
+before the public and pushing the sale of my books.'
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'you are right. In that case you are entitled to
+deduct your loss from the profit.'
+
+And this is how I got out of the difficulty--a little incident which has
+made me proud of my business abilities ever since.
+
+I was in America last season to give lectures. Instead of lecturing, I
+had to be in bed and in convalescence for a month, then undergo an
+operation and stay in the hospital for six weeks.
+
+You may imagine the fine income I derived from my last American tour. On
+my return to Europe, I passed through London, and stopped there a week
+before coming to Paris.
+
+I found awaiting me a bill for about £54, a percentage on 'my profit of
+£1,000 realized in America.' Now, this was adding insult to injury. I
+have the greatest respect for H.M. Edward VII., but I regret that his
+officials should have resorted to such means to defray the expenses of
+his Coronation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+HOW TO BE ENTERTAINING
+
+
+To know how to entertain people is a talent; but there is one better,
+and which makes you still more popular with your friends and
+acquaintances--it is that talent which consists in drawing them out and
+allowing them to entertain you.
+
+I know very clever people, not exactly conceited or assertive, but who
+have the objectionable knack of gently sitting upon you. Their opinions
+are given with an _ex cathedra_ air that seems to exclude any appeal
+against them.
+
+Sometimes they tell anecdotes very well, and they give you strings of
+them, each one bridged over to the other by a 'That reminds me.' They
+laugh at their anecdotes heartily, and invite you to do so with such a
+suggestion as 'That's a good one, isn't it?'
+
+You do laugh, and you hope for your reward, that you will be able to
+tell a little anecdote yourself. Sometimes they will cut you short and
+go on with another; sometimes they will give you a chance, show little
+signs of impatience while you give it, and never laugh when you have
+finished.
+
+Worse than that, they will occasionally say: 'Oh yes,' on the tune of 'I
+have heard that one before,' or, maybe, 'Why, I am the inventor of it
+myself.' I have known such clever people and good anecdote tellers to
+prove terrific bores.
+
+Whether you are discussing a question or merely spending a little time
+telling stories over a cup of coffee and a couple of cigarettes, you
+like to be allowed to prove alive, and the really entertaining people
+are those who know how to make you enjoy yourself as well as their
+company.
+
+You are grateful to those friends who give you a chance of shining
+yourself, and there are some who know not only how to draw you out, but
+who know how to do it to the extent of making you brilliant.
+
+Those who make you feel like an idiot are no better than those who take
+you for one. Although they do not do it on purpose, the result is
+exactly the same as if they did. You find that kind of man in every walk
+of life.
+
+There is the savant who pours forth science by the gallon and talks you
+deaf, dumb, and lame. There is the other kind also. I once spent an hour
+talking on philology with the greatest professor of the College of
+France in Paris.
+
+I know a little philology, but my knowledge of that science compared to
+his is about in the proportion of the length of my little finger to that
+of his whole body, and he is over six feet. He put me so much at my
+ease; he so many times asked me 'if I didn't think that it was so,' that
+for the time being I really felt I was something of a philologist
+myself. It was only after I had left him that I realized that I had
+learned a great deal from the famous master.
+
+The nice people of the world are those who make you feel satisfied with
+yourself. All the talkers, advice-givers, assertive critics put together
+are not worth for your good a considerate friend who gives you a little
+praise, or a good, loving woman who, two or three times a day, gives you
+a teaspoonful of admiration.
+
+After all, the greatest reward for our humblest efforts is appreciation,
+the greatest incentive is encouragement. What makes us powerless to
+achieve anything are the sneers of all the wet-blankets and kill-joys of
+this world.
+
+You do not make a child get on at school by calling him a little idiot
+and telling him he will never do anything in his life; you do not impart
+bravery into the heart of a timid soldier by treating him as if he were
+a coward.
+
+If a horse is afraid of anything lying on the road, don't whip him,
+don't use the spurs; pat him gently on the neck and lead him near the
+object to make him acquainted with it. Like that you will cure him of
+his shyness.
+
+Help men with encouragement, praise, and admiration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+WHAT IS GENIUS?
+
+
+Genius is a form of madness. Early in the Christian era, St. Augustine
+declared that there was no genius without a touch of insanity. The human
+being who is born without a grain of folly will never be a great poet, a
+great novelist, a great painter or sculptor, a great musician, or a
+great anything.
+
+Unless you are erratic, irritable, full of fads, you need not aspire to
+attain sublime heights. Homer, Shakespeare, Raphael, Shelley, Wagner
+were lunatics. That is why, to my mind, nothing is more absurd,
+preposterous, than to go and poke one's nose into the private life of
+geniuses. Let us admire the work that their genius has left to us,
+without inquiring whether they regularly came home to tea, and were
+attentive fathers and faithful husbands. Do we not love Burns and
+Shelley?
+
+Certainly, if I had lived in their times and had a marriageable
+daughter, I would have been careful to see that she did not fall in love
+with either of them; but what has that to do with their poetry and the
+enjoyment of it?
+
+To this very day, in the autumn of my life, I enjoy the fables of dear
+old La Fontaine, and can't help smiling when I am reminded that he was
+married, but that he was separated from his wife. She lived in Lyons and
+he in Paris. One day they persuaded him to go to Lyons and 'make it up'
+with her.
+
+He started. In those days the journey took five days and five nights. On
+the eleventh day after his departure he was back in Paris. 'Well,' they
+said to him, 'is it all right?'
+
+'I could not see her,' replied he, 'when I called at her house. They
+told me that she had gone to Mass.' So he came back.
+
+I once criticised the acting of a well-known actress before good folks,
+who said to me: 'Ah, but she is a woman who leads an irreproachable
+life!' What do I care about that? I am very glad to hear it, for the
+sake of her husband and children; but I would rather go and hear Miss
+So-and-so, who stirs my soul to its very depth by her genius, although I
+am told, by jealous people, no doubt, that she is not quite as good as
+she should be.
+
+I hear that Sarah Bernhardt travels with either a lion, a bear, or a
+snake. Very well, that is her business. She goes to a hotel with her
+menagerie, and does not ask you to invite her to stay with you. Is that
+a reason for not going to see her play Phedre, Tosca, Fedora, or any
+other of her marvellous creations?
+
+Wagner could not compose his operas unless he had on a red plush robe
+and a helmet. What do I care if this enabled him to write 'Lohengrin,'
+'Tannhäuser,' and the Trilogy?
+
+One day Alexandre Dumas, a lunatic of the purest water, called on
+Wagner. The latter kept him waiting half an hour. Then he appeared
+dressed as Wotan. 'Excuse me, Master,' he said to Dumas, 'I am composing
+a scene between the god and Brunnehilde.'
+
+'Don't mention it, please,' replied Dumas, who, before leaving, invited
+him to come and see him in Paris. A few months later Wagner called on
+Dumas. The latter kept him waiting a little, and then appeared with
+nothing on but a Roman helmet and a shield.
+
+'Excuse me, Maestro,' he said, 'I am writing a Roman novel.' The two
+great geniuses or lunatics were quits.
+
+I knew a great poet who could no more write good poetry than he could
+fly unless he had blue paper. Victor Hugo would have been a failure if
+he had not been able always to be provided with very thick pens.
+
+Balzac could write only on condition he was dressed as a monk, had the
+shutters of the room closed, and the lamps lighted. Alfred de Musset
+would compose his immortal poetry only when under the influence of
+drink. All lunatics, every one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+NEW AND PIQUANT CRITICISM
+
+
+The Paris _Matin_ has started a new kind of dramatic criticism. The day
+after a play has been produced it publishes a criticism of it by the
+author himself, or by the manager of the theatre. This is as piquant as
+it is novel, and if the French had the sense of humour as keenly
+developed as the Americans, the result would be highly diverting.
+
+Just imagine a play by Mark Twain reviewed and criticised the following
+morning in a paper by Mr. Samuel L. Clemens!
+
+Gentlemen of the American press, take the hint, if you like.
+
+This new kind of criticism is only a few days old, but the readers of
+the _Matin_ have taken to it kindly already. Two well-known men have
+inaugurated it. They are Pierre Wolff, the dramatist, and Antoine, the
+actor and proprietor-manager of the Antoine Theatre. Both give a very
+flattering account of their plays: how beautifully they were acted, how
+well they were received, and, after giving a short synopsis of them,
+wind up with heartfelt thanks to the actors and actresses who appeared
+in them. Everybody is satisfied, author, actors, managers, editor, who
+has attracted the notice of the public, and the readers, who are amused
+at the new idea, and do not care a jot what critics say of the plays
+which they review.
+
+Why should not books be reviewed in the same way? Why should they not be
+reviewed and criticised by the author or the publisher? I should
+prefer--by the author.
+
+I have never read a notice of any of my books, however favourable, which
+I did not think I could have done better myself, if I had had to write
+it.
+
+Just imagine, if only for fun, a new novel (pronounced 'novell,' please)
+by Hall Caine reviewed by Mr. Hall Caine; or one by Marie Corelli
+criticised by that talented lady herself! I say, just think of it!
+
+We might have the good-fortune to read something in the following style:
+'A new novel by myself is one of those literary events which keep the
+world breathless, in awful silence, for a long time before it comes to
+pass. The first edition of 100,000 copies was exhausted a week before
+the book appeared, but a second edition of the same number will be ready
+in a day or two. The story is wonderful, colossal, like everything that
+comes from the pen of that author, whose genius is as Shakespearian as
+his brow, which even reminds one of that of--but perhaps it would be
+profane to name.'
+
+Or something interesting like this: 'His Majesty the King and most
+members of the Royal Family ordered copies of this book long before it
+was ready for publication, and no doubt to-day, and for many days
+following, there will be no other topic of conversation than my book at
+Windsor Castle. I should like to call the attention of the reading
+public--and who is it that does not read me?--to the fact that this is
+the longest book I have yet published. The public will also, I am sure,
+forgive me for calling it my best. A mother's last baby is always, in
+her eyes, her best.'
+
+At all events, I salute the new criticism. It should greatly add to the
+gaiety of nations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+ORIGINALITY IN LITERATURE
+
+
+There is very little originality in this world. Even among the greatest
+thoughts expressed by famous philosophers, there are very few that had
+not been heard before in some form or other. It is the pithy way in
+which they are expressed by such men as La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère,
+and Balzac that made the reputation of these great writers. The
+characteristics of man and woman have always existed, just as has their
+anatomy, and the dissector of the human heart cannot invent anything new
+any more than the dissector of the human body. We all know these
+characteristics, but what we like is to see a philosopher present them
+to us in a new shape.
+
+Pascal says that the greatest compliment that can be paid to a book,
+even to a thought, is the exclamation, 'I could have written that!' and
+'I could have said that!' In fact, the author whom we admire most is the
+one who writes a book that we 'could' have written ourselves. And we say
+'bravo' when a philosopher gives us a thought of our own, only better
+expressed than we could have done it, or when he confirms an opinion
+that we already held ourselves.
+
+No; there is nothing original, not even the stories that we hear and
+tell in our clubs. They have been told before. I forget who said that
+there were only thirty-five anecdotes in the world, seventeen of which
+were unfit for ladies' ears.
+
+Even the characters of fiction are not original. The novelist is, as a
+rule, none but a portrait painter, possessed of more or less originality
+and talent. Charles Dickens said that there was not a single personage
+of his novels whom he had not drawn from life. Thackeray and Balzac, two
+observers of mankind of marvellous ability, said the same. Racine
+borrowed of Sophocles and Euripides, Molière of Plautus and Terence.
+Alexandre Dumas chose his heroes from history, and regifted them with
+life with his unequalled imagination. George Eliot's personality
+remained a mystery for a long time, but everybody knew that the author
+of 'Scenes of Clerical Life' was a native of Nuneaton, or had lived long
+enough in that town to introduce local characters who were recognised at
+once. The _Dame aux Camélias_, the Camille of the American stage, by
+Dumas, junr., was inspired, if not suggested, by _Manon Lescaut_. And is
+not the _Adam Bede_ of George Eliot a variation of Goethe's _Faust_? Is
+not _Tess_ of Thomas Hardy another? And that marvellous hero Tartarin of
+Alphonse Daudet: do you not recognise in him Don Quixote? More than
+that, he is a double embodiment, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in one:
+the Don Quixote who dreams of adventures with lions in the desert, of
+ascensions on Mont Blanc, of guns, swords, and alpinstocks, and the
+Sancho Panza who thinks of wool socks, flannel vests, and a
+medicine-chest for the marvellous journeys that are going to be
+undertaken--a tremendous creation, this double personage, but not
+altogether original.
+
+Every character has been described in fiction, every characteristic of
+mankind has been told; but we like to see those characters described
+again with new surroundings; we love to hear the philosophy of life told
+over again in new, pleasant, pithy, witty sentences.
+
+This lack of originality in literature is so obvious, it is so well
+acknowledged a fact that authors, novelists, or philosophers have used
+mankind for their work, and availed themselves of all that mankind has
+written or said before, that the law does not allow the literary man to
+own the work of his brain for ever and ever, as he owns land or any
+other valuable possession. After allowing him to derive a benefit for
+forty or fifty years, his literary productions become common
+property--that is to say, return to mankind to whom he owed so much of
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+PLAGIARISM
+
+
+La Bruyère said: 'Women often love liberty only to abuse it.' Two
+hundred years later Balzac wrote: 'There are women who crave for liberty
+in order to make bad use of it.' The thoughts are not great, they are
+not even true, but that is not the question. Could such a genius as
+Balzac be accused of plagiarism because he expressed a thought
+practically in the very words of La Bruyère? I would as soon charge
+Balzac with plagiarism as I would accuse a Vanderbilt or a Carnegie of
+trying to cheat a street-car conductor out of a penny fare. The heroines
+of _Tess_ and _Adam Bede_ practically go through the same ordeals as
+Gretchen. Would you seriously accuse Thomas Hardy and George Eliot of
+plagiarism, and say that they owed their plots to Goethe's '_Faust_'?
+
+There are people engaged in literary pursuits, or, rather, in the
+literary trade, and, as a rule, not very successful at that, who spend
+their leisure time in trying to catch successful men in the act of
+committing plagiarism. The moment they can discover in their works a
+sentence that they can compare to a sentence written by some other
+author, they put the two sentences side by side and send them to the
+papers. There are papers always ready to publish that sort of thing. Of
+course, respectable papers throw those communications into the
+waste-paper baskets. Then, when the papers have published the would-be
+plagiarism, the perpetrator marks it in blue pencil at the four corners
+and sends it to the author--anonymously, of course. For that matter,
+whenever there appears anything nasty about a successful man in the
+papers--an adverse criticism or a scurrilous paragraph--he never runs
+the slightest risk of not seeing it; there are scores of failures, of
+crabbed, jealous, penurious nobodies who mail it to him. It does him no
+harm; but it does them good.
+
+As far as I can recollect I have, during my twenty-one years of literary
+life, committed plagiarism four times: twice quite unintentionally, once
+through the inadvertence of a compositor, and once absolutely out of
+mere wickedness, just to draw out the plagiarism hunter. And I will tell
+you how it happened. Once, many years ago, I was reading a book on the
+French, written by an American. A phrase struck me as expressing a
+sentiment so true, so well observed, that I memorized it, and,
+unfortunately, when, several years later, I wrote a series of articles
+on France for a London paper, I incorporated the phrase. I was not long
+in being discovered. The author of the book, which had never sold,
+wrote to all the papers that I had 'stolen his book,' and thought the
+correspondence would start a sale for his book. Of course I was guilty,
+and I apologized, explaining how it had happened. For years the phrase
+had been in my mind--had, as it were, become part and parcel of myself.
+May this be a warning to authors who may take too great a fancy to a
+thought of theirs well expressed by some other author. It is a very
+dangerous practice. Another time I incorporated in a newspaper article a
+quotation from Emerson, but the compositor omitted the inverted commas,
+and Emerson's sentence read as if it was mine. Of course, no one would
+accuse me of choosing Emerson to plagiarize in America, but this article
+brought me half a dozen anonymous letters. In one of them there was this
+choice bit: 'The second half of the article is by Emerson; the first
+half I don't know, but probably not by the author.' Twenty centuries of
+Christianity have caused Christians to love one another. But when I
+really had a good time was when, deliberately, as I said before, out of
+sheer wickedness, I introduced into my text nine lines of Shakespeare.
+
+I have kept the newspapers that commented on it and the anonymous
+letters that were mailed to me. One of them had humour in it. 'My dear
+sir,' said the writer, 'when you speak of an incident as being a
+personal reminiscence, it is a mistake to borrow it of an author so
+widely known for the last three centuries as the late William
+Shakespeare.'
+
+A celebrated literary friend of mine once amused himself in
+incorporating twenty lines of Dickens as his own in the midst of an
+essay he published in his own paper.
+
+When he feels dull, he takes from his shelves a scrapbook which contains
+the letters and newspaper cuttings referring to the subject.
+
+When a literary man has a reputation of long standing, never for a
+moment accuse him of plagiarism. He may express a thought already
+expressed by someone else; he may work out a plot which is not original;
+but success that lasts rests on some personal merit. I have never heard
+successful men charge any of their brethren of the pen with plagiarism.
+Successful men are charitable to their craft, as beautiful women are to
+their sex.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND REMINISCENCES
+
+
+The best writers of memoirs have been the French, and it is through
+those memoirs that we know so well and so intimately the reigns of Louis
+XIV., Louis XV., and Napoleon I., as well as the history of the
+Revolution, the Restoration, and the Second Empire.
+
+Courtiers, diplomatists, statesmen, and women of the Court, by their
+memoirs and letters, have made us acquainted not only with the public
+life of Sovereigns, but with all the details of their private life, with
+all the Court gossip.
+
+The French, however, care little or nothing for memoirs that do not make
+clear to them some chapter of history.
+
+The English, on the contrary, have practically no memoirs of that sort.
+The only interesting ones that I know are those of Greville. On the
+other hand, almost every man of note, literary man, journalist, artist,
+actor, publishes his autobiography or his reminiscences.
+
+While the French only care for the work that a man before the public
+has produced, the English like to know how he lived, how he worked, whom
+he met, whom he knew, and his appreciation of the character of his more
+or less famous friends and acquaintances.
+
+Why, even the music-hall star publishes his reminiscences in England.
+The fact is that, if a man keeps his diary regularly, and knows how to
+tell an anecdote well, he can always write a readable book of
+reminiscences.
+
+Among the best books of this sort that I know I would mention those of
+the late Edmund Yates and George Augustus Sala; but the best of all is
+the one which I do hope will make its appearance one day (although I am
+not aware that it is being prepared), and will be signed by the wittiest
+raconteur and causeur of England, Mr. Henry Labouchere.
+
+Try to get Mr. Labouchere in one corner of the smoke-room in the House
+of Commons, give him a cup of coffee and some good cigarettes, and just
+turn him on; there is no better treat, no more intellectual feast of
+mirth and humour and wit in store for you. His style is the very one
+suited for a crisp, gossipy, brilliant book of reminiscences.
+
+Among possible writers of interesting and piquant memoirs or
+reminiscences I ought to mention Lady Dorothy Nevil and Lady Jeune. Both
+ladies have known in intimacy every celebrity you wish to name--Kings,
+Queens, statesmen, generals, prelates, judges, politicians, literary
+men, artists, lawyers, actors; there is not a man or woman of fame who
+has not supplied an impression or an incident to them.
+
+And they are the very women to write memoirs, both possessed of keen
+judgment and insight in human nature, and of great literary ability,
+both delightful conversationalists, always capable of drawing you out
+and enabling you to do your best, and thus supplying them with materials
+for notes and observations.
+
+I am not announcing any book, for neither of these two ladies ever
+mentioned to me that she was preparing a book of memoirs, but I wish
+they would, and I have simply named them as being both capable of
+writing books of unsurpassed interest.
+
+In order to write a good and trustworthy book of reminiscences, you
+must, above all, be an observer and a listener, besides a good
+story-teller. You must be modest enough to know how to efface yourself,
+remain hidden behind the scenes, and put all your personages on the
+stage without hardly appearing yourself.
+
+You must be satisfied with sharing the honours of the book with all your
+_dramatis personæ_, and not cause the printing of the volume to be
+stopped for want of a sufficient supply of 'I's' and 'me's.'
+
+I knew a famous actor whose reminiscences were published some years ago
+by a literary man. Once I congratulated that actor on the success of the
+book.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'the book has done me good, because X., you know,
+mentions my name once or twice in that book.'
+
+And many books of reminiscences that I know are full of the sayings and
+doings of the author, with an occasional mention of people of whom we
+should like to hear a great deal.
+
+I have met these men in private, and sometimes found them clever, and
+invariably fatiguing bores, and their books are not more entertaining
+than their conversation. Many of them reminded me of the first visit
+that Diderot paid to Voltaire, on which occasion he talked the great
+French wit deaf and dumb.
+
+'What do you think of Diderot?' asked a friend of Voltaire a few days
+after that visit.
+
+'Well,' replied Voltaire, 'Diderot is a clever fellow, but he has no
+talent for dialogue.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THOUGHTS ON HATS
+
+
+The manly man wears his hat slightly inclined on the right, naturally,
+without exaggeration, and without swagger. The braggart wears his right
+on his ear. Jolly fellows, destitute of manners, and drunkards, wear
+theirs on the back of the head; when far gone, the brim of the hat
+touches the neck.
+
+Hypocrites wear theirs over the eyes. Fops wear their hats inclined on
+the left. Why? The reason is simple. Of course, they know that the hat,
+if inclined, should be on the right; but, unfortunately for them, they
+look at themselves in the glass, where the hat inclined on the left
+looks as if it were inclined on the right. So they wear it on the left,
+and think they have done the correct thing.
+
+The very proper man and the prig invariably wear their hats perfectly
+straight. The scientific man and all men of brains put their heads well
+inside their hats; the more scientific the mind is, the deeper the head
+goes inside the hat.
+
+Fools put on their hats with the help of both hands, and simply lay them
+on the top of their heads. I suppose they feel that hats are meant to
+cover the brain, and they are satisfied, in their modesty and
+consciousness of their value, with covering the small quantity of brains
+given to them by Nature.
+
+The absent-minded man is recognised by his hat brushed against the nap,
+the tidy man by his irreproachably smooth hat, and the needy man by a
+greasy hat.
+
+A shabby coat is not necessarily a sign that a man is hard up. Many men
+get so fond of a coat that they cannot make up their minds to part with
+it and discard it; but shoes down at heel and a shabby, greasy hat prove
+that their wearer is drowning: he is helpless and hopeless.
+
+Only the well-off man, who serves nobody, wears a white top-hat; this
+hat is the emblem of independence and of success in life.
+
+Man's station in life is shown from the way he takes off his hat. Kings
+and emperors just lift it off their heads. A gentleman takes off his hat
+to whoever salutes him. Once a beggar in Dublin saluted the great Irish
+patriot, Daniel O'Connell. The latter returned the salute by taking off
+his hat to the beggar.
+
+'How can you take off your hat to a beggar?' remarked a friend who was
+with him. 'Because,' he replied, 'I don't want that beggar to say that
+he is more of a gentleman than I am.' Parvenus keep their hats on
+always, unless before some aristocrat, to whom they cringe.
+
+The Englishman takes off his hat with a stiff jerk and puts it on again
+immediately. The Frenchman takes it off gently, and, before a lady,
+remains uncovered until she says to him: 'Couvrez-vous, monsieur, je
+vous prie.'
+
+The Italian takes it off with ceremony, and with his hand puts it nearly
+to the ground. Timid men keep rolling their hats in their hands. Very
+religious ones pray inside them, making a wry face, as if the emanations
+were of an unpleasant character.
+
+Soldiers and horsemen fix their hats by pressing on the top of the
+crown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Men who belong to decent clubs and frequent 'at homes' never need be in
+want of a good hat.
+
+In Paris, in London, and in New York during the season no gentleman can
+wear anything but a silk hat after lunch-time.
+
+When you pay calls, you must enter the drawing-room with your hat in
+your hand and keep it all the time, unless you are on very intimate
+terms with your host and hostess, when you may leave it in the hall.
+
+A well-put-on hat is the proof of a well-balanced mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THOUGHTS ON EYE-GLASSES
+
+
+The man who wears spectacles--I mean eye-glasses with branches fixed
+behind the ears--is a serious man, a man of science, a man of
+business--at all events, a man who thinks of his comfort before he
+thinks of his appearance. There is no nonsense, no frivolity about him,
+especially if they are framed in gold. He is a steady man, somewhat
+prosaic, and even matter-of-fact. If he is a young man and wears them,
+you may conclude that he means to succeed, and always look on the
+serious side of life. He is no fop, no lady-killer, but a man whose
+affections can be relied on, and who expects a woman to love him for the
+qualities of his mind and the truthfulness of his heart.
+
+Next to a solid gold watch and chain, a pair of gold spectacles are the
+best testimony of respectability; then comes a sound umbrella.
+
+The man who wears his eye-glasses halfway down his nose is a shrewd man
+of business, who ever bears in mind that time is money. Thus placed, his
+eye-glasses enable him to read a letter of introduction, and, above
+them, to read and observe the character of the person who has presented
+it to him. Lawyers generally wear them that way, and they seldom fail to
+have their bureau so placed that they can have their backs to the
+window, while their clients or callers are seated opposite in the full
+light of the day.
+
+Old gentlemen wear their eye-glasses on the tip of their noses when they
+read their newspaper, because it enables them to recline in their
+arm-chairs and assume a more comfortable position.
+
+The single eye-glass was originally worn by people whose eyes were
+different, in order to remedy the defective one. To-day it may be
+asserted that, out of a hundred men who wear single eye-glasses,
+ninety-nine see through--the other one. The single eye-glass is
+tolerable in a man of a certain age who is both clever and _distingué_
+looking. John Bright, with his fine white mass of hair and intelligent,
+firm, yet kind expression, looked beautiful with his eye-glass on. Lord
+Beaconsfield also looked well with one. To Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, with
+his turned-up nose and sneering smile, and his jaw ever ready to snap,
+it adds impudence.
+
+When a man looks silly, the single eye-glass finishes him and makes him
+look like a drivelling idiot. If, besides, he is very young, it gives
+you an irresistible desire to smack his face or pull his nose.
+
+The single eye-glass originated in England, but it is now worn in France
+quite as much, especially by young dudes, who, lacking the manliness of
+young Englishmen, look preposterously ridiculous with them on. I must
+say, however, that great Frenchmen have worn single eye-glasses, among
+them Alphonse Daudet, Aurélien Scholl, President Felix Faure, Gaston
+Paris. Alfred Capus, now our most popular dramatist, wears one; so does
+Paul Bourget, but the latter is short-sighted on the right side.
+
+No Royalty has ever been known to wear one, although not long ago I saw
+a portrait of the Kaiser with a single eye-glass.
+
+America is to be congratulated on the absence of single eye-glasses. I
+may have seen one or two at the horse-show in New York, but I should not
+like to swear to it. An American dude, with his trousers turned up,
+wearing a single eye-glass and sucking the top of his stick, would be a
+sight for the gods to enjoy. I believe that a single eye-glass, not only
+in Chicago or Kansas City, but in Broadway, New York, and even in
+Boston, would cause Americans, whose bump of veneration is not highly
+developed, to pass remarks not of a particularly favourable character on
+its wearer. In the West, he might be tarred and feathered, if not
+lynched. One way or the other, he would be a success there.
+
+But the most impudent, the most provoking single eye-glass of all is the
+one which is worn, generally by very young men, without strings. As they
+frown and wink, and make the grimace unavoidable to the wearer of that
+kind of apparel, they seem to say: 'See what practice can do! I have no
+string, yet I am not at all afraid of my glass falling from my eye.'
+Rich Annamites grow their finger-nails eight and ten inches long, to
+show you that they are aristocrats, and have never used their hands for
+any kind of work. French and English parasites advertise their
+uselessness by this exhibition of the single eye-glass without string.
+And with it on, they eat, talk, smoke, run, laugh, and sneeze--and it
+sticks. Wonderful, simply wonderful! When you can do that, you really
+are 'in it.'
+
+When you consider the progress that civilization is making every day,
+the discoveries that are made, the pluck and perseverance that are shown
+by the pioneers of all science, by the princes of commerce, by the
+explorers of new fields and pastures, in your gratitude for all they
+have done and are still doing for the world, you must not forget the
+well-groomed young man who has succeeded in being able to wear a single
+eye-glass without a string.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THOUGHTS ON UMBRELLAS
+
+
+Tell me how a man uses his umbrella, and I will tell you his character.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon Puritan always carried his umbrella open. If he rolled
+it, you might, at a distance, take that umbrella for a stick, which, he
+thinks, would give him a certain fast appearance. The miser does the
+same, because an umbrella that is never rolled lasts longer.
+
+The man who always takes an umbrella out with him is a cautious
+individual, who never runs risks, and abstains from speculation. He will
+probably die rich; at all events, in cosy circumstances. On the
+contrary, the man who always leaves his umbrella behind him is generally
+one who makes no provision for the morrow. That man is thoughtless,
+reckless, always late for the train or an appointment, leaves the
+street-door open when he comes home late at night, and is generally
+unreliable.
+
+The man who is always losing his umbrella is an unlucky dog, whose bills
+are protested, whose boots split, whose gloves crack, whose buttons are
+always coming off, who is always in trouble on account of one thing or
+another.
+
+The man, who leaves a new umbrella in his club and hopes to find it
+there the following day, is a simpleton who deserves all the bad luck
+that pursues him through life.
+
+The man who comes early to an 'at home' may not show his eagerness to
+present his respects to a hostess early so much as to aim at having a
+better chance to choose a good umbrella.
+
+The man who is perpetually showing a nervous anxiety about his umbrella,
+and wondering if it is safe, is full of meanness and low suspicion. Let
+him be ever so rich, if he asks your daughter in marriage, refuse her to
+him. He will undoubtedly take more care of his umbrella than of his
+wife.
+
+If you are fortunate enough to have your umbrella when it rains, and you
+meet a friend who has left his at home, and asks you to shelter him, try
+immediately to meet another friend or acquaintance to whom you will
+offer the same service. By so doing, you will be all right in the
+middle, you will have your sides also well protected, and, besides, you
+will have obliged two friends instead of one.
+
+The possession of a well-regulated watch and a decent umbrella is to a
+great degree a sign of respectability. More watches and silk umbrellas
+are pawned than all the other pieces of man's apparel put together.
+
+The man who carries a cotton umbrella is either a philosopher, who
+defies the world and all its fashionable conventions and prejudices, or
+an economist, who knows that a cotton umbrella is cheaper than a silk
+one, and lasts longer.
+
+The man who walks with short, jerky steps, and never allows his umbrella
+to touch the ground, is a very proper man, and not uncommonly a
+downright hypocrite. On the other hand, the man who walks with a firm,
+long step, swinging his body slightly from right to left, and using his
+umbrella like a stick, is generally a good, manly fellow.
+
+Once a man came to an afternoon 'at home,' and, when ready to leave the
+house, could not find his umbrella, a beautiful new one. He made
+somewhat of a fuss in the hall. The master of the house came to his
+rescue, and looked for the missing umbrella among the scores that were
+there.
+
+'Are you sure you had an umbrella when you came?'
+
+'Quite sure.'
+
+'Perhaps you left it at the other party, where you went first.'
+
+'No, no; that's where I got it.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+SOME AMERICAN TOPICS
+
+
+As I sit quietly thinking over my seventh visit to the United States,
+some impressions take a definite shape. I may here repeat a phrase which
+I used yesterday while speaking to the representative of an English
+newspaper who had called to interview me:
+
+'This last visit has left me more than ever impressed with the colossal
+greatness of the American people.'
+
+The progress they have made during the last five years is perfectly
+astounding--progress in commerce and industry, progress in art and
+science, progress in architecture. The whole thing is simply amazing.
+And the ingenuity displayed in the smallest things!
+
+Really, this morning I was pitying from the bottom of my heart a poor
+English carman, who was emptying sacks of coal into a hole made in the
+pavement, as in New York, in front of a house.
+
+He had to go and fetch every sack of coal, put it on his back, carry it
+with his bent body, and then aim at the hole as best he could. In New
+York the cart is lifted one side by means of a handle, an inclined tray
+is placed at the bottom of the cart, with its head over the hole, and
+down goes the coal as the man looks at the work done for him.
+
+It is in thousands of little things like this that you understand how
+the American mind is constantly at work. I do not know whether America
+makes more inventions than other nations (I believe that France is still
+leading), but there is no country where so many inventions are
+perfected.
+
+In a great measure I attribute the commercial prosperity of the
+Americans to the soundness and practicability of their principles in the
+matter of the commercial education of their youth. It is partly due to
+the existence of the 'business college,' which has no counterpart in
+England, but which is as great and powerful an institution in the States
+as public schools are in England. Until Europe has such colleges, she
+will never breed leaders of commerce and industry as they are bred in
+America.
+
+France possesses the best artisans in the world--glass-cutters,
+cabinet-makers, book-binders, gardeners--simply because boys of the
+working classes choose their trade early, work long apprenticeships, and
+study.
+
+The English boy of these classes becomes a plumber at thirteen, then he
+tries everything afterward. He is in turn a mason, a gardener, anything
+you like 'for a job.' In America it is the mind of boys which is
+prepared for commerce in the business colleges. At twenty they are
+practical men.
+
+Of course, my mind is full of trusts. Is it possible that in a few years
+all the great industries of America--its mines, its railroads, its
+telegraphic and telephonic systems, its land, its land produce--will all
+be amalgamated and transformed into trusts?
+
+I am not inclined to look on this great system of trusts in too
+pessimistic a fashion. In my view, they may eventually lead to the
+nationalization of those gigantic enterprises, and in this way bring
+about the greatest good for the greatest number, by the simple reason
+that it will be much easier for the State to deal with all those
+different trusts than with thousands of different companies and
+individuals.
+
+One day the earth will belong to its inhabitants, not to a privileged
+few. Trusts may lead to the solution of the question.
+
+Another impression deeply confirmed more than ever: the English may talk
+of the 'blood-thicker-than-water' theory, but it will never stand the
+test of a political crisis.
+
+Of course, there are the '400' of New York who are entirely pro-English,
+and half apologetic for being American; but the population of Greater
+New York is 4,000,000. If out of 4,000,000 you take 400, there still
+remain some Americans. And these have no love lost for England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+SOME AMERICANS I OBJECT TO
+
+
+An American was one day travelling with an Englishman friend of mine in
+the same railway compartment from Dieppe to Paris. During the
+conversation, the American did not care to own that he hailed from
+America, but went as far as to confess that he came from Boston, which,
+he thought, would no doubt atone for his being American in the eyes of
+his English companion.
+
+'And where are you going to put up in Paris?' inquired the Englishman.
+'Well,' replied the Bostonian, 'I was thinking of staying at Meurice's;
+but it's so full of d----d Americans! Where are you going to stop
+yourself?' 'H'm,' said the Englishman; 'I was thinking of stopping at
+Meurice's myself, but the place is so full of d----d English people!'
+
+I object to the American who tells you that he spends the summer in
+Europe because America does not possess a summer resort fit to visit,
+and who regrets being unable to spend the winter in the South of France
+because there is not in the United States a decent place where to spend
+the winter months, who assures you that America does not possess a
+single spot historically interesting. In my innocence I thought that an
+American might be interested to visit the Independence Hall of
+Philadelphia, Mount Vernon in Virginia, Lexington, Bunker's Hill,
+Yorktown, Chattanooga, Gettysburg, and a few other places where his
+ancestors made America what she is now.
+
+I thought that the Hudson River compared favourably with the Thames and
+the Seine, the Rocky Mountains with the Alps and the Pyrenees, the
+Sierras with Switzerland, and that Europe had nothing to offer to be
+mentioned in the same breath with the Indian summer of America, when the
+country puts on her garb of red and gold.
+
+When you meet that American in Europe, he asks you if you have met Lord
+Fitz-Noodle, Lady Ginger, and the Marquis de la Roche-Trompette. When
+you confess to him that you never had the pleasure of meeting those
+European worthies, he throws at you a patronizing glance, a mixture of
+pity and contempt, which seems to say: 'Good gracious! who on earth can
+you be? In what awful set do you move?'
+
+At fashionable places, on board steamers, he avoids his compatriots and
+introduces himself into the aristocracy, always glad to patronize people
+who have money. He makes no inquiry about the private character of those
+titled people before he allows his wife and daughters to frequent them.
+They are titled, and, in his eyes, that sanctifies everything. On board
+a steamer he works hard with the purser and the chief steward in order
+to be given a seat at the same table with a travelling lord. You never
+see him in anybody else's company.
+
+A favourite remark of his is: 'The Americans one meets in Europe make me
+feel ashamed of my country and of my compatriots.'
+
+How I do prefer to that American snob the good American who has never
+left the States, and who is perfectly convinced that America is the only
+country fit for a free man to live in--God's own country! At any rate,
+he is a good patriot, proud of his motherland. I even prefer to him that
+American (often to be met abroad) who damns everything in Europe; who
+prefers the Presbyterian church of his little city to Notre Dame,
+Westminster Abbey, and the cathedrals of Rouen, Cologne, and Milan; who
+thinks that England is such a tight little island that he is afraid of
+going out at night for fear of falling into the water; who thinks that
+French politeness and manners are much overrated, and who, when being
+asked if he likes French cuisine, replies: 'No; nor their cookery
+either.'
+
+I love the man who sees only things to admire in his mother and his own
+country; and in America that man has his choice--_une abondance de
+biens_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+PATIENCE--AN AMERICAN TRAIT
+
+
+For power of endurance, give me the Americans. They are angels of
+patience. The best illustration is what they can put up with at their
+Custom House when they return home. Foreigners are more leniently dealt
+with, but if the American and his wife return from a trip to Europe and
+have with them twelve trunks and ten bags, these twelve trunks and ten
+bags have to be opened and thoroughly searched, and that although the
+said American has already signed a paper that he has nothing dutiable
+with him.
+
+In every civilized nation of the world, there is a Custom House officer
+to inquire of the foreign visitor or the returning native whether he has
+anything to declare. He is not required to sign anything. He is asked
+the question on presenting himself with his baggage.
+
+Never more than one piece of luggage is opened, and when the owner is a
+lady alone she is allowed to pass without having anything opened,
+unless, of course, she appears to be a suspicious character.
+
+Everywhere in Europe any decent-looking man or woman who declares that
+he or she has nothing dutiable has one piece of luggage examined and no
+more. But in America not only is every trunk, every bag, opened, but
+everything in it most searchingly examined.
+
+'Have you worn this?' says the man.
+
+I knew a gentleman who had had ten trunks examined from top to bottom,
+but could not find the key to his hat-box, a light piece of luggage
+which, by its weight, was labelled innocent. The Custom House officer
+took a hatchet and smashed it.
+
+I allowed myself to be told that the gentleman in question could obtain
+no redress against the man in authority. A lady, for that matter, would
+have been treated in exactly the same way. No respect for her sex, no
+consideration for the pretty things she had had so carefully packed;
+everything is taken out, felt, and replaced topsy-turvy.
+
+When a favourite steamer arrives in New York, with 500 first and second
+class passengers, it means about 5,000 pieces of luggage to open and
+examine. If you have no servants to see it done for you, the odds are
+that you will be five hours on the wharf before you are able to proceed
+to your hotel.
+
+The Americans grumble, but patiently endure the nuisance, as if they
+were not masters in their own home and able to put a stop to it. No
+Englishman would stand it a day. If it was a special order, it would be
+repealed at once. The only time when the thing was done in England was
+during the period of scare produced by the Irish dynamitards some
+twenty-five years ago.
+
+To some American millionairesses fifty new dresses are less extravagant
+than two or three for other women; besides, if they are extravagant,
+that's their business. What does it matter so long as it is not some
+materials for sale or any other commercial purpose?
+
+The Americans endure bureaucracy much more readily than the English. In
+that, as in many other traits, they more resemble the French, who, in
+spite of their reputation for being unruly, are the most docile,
+enduring, easily-governed people in the world, until they are aroused,
+when--then look out!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+AMERICAN FEELINGS FOR FOREIGNERS
+
+
+Jonathan has such a large family of his own to think of and look after
+at home that he has not much time to spare for concerning himself about
+what is going on in other people's houses.
+
+He takes a general interest in them, likes to be kept acquainted with
+what is happening in the world, in Europe especially; he feels sympathy
+for most people, antipathy to one, but it would be difficult to say, so
+far as the names of the American people are concerned, that he has a
+predilection for any particular nation more than for any other.
+
+The largest foreign element in the United States is German,
+Scandinavian, and Irish; but they are all now digested and assimilated,
+and they inspire no particular feeling in the breast of Uncle Sam for
+the respective countries they originally came from. He asks them to be,
+and they are, good American citizens, ready to fight his battles on
+election day or, if need be, on the battlefield.
+
+There is no 'most favoured' nation in the American character, which in
+this respect is opportunist to the greatest degree.
+
+During the war with Spain the Americans were pro-English, because they
+had the moral support of the English, or thought they had.
+
+In 1895, during the Venezuelan difficulty, they were above all
+anti-English. Just at present their love of the English is somewhat
+cooler, because they wonder whether England was really friendly and
+sincere during the Spanish-American War, and because their sympathy was
+for the Boers who, in their eyes, rightly or wrongly, bravely fought for
+their liberty and independence as the Americans did 125 years ago.
+
+When Prince Henry visited the United States, the Americans regarded his
+visit as a great compliment paid to their country, and a delicate
+advance and attention on the part of the German Emperor.
+
+Then Germany naturally came to the front, and, at the time, might with
+reason have been called the nation nearest to the heart of Jonathan.
+Prince Henry was fêted, banqueted, liked, and when the steamer took him
+home, he was remembered with pleasure and forgotten, and Germany resumed
+her position of foreign nation, just like that of any other.
+
+The English, who buy inventions, but seldom make them, are now starting
+the rumour that the Prince of Wales has been invited to visit the United
+States. The idea is not very original, not any more than that of King
+Edward having a racing yacht built in America, and sending his son over
+to be present at its launching and christening. That sort of thing may
+be overdone.
+
+If, however, the Prince of Wales went to America, he would be received
+with open arms, the 'blood-thicker-than-water' business, and the
+'kin-and-kith' cry would be indulged in during his visit, after which
+everything would resume its normal state.
+
+If the President of the French Republic could be induced to visit
+America, the Americans would become pro-French; Lafayette, the
+'never-to-be-forgotten helper of the Americans' in their struggle for
+liberty and independence, would be resurrected, and this visit would,
+perhaps, be the one most likely to go straight to the hearts of the
+Americans, as, in this case, the visit paid would bring to the United
+States the very head of the French nation and the President of a great
+Republic, the sister Republic.
+
+But the visit over, I have no doubt that Jonathan would resume his
+business habits, forget all about it, and only remember a little
+excitement and a good time.
+
+Let me, however, advise any royalty, English or other, to wait a little
+before visiting America. For a long time there will be no originality,
+no novelty even, about the presence of a real Prince in the United
+States, and the Americans are particularly fond of novelties. They want
+a constant change in the programme.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+SHOULD YOUNG GIRLS READ NOVELS?
+
+
+A lady, an intimate friend of the late Alphonse Karr, was one day on a
+visit to the famous French author, and noticing in his library the
+statuettes of the Venus of Milo and a few other classical beauties, she
+said to him: 'I am afraid you are wrong to feast your eyes on those
+exquisite faces and perfect forms, because they very seldom exist in
+real life, and they can only make you feel disappointed and spoil your
+mind. When you go to a ballroom, I imagine that there are few women, if
+any, that you are not inclined to criticise.'
+
+For the same reason I will answer a lady correspondent, who asks me
+whether she should encourage or even allow her daughters to read novels:
+No, young people should not read novels. Instead of infusing into their
+minds sensible ideas about the stern realities of life, they portray
+disinterestedness that is overdone, beauty that is rarely seen outside
+of museums, devotion that has been very uncommon since the days of the
+Crusaders, love that has been unheard of since the death of Orpheus and
+Eurydice, pluck that died with Bayard and Bertrand du Guesclin; and I am
+not sure that, loathsome as they are to me, I would not recommend the
+novels of the realistic school rather than those of the romantic school
+to young people of both sexes; for if the former make you feel fairly
+disgusted with humanity, they do not, like the latter, fill the minds of
+youth with illusions that are destined to be blown to the four winds of
+the earth by the realities of life. In fact, I know some novels which
+young people might read, and also some which they ought to read; but I
+believe I could count them all on the fingers of my two hands. Let young
+people study life from life, listen to the experience of those who have
+lived, frequent people who have found happiness and met with success in
+life. This will much better make them serve their apprenticeship.
+
+Yes, I say, avoid reading all novels, and, above all, the sentimental
+ones--those that make young girls believe that husbands are lovers who
+spend their lives at the feet of their wives making love to them, and
+young men imagine that wives are sweethearts who have nothing to do but
+coo and try to look pretty. Let young people read books that will help
+make them sensible and cheerful, books of travels and adventures, books
+of pleasant philosophy, of common-sense and humour. Boyhood, girlhood,
+as well as young manhood and womanhood, should be spent in cheerful
+surroundings, for nothing leads better to morality than cheerfulness. If
+I had a house full of young people, I would have my house ring all day
+long with the peals of laughter of my boys and girls. Fun of the good,
+wholesome sort, humour and gaiety, should be the daily food of youth,
+and only books that supply it should be given to them.
+
+On the whole, there is not much to choose between the novels of the
+realistic school, that would make you believe that the world is full of
+murderers, forgers, men and women with diseased minds, novels that reek
+of disinfectants, and make you feel as you do when you come out of a
+hospital and your clothes are permeated with a smell of carbolic acid,
+and the novels of the sentimental school, that would lead you to believe
+that all the male and female geese who are their heroes and heroines
+have the slightest chance of being successful in life.
+
+People should already know a great deal of real life before they get
+acquainted with the way in which it is represented in novels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+NOW, WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH FATHER?
+
+
+I confess that I am a little tired, and I will say so frankly, of
+continually hearing such phrases as 'What is home without a mother?'
+'God bless our mother!' and so forth. I should like to use an
+Americanism and ask, 'Now, pray, what's the matter with father?'
+
+I cannot help thinking that children would grow just as sensible if they
+sometimes heard a word of praise bestowed on their fathers instead of
+being loaded with an endless litany of all the virtues of mother.
+
+Mother's love, mother's devotion, mother's influence, mother's this, and
+mother's that. Now, father does exist, and occasionally makes himself
+useful enough to stand in no need of an apology for daring to exist.
+
+He generally loves his children, and sometimes feels that he cannot
+compete with his wife in their affections, simply because she
+monopolizes them, not only when they are babies, but after they are out
+of infancy. He resents it, but, as a rule, resigns himself to what he is
+made to believe inevitable.
+
+The first duty of a woman is to teach her children to love their father,
+and, as they grow up, to teach them to respect him and admire him. It
+is her duty to hide from her children any little thing that might cause
+them to lose the least respect or admiration towards him.
+
+But, out of one hundred women, will you find one who will not be of
+opinion that mother is foremost?
+
+When a woman has become a mother, her vanity, though often full of
+repose, gets the best of her. She is a mother, and thinks she is the
+most important thing in the world. Yet, as I say elsewhere, it is no
+extraordinary testimonial for a woman to be fond of her children. All
+mothers are fond of their children and good to them--why, even the
+fiercest and cruellest of animals. The feeling is given to them by
+Nature. We all profit by it; we are all happier for it. For being able
+to dispense maternal love woman is to be admired and blessed, but not
+congratulated. A child is part and parcel of a mother. In loving a child
+a woman loves part of herself. It is not selfishness so much as
+self-love. When she brings up her children for herself, for the love of
+herself, without doing her utmost to see that their father gets his
+share; when, thanks to her own trumpeting, her house rings only with
+'God bless our mother!' she is guilty of an act of terrible injustice.
+
+The vanity of some women is such that some expect a pedestal--nay, an
+altar--when the spring-cleaning of their house is over.
+
+I know men who work with one view only--that of bringing up their
+children in comfort, giving them a University education, and starting
+them in life at the cost of any sacrifice.
+
+I know Americans who work like slaves at home so that their wives and
+daughters may enjoy themselves in Paris and London. For this they demand
+nothing except an occasional letter, which they sometimes get.
+
+Mother is very tired! She has had to pay calls, go to so many 'at
+homes,' so many garden-parties! She is exhausted; she wants a change of
+air immediately. Father is at his office, a dingy, badly-ventilated
+room. He has had no holiday for a year. He, too, would like a little
+change of air; but what's the matter with father? He's all right.
+
+In the most humble stations of life we have all of us known that man who
+gets up at five o'clock in the morning, lights the fire to cook a bit of
+breakfast for himself, gets his tools and starts to his daily labour,
+wiping off the dew of the dawn on his boots while many a mother is
+sleeping. With his hard-earned wages he pays the butcher, the grocer,
+the milkman and the baker. He stands off the wolf and the bailiff and
+pays the rent.
+
+What's the matter with father? How blessed that home would be without
+him!
+
+I know there are loafers who refuse the work that would enable them to
+support their wives and children. There are also good steady workmen who
+at home find nothing awaiting them except the sight of a drunken woman,
+who not only has not prepared a meal for him, but has spent his
+hard-earned money, and not uncommonly even pawned the baby's shoes to
+get brandy or gin with. 'What's home without a mother?' 'God bless our
+mother!'
+
+Do give father a chance, if you please.
+
+
+THE END
+
+BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
+
+
+
+
+MAX O'RELL'S WORKS
+
+
+    JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND.
+    JOHN BULL'S WOMANKIND.
+    THE DEAR NEIGHBOURS!
+    FRIEND MACDONALD.
+    DRAT THE BOYS!
+    JOHN BULL, JUNIOR.
+    JACQUES BONHOMME.
+    JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT.
+    A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA.
+    JOHN BULL AND CO.
+    PHARISEES AND CROCODILES.
+    FRENCH ORATORY.
+    WOMAN AND ARTIST.
+    HER ROYAL HIGHNESS WOMAN.
+    BETWEEN OURSELVES.
+    RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND.
+
+
+
+    OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
+    ON
+    RAMBLES IN WOMANLAND
+
+    'Max O'Rell has in this volume given us another entertaining and
+    delightful dissertation upon woman and her kind. What Max O'Rell
+    does not know about the sex to which he has not the honour to
+    belong is hardly worth knowing.'--_St. James's Gazette._
+
+    'It is too late in the day to dwell upon the features of style
+    which render the work of Max O'Rell such easy and agreeable
+    reading, and it is unnecessary to illustrate his pretty gift of
+    phrase-making. He has gained his own place among popular
+    authors, and offers no sign of vacating it.'--_Pall Mall
+    Gazette._
+
+    'We hardly know whether to recommend the book to our readers or
+    not. They will not put it down, once begun--that is
+    certain.'--_Spectator._
+
+    'Max O'Rell, in his new book, expresses in his own peculiar and
+    entertaining way many witty, satirical, and humorous ideas on
+    the subject of the "eternal woman."'--_Daily Express._
+
+    'Max O'Rell is always entertaining, and provokes friendly
+    discussion as readily as any writer I know. His new book
+    contains many aphorisms, and some of them are very
+    good.'--_British Weekly._
+
+    'Max O'Rell supplies, not for the first time, a delightful
+    mixture of commonplace and common-sense.'--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+    'We have no doubt a great many people will enjoy the book, and
+    the enjoyment will be innocent and wholesome.'--_Academy._
+
+    'Max O'Rell's chaff is excellent, and all in perfect good
+    taste.'--_Pelican._
+
+    'The genial author takes up the cudgels on behalf of the
+    better-looking sex in a way which should make his book
+    tremendously popular with lady readers--especially the married
+    ones.... A very entertaining book.'--_Golden Penny._
+
+    'Contains some delightful reading.... It is a book happy in
+    idea, felicitous in expression, cynically frank and refreshing
+    in its candour.'--_Gossip._
+
+    'Another collection of amusing and epigrammatic essays.... Max
+    O'Rell, as everyone knows, has the gift of discoursing fluently
+    and amusingly on any subject on which he touches, and to English
+    and American people his good-humoured criticisms are
+    particularly valuable, as they are not only sound and sane in
+    themselves, but they are written from an outside
+    standpoint.'--_Morning Leader._
+
+    'Women will not feel sorry that Max O'Rell's last work should be
+    his new book on the fair sex. For many a year he has helped us
+    with his gentle raillery, cheered us with his bright humour, and
+    taught us much. "Rambles in Womanland" contains many little
+    personal reminiscences and revelations, and its author's wit is
+    undimmed. The book is full of epigrams, bons mots, and piquant
+    criticisms.'--_Gentlewoman._
+
+    'Max O'Rell's last book will add to the regret that his genial
+    pen will write no more. Usually there is a tone of gaiety in
+    what he says, but at all times he discusses important problems
+    with all seriousness, and with not a little of the wisdom with
+    which a wide knowledge of the world had endowed him. Max
+    O'Rell's writings have always been notable for witty
+    epigrammatic sentences.... His last work is a bright and
+    engaging book.'--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+    'With a pretty wit and a turn for epigram this writer can
+    scarcely be dull, and no one will turn to one or other of these
+    chatty chapters without being pleasantly
+    entertained.'--_Scotsman._
+
+    'Liveliness, amiability, charm, honourable sentiment, humour,
+    every quality that the best kind of French culture produces, are
+    open to anyone who can read English in the pages of Max O'Rell.
+    Every page of these "Rambles" is sprinkled over with aphorisms.
+    ... This most entertaining book.'--_Vanity Fair._
+
+    'There is much that is entertaining in these short pithy
+    comments on women's characteristics, and occasionally criticism
+    that penetrates deep beneath the surface, and reveals a vast
+    amount of observation and knowledge of the world.... The book is
+    full of smart sayings and clever aphorisms.'--_Publishers'
+    Circular._
+
+    'Whatever his theme, he is always bright, and the coruscations
+    of his wit are exceedingly diverting.... This last contribution
+    is full of good things, placed in an amusing setting.... These
+    are but a few maxims culled from a crowded garden.... This
+    wonderful little volume.'--_Echo._
+
+    '"Rambles in Womanland" has between its covers much wisdom,
+    served up with a pretty garnish of wit and that wholesome
+    sauce--common sense. Indeed, Max O'Rell has written nothing
+    better than--in fact, nothing so good as--"Rambles in
+    Womanland." Here we have his riper wisdom, his fuller
+    experience; but while he has gained in wisdom or experience, he
+    has not lost his spiciness or his power of brief, terse
+    epigram.'--_Black and White._
+
+    'Full of sparkling common-sense.'--_T. P.'s Weekly._
+
+    'There is enough fresh material to commend these "Rambles in
+    Womanland" to those who have enjoyed rambling through the
+    author's entertaining writings.'--_Morning Post._
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. The word homoeopathy uses an "oe" ligature in the original.
+
+3. Apart from one misprint correction on page 157 ("necesssity" changed
+to "necessity") and few punctuation corrections, no other modifications
+have been made in the text.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rambles in Womanland, by Max O'Rell
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