XI. WOMAN’S INTUITIONS.

“Your charming sex, as a rule, are not possessed of reasoning power,” remarked a gentleman to me the other day. “They rush at conclusions in the same sort of zigzag fashion that a humming bird darts at a bed of clover. Nobody can tell which blossom she is aiming at, and I doubt if she knows herself.”

“And yet I observe that the humming bird generally obtains the honey,” remarked I dryly, “and however a woman reasons I observe that she generally ‘gets there’s in the end.’”

“Aw! Ya-as—ah—‘gets there,’” mumbled my companion, who was an Englishman not yet up in American slang. So I came to his aid with:

“She extracts what she wants from the question in hand just as the humming bird extracts the honey, and I imagine the honey is just as good and considerably less adulterated than if it had been crushed out of the clover blossom by a steam engine.”

“And do they make honey by steam in your wonderful country?” demanded my Englishman, eagerly catching at what seemed a tangible fact.

Well, an American would not have said it but I am sure a good many of them think it, and especially those men whose reasoning powers are of the heavy, wooden order which work like an old cider mill I once stood and watched in the country, with creaks and groans portentous, and which required a yoke of oxen to drag it round its little appointed circuit.

Of course we all know that woman’s reason differs from man’s reason, just as her light, agile figure differs from his breadth of brawn and muscle. No woman is likely to excel in “putting the hammer,” or in lifting heavy weights, or in a bout of fisticuffs in the ring, but a great many women excel at tennis and billiards and archery, a good many are excellent shots with light rifles, and some are as invincible with the foils as Bussy d’Amboise or Henriot. Look, for instance, at the Chevalier d’Eon, who fought many duels and killed many opponents before she was discovered to be a woman. All of which goes to prove that where quickness and skill are the qualities required, a woman is just as likely to succeed as a man, although where weight and brawny muscle are essential she does not claim equality.

What is true of the body is true of the mind in most cases: in fact our friends, the theosophists and psychists, claim that the body is only the outward and visible sign of the spirit within, and that what a man is so he is bound to look, if not at the start, surely at the finish. I don’t say this is true, for I have not made up my mind about it; but it is a theory much in vogue just now.

I was saying very much the same thing the other day to a man, who replied:

“Yes, women often play well at billiards, but they win the game by a series of the most daring flukes and impossible hazards—plays that no man would ever venture upon, and would be howled at if he did.”

“But you say they win the game,” remarked I, and he grumpily responded:

“Yes, they win, but they’ve no right to; and it’s just the same in fencing. They dart under and over your guard, and use a foil more as if it were a sting than a recognized weapon.”

“But if it were a real combat they would be likely to kill their opponents?”

“Yes, the poor fellow would be spitted while he was trying to make out what his fair enemy was doing.”

“Capital! That is just the parable I want to support my theory. You men can’t or won’t allow that a woman has reasoning powers, but her tongue is like her rapier—she may not use it according to the rules laid down by men, but while her opponent is wondering what his fair enemy is doing he finds himself stabbed to the heart.”

“To the heart, yes, but not generally to the brain,” responded my friend, and I assured him that his retort was quite feminine in its patness and conclusiveness.

But it is not only in argument that women show this side of their complex nature, but in achieving whatever end they set before themselves. They are not—that is, women, as a rule, are not—-consciously scheming and cunning; they do not say, “The best way to win this success is to appear indifferent and to seem bent upon something else,” but they all unconsciously act out that plan and so achieve their end, they scarcely know how.

I have a friend who possesses a great many pictures and other ornamental items of furnishing a room. She is, like many Americans, very peripatetic in her disposition, and nearly every year sees her in a new set of apartments. I lately visited her in her latest home and noticed that very few of the pictures were hung, and that the bronzes, china, statuettes, shrines, brackets, draperies—in fact, all the objects of “bigotry and virtue”—were piled upon tables in the back drawing room, evidently awaiting their fate.

“You have been here almost a week and not arranged your pretty things yet!” exclaimed I; and she, with a little sigh replied:

“No! The inspiration hasn’t come yet. Until it does I haven’t the faintest idea where any of those things belong, and if I insisted upon arranging them very likely I should take such a dislike to the rooms that I couldn’t stay in them.”

“But when the right moment comes,” suggested I, with a laugh, “you will be like a poet who cannot wait for pen, ink and paper to put down his idea.”

“Exactly,” replied my friend gravely. “When the right moment comes I shall see the precise spot where every picture should hang, every vase stand, every drapery be flung so as to look as if it had dropped there by the happiest of accidents. My only trouble is lest the inspiration shouldn’t come before my reception day comes round, for I positively won’t let anybody else arrange them, and neither will I let the world see the naked framework of my home.”

“Well, I shall come at any rate, for the skeleton in your cupboard is an old friend of mine.”

“Yes, you may come, but the maid will probably tell you that I am in bed with neuralgia. Then come right into my bedroom, and we will have a cozy cup of tea all to ourselves.”

But when the reception day came round, and I presented myself with an expectant smile just under the surface the maid simply ushered me into the drawing room, where stood my hostess in the midst of her charming surroundings, every one of which had found the very place of all others where it looked the best and the most at home. Somebody was saying to her as I approached:

“I am sure, Mrs. ——, that you select your apartments to fit your pictures and ornaments. You saw, for instance, when you looked at this room that your Bouguereau never could find another such light, and that Venetian mirror and that pier were made for each other.”

“An eternal fitness for each other, haven’t they?” assented my friend, turning to me with a twinkle of the eye as she murmured:

“The inspiration never came until noon to-day, but the moment it did I called the servants, and we had everything done by 3 o’clock. Not bad, is it?”

“Perfect, my dear; but your demon is a very unreliable official.”

“Wouldn’t do for a business man, would he?”

“Nor for a man of any sort,” thought I to myself, as I moved away, and presently in my lonely drive I fell into my favorite fit of musing upon the different characteristics of man and woman, and of the difficulty each has in comprehending the other fully.

Probably of all the problems that puzzle the masculine student of woman the most utterly insoluble is this matter of intuition. It is far easier for a woman to understand the formal and laborious methods of a man’s mind than for him to grasp the idea of an intuitive process which cannot be formulated even by its owner. A man of intellectual nature and regular education bases his every argument, his every conviction, upon mathematical truths. He is fond of saying, “It is as certain as that two and two make four,” and that to him is a perfectly unassailable standpoint. He perceives that to the woman with whom he argues the fact that two and two make four is not of the slightest importance. She says, for instance, that a perfect army of street roughs threatened her, and it was hours before she could get through them. The man corrects her with:

“There were but four of the roughs, and it was not five minutes before you were out of their reach and quite safe.”

“Only four indeed! More likely forty-four!” cries the woman, with scorn and indignation.

“I assure you there were only four—two on one side of the door and two on the other, and two and two make four, don’t they?”

“Not always, by any means,” retorts madame, with all the courage of her convictions. “Not in this case, for instance. Two and two made a great deal more than four for me, I assure you.”

And she is actually more correct than the man is. Four street ruffians, inflamed with the lawless spirit of the mob and attempting to hustle and annoy a lady simply because she is well dressed and looks scornfully at them, become in her eyes and to her consciousness a great many more than two and two—they become a crowd, a mob, a phalanx, a terrifying and perhaps deadly force. She is quite right in saying that in this case two and two did not make four, but forty-four, and that the period of time during which she felt herself in their power was to her without bounds or limit, but a chaos of endurance answering to many hours of ordinary life. If the clock said it was but five minutes, why, all the worse for the clock; and it must have been a male clock, although they are generally called “she.”

But you can’t make a man see this. You, for instance—you are reading it. Tell me, aren’t you saying to yourself:

“She means that to the frightened woman the mob seemed large and the time seemed long, but in point of fact two men and two men are only four men, and five minutes are but five minutes.”

There! That is exactly the difference between a man’s mind and a woman’s. The man is fast bound, “tied and fettered in the chain,” not “of his sins” perhaps, but of his mechanical make-up. He simply cannot take in the idea that an event is not what actually and literally happens, but it is to each person the results it produces upon that person’s mentality.

A volcanic eruption, for instance, or an earthquake, is to the scientist a perfectly regular and comprehensible phenomenon of nature—the combination and explosion of certain gases and the liquefying and projection of certain mineral subterranean deposits. He gets out of the way of the rivers of lava just as he would get out of the way of a locomotive, but he is no more terrified by the one than the other. It is simply a phenomenon of nature, like a snowstorm or a high tide.

But to a savage, who had never seen or heard of such a thing, this volcanic eruption is the malignant or tyrannical act of some mighty spirit, some all-powerful demon who is threatening to destroy mankind unless he is propitiated. He accordingly propitiates him either by throwing his eldest son into one of the gaping chasms, or by vowing to do some tremendous act of heroism, or perchance, if he is a very, very good savage, by resolving not to flog his wife any more.

In any case, the eruption makes a big change in this savage’s career. It is to him a matter of life and death. Its results last perhaps after the man is dead.

Now, the scientist’s estimate of this phenomenon and the savage’s estimate of the very same event are both true, perfectly true to the individual forming the estimate. Neither one could possibly view the occurrence from the standpoint of the other; neither one could perhaps even put himself in the other’s place enough to see just what it was the other believed. Each is to the other a poor, deluded fool, and the savage despises and marvels at the philosopher just as much as the philosopher at him.

Now, who shall say that either is absolutely right, to the stultification of the other, any more than a mirror is a false mirror because it shows you a different image from what it shows me?

And so by this rather roundabout course we come back to the different workings of the man’s and the woman’s mind. Each arrives at a solution of the problem, whatever it may be, by a route utterly unfamiliar, even impossible, to the steps of the other. Perhaps the solution is the same in essence, although somewhat differently expressed; perhaps, on the other hand, the results are widely different; but in either case I contend that both are right and neither wrong, and most women will be ready to agree with me. Most men, on the other hand, will disagree and exclaim contemptuously:

“How ridiculous! How exactly like a woman’s argument! Of course a thing is either right or it’s wrong. How can two opposing views both be correct? If two and two make four on one occasion, they do on every occasion. It’s all nonsense, utter nonsense.”

So speaks the lord of creation and considers the matter settled, and so it is for him; but the lady of creation has an equal right to an “ipsé dixit” on this and every other topic of common interest and value to both sexes, and she says:

“My friend, you are wrong. Things are not what they seem either to you or to me. Things are what they become in the consciousness of the individual receiving them. Two and two do generally make four, I grant you; but there are occasions when they make infinitely more or infinitely less, and it is your misfortune to be a man and therefore unable to perceive this truth.”

If some reader of the masculine persuasion asks me, How do you know this rather startling truth, and how do you prove it? I reply, with that grand simplicity characteristic of great minds and great truths:

I know it by intuition, and I prove it by looking in upon my own convictions, which tell me it is a truth.

If yours don’t tell you so, it is not a truth for you, and we continue gazing, the one upon the gold and the other upon the silver side of the shield, each assured that our own is the true side.