MAX O'RELL (continued 3)

Those French girls will not lose their charms by the enjoyment of greater liberty and independence. The American women have thus improved theirs.

CHAPTER XXIX

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN WOMEN HAVE NO LOVE TO SPARE FOR ONE ANOTHER

England and America are two branches of a family who once quarrelled — For their common interests they may make it up, but there will never be any love lost — There are no such quarrels to patch up as family ones.

I have heard a great deal about 'our kith and kin,' 'our cousins across the Atlantic,' 'blood is thicker than water,' 'the Anglo-Saxon race,' 'the English-speaking people,' 'the Anglo-American alliance,' and other more or less venerable platitudes with which music-hall managers in England have for some time succeeded in bringing down the gallery, on Saturday nights especially. I have heard all that, and, in company with most Americans, I have laughed in my sleeve.

During their war with Spain, the Americans were grateful for English sympathy and moral support.

During the Transvaal War, the English, finding themselves isolated and blamed by the whole of Europe, hoped for American sympathy.

'I scratched your back, you scratch mine.'

This sympathy the English did not obtain, or, if they did, in a very small measure, and only among the inhabitants of Fifth Avenue and the 'Four Hundred' of a few large Eastern cities. I was in America for three months at the beginning of last year, and everywhere, from New York to New Orleans, I found ninety-nine Americans out of every hundred sympathizing with the Boers in their plucky and determined struggle for liberty and independence. Their skill and bravery appealed to a nation who, some hundred years ago, themselves fought successfully for their freedom.

Yet, as I had many times the opportunity of telling American audiences, 'In the Anglo-Boer struggle, it is not the Boers, but the English who are fighting for what your ancestors fought for so successfully during the War of Independence—the liberty of the citizen and good and honest government. I have sympathy for the Boers on account of their ignorant patriotism and bravery; but, for the sake of humanity and civilization, I hope the English will win.'

It is true that I got applause for this statement, it is true that the presidents of many American universities thanked me for putting the truth and the facts of the question plainly before the students; but I am afraid I made very few converts to the pro-English cause, although I believe I was more successful on the platform in America than in France, where I got enthusiastically hissed and had several narrow escapes of being mobbed for expressing my rather pro-English sentiments.

The more charitable of my compatriots said it was only fair for a Frenchman who had long enjoyed the hospitality of the English to speak well of them abroad. Some went so far as to suggest that I was probably in the pay of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.

However all this may be, my point is this: I don't care what a few American millionaires, who prefer England to America, who crawl on all fours before the English aristocracy, who would think it beneath their dignity to give their daughters to honest Americans, and prefer to get some English noblemen's coats-of-arms out of pawn with their daughters and their dollars—I say I don't care what these people may say to the contrary, my firm conviction, more and more absolute every time that I travel throughout the United States, is that there is very little love to spare in America for the English people. And this state of things will exist as long as the Americans build their patriotism on their successes of 1776 and 1812 against the English, and so long as school-books published in America teach American children that the English are the hereditary foes of their country.

Add also to this that not one-third of the population of the United States are of English extraction. The Germans and the Scandinavians are not 'kith and kin,' and the Irish are tooth and nail. Now, if you don't believe me, let me wish you had been in America, as I was, during the Venezuelan squabble, some five years ago, and you will be convinced of the truth of my statement.

But I must leave aside all these political considerations, and also the question whether American and English men love each other or not, for I was very near forgetting that the subject of this chapter is 'What American and English Women think of each other.' Here again, as in the case of the men, we must not speak of the aristocracy and the plutocracy of the two countries. Those people are cosmopolitan; besides, they travel and they get rid of their international prejudices.

But what about the good, worthy masses of the people, say, at least nine-tenths of the populations of America and England?

Well, I should like to tell what I think to be the truth frankly and plainly. I am not a rich man—far from it—but I now see my way to easily paying my butcher's bills for the rest of my life, and I can afford to say what I mean. If you don't like it, and want something else, please apply elsewhere for compliments, platitudes, and falsehoods.

I am absolutely convinced that most American women despise English women, and that most English women cordially hate American women. And as it is much more flattering to be hated than to be despised, it is the American women who seem to me the better served of the two.

In the eyes of the English women who have not travelled in America or had the good fortune of mixing in Europe with the best American women, and who, in good womanly fashion, stick fast to their prejudiced notions, the daughters of Brother Jonathan are bumptious, vulgar, overdressed, loud, assertive, indifferent mothers, selfish wives, bad housekeepers, or else unbearable prigs and blue-stockings. And you will hear them deliver judgment in a way that seems to admit of no appeal.

In the eyes of the American women who have not lived the home-life of the English or mixed with the women of good English society, and who have been fed on ideas and opinions given in some American books or published in the newspapers of the smaller American cities, the English women are silly, sat-upon, ignorant creatures, seedy and dowdy, badly shaped, badly dressed, and who can only talk of their babies and their servants.

Among that class of women in both countries, the only concessions I have heard them make are the following: English women admit that their American sisters are freer and smarter than they are, and the American women envy the complexion of the daughters of John Bull.

How amiable women can be!

CHAPTER XXX

THE WOMAN I HATE

Women's-righters — Electric fluids — The bearded lady — The first-fiddle — Lady doctors — Lady lawyers — Lady speech-makers — Prominent women — A pretty picture.

Ernest Renan, whom nobody would dream of charging with frivolity, said that the first duty of woman was to look beautiful. Victor Hugo once said that it was to look pleasant. In mythology we find that the gods fell in love with Venus, but never with Minerva.

The functions of woman are to inspire and to guide, not to lead or command, and I think that the saddest spectacle of the latter end of the nineteenth century was the supremely ridiculous efforts made by some women to usurp functions which by Nature were intended for men to perform. Poor women's-righters! They cannot be men, and they want to cease to be women. Men and women are like electric fluids. When of the same name, they repel each other; when of different kinds, they attract each other. Now, women's-righters are seldom beautiful, very seldom attractive. A manly woman is as objectionable a sight as an effeminate man. The blue-stockings are mostly of the 'unclaimed blessing' sisterhood, and very few of them set up for professional beauties. The blue-stocking fascinates me as much as the bearded lady of a Chicago dime museum.

When a woman is beautiful, she is generally satisfied with playing a woman's part. The tedious women's-righters embrace the thankless career of exponents of women's grievances because they have never found anything better to embrace. And, for that matter, these excellent ladies must not put it into their heads that they have created the part, for it existed in the days of Aristophanes. Praxagora was neither more nor less ridiculous than most of the present champions of women's rights.

I hate the woman who appears in public. I hate the woman who lectures in public or in private. I hate the woman who rises to make a speech after dinner. I hate the woman who speaks about politics, and would like to sit in Parliament so as to transform it into a Chatterment. I hate the scientific woman who lectures on evolution or writes on natural philosophy. I hate the lady physician, the lady lawyer, the lady member of the School Board, the lady preacher, the lady president, the lady secretary, the lady reciter, even the lady who conducts an orchestra. I hate the prominent woman. And, although I don't see her, I hate the woman who writes a book, and feel almost ready to exclaim with Alphonse Karr: 'One book more and one woman less!'

Compared to all these, how I love the pretty woman who dresses well, smiles pleasantly, parts her hair in the middle, and has never done anything in her life! 'Ah!' will exclaim the hateful woman, 'but see, she wears the collar of servitude.' Nonsense! The marks that you see on her neck are not those of a collar of servitude, but those made by the arms of the husband and the children that clasp her round it.

Women, priests, and poultry have never enough, but in wishing to extend her empire woman will destroy it.

Now, ladies, what do you want? I hear you constantly loudly demanding the emancipation of your sex. You say you can do without us, and as for our protection, you'll none of it. For you, in times past, have we drawn the sword; to-day you hold us scarce worthy to draw cheques at your bidding. You would be man's equal, as if you ought not to be content with being incontestably his superior. You have graces of body and mind, and men pay you a homage that falls little short of worship. Your first duties are to be tender, sweet, and beautiful. You have every intention of continuing to be the latter, we have no doubt, but you mean to be tender and sweet no longer. In a word, you mean to strike, as your sisters did in the good old days of Aristophanes.

'You want to be learned? But you are learned in the heart's lore by Nature. You want to be free? But we are your slaves confessed. You want to make the laws? But your lightest word is law already. And, besides, between ourselves, do you not practically make your husbands vote pretty much as you please in all the parliaments of the world? You want to have more influence in the higher councils? But are you not satisfied with knowing that it was a woman who was the cause of the fall of the human race? that a woman has been the cause of every great catastrophe, from the Siege of Troy down to the Franco-Prussian War? that, in a word, woman has ever inspired our noblest actions and our foulest crimes? The rights of woman! What a sonorous platitude!'

You are proud of saying that to your sex belonged Joan of Arc, Charlotte Corday, George Sand, George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Madame Roland, Madame de Staël. Quite true; but could you find many men who would have been happy by taking to wife any one of the ladies I have just mentioned?

If you give a boy the education of a girl, or a girl the education of a boy, the result will be an unsubmissive or degraded being. It is always this result which must be reached by all who, believing that they are protesting against laws and usages, are really in rebellion against Nature. 'I dream of a society,' said Jules Simon, 'where women would be the mistresses in their own household, and would figure in public affairs only through the intermediary of their fathers and their husbands. I would like to sacrifice myself for woman, but not to obey her. I repel her domination, but I crave for her influence.'

The name of woman will ever be glorious so long as it is synonymous with beauty, tenderness, sweetness, devotion, all the sacred troop of virtues. It will be glorious, thanks to the Lucretias, the Penelopes, the Cornelias, ancient and modern, the devoted daughters, the loving wives, the adorable mothers, to the thousands of obscure heroines, who remind us, in the words of the great poet of antiquity, that the best women have been those whom the world has heard least of.

The loveliest picture in the world is that which represents a soldier lying on the battlefield with a woman kneeling by his side tending his wounds. Let the field be that of the everyday battle of life.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE KIND OF WOMAN I LOVE

Another answer to critics — Distorted minds — The portrait of a womanly woman.

I once wrote an article on 'The Woman I Hate,' which brought me an avalanche of letters, not all very pleasing reading. Many of them conveyed to me the wrath of viragos, women's-righters, petticoated males, trousered females, misunderstood and unclaimed women, ripe, spectacled spinsters, cockatoos of all sorts and conditions, who happened by the irony of fate and freaks of nature to be born of a sex of which they failed to be an ornament.

One of these correspondents accused me of 'possessing a nasty mind' for sneering at lady doctors. 'You insult women,' she says. 'Can you imagine, for instance, a respectable woman submitting to an examination by a man?' My dear lady, I am afraid I must return you the compliment. Let me assure you that, just as an artist will see nothing in a female figure beyond beauty and perfect harmony of lines, and will admire her with as cool a mind as he would a statue, just so a doctor will examine a woman as he would a piece of anatomy, and your mind must be fearfully distorted and impure, if you imagine for a moment that a single objectionable thought will pass through the mind of this man of science.

If you really do think so, let me assure you that I pity you, or even must despise you, from the bottom of my heart. And, while on this subject, allow me to remind you that an eminent American man exclaimed only the other day: 'In our country we have a great many female doctors, female lawyers, female journalists, female orators, female preachers, and females in all classes and professions and trades, but what we want is a good many more female women.'

The woman I love is the female woman that I would protect and cherish in return for all the sweet attention she would pay me, and which would enable me to cheerfully fight the battle of life. How to describe her I hardly know.

Should she be beautiful? Not necessarily. Pretty? Yes, rather. Good figure? Decidedly. Clever? H'm—yes. Cheerful? By all means. Punctual? Like a military man. Serious? Not too much. Frivolous? Yes, just a little. Of a scientific turn of mind? B-r-r-r! no; I should shudder at the idea of it. Of an artistic nature, then, with literary tastes? Yes, certainly. But, above all, a keen, sensible, tactful little woman who would make it the business of her life to study me, as I would make it the business of my life to study her; a woman who could be in turn, according to circumstances, a housewife, a counsellor, a 'pal,' a wife, a sweetheart, a nurse, a patient, the sunshine of my life, and always a confidante, a friend, and a partner.

In a little Normandy town I have a dear lady friend, Parisienne to the core, whom I have known and loved from childhood. She is not far from sixty, but, upon my word, I think she is still very beautiful. She was in succession a loving, devoted daughter, an excellent wife, and an adorable mother. She has now lost all she loved in the world, and she devotes her time cultivating a lovely garden of flowers and attending all the church services of the parish. A beggar never passes her without receiving a little contribution, and she helps many a poor family. In a word, the gay life of Paris is all forgotten, and you would imagine that my recluse friend was a hermit, a sort of lay nun, as it were.

Well, yes, she is all that; but isn't she a woman still, though! 'Do you see,' she was saying to me one day, 'I have renounced all my worldly ideas? My flowers, my books, my poor friends, that's the only thought of my life now. I am old; I don't care how I dress or how I look. Anything does for me now. The Parisienne that you used to know, my dear friend, is dead and buried.'

'What a charming dress you have on!' I remarked. 'I do admire the material and the colour, and the cut, too. And how beautifully made and finished! Did you have that made in this town?'

The expression of her face was a study.

'My dear friend,' she exclaimed, 'you do not imagine I would get a dress made in this stupid little hole of a town. They make bags here, not gowns.' And she almost looked indignant, the dear! at the idea that I could suppose she had not her dresses made in Paris. I smiled, and said nothing.

And, as I looked at the book-shelves in her boudoir, I saw 'L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ.' The volume next to it was 'Les Secrets du Cabinet de Toilette.' I could not help making a little sarcastic remark to my dear old friend.

'Well, mon cher ami,' she said, 'do you think the bon Dieu would give me a better reception if I presented myself with a face covered with wrinkles? By the way, what is that stuff they make in England which you told me is so good for the skin?'

Those little contradictions in a good and delightful woman make her lovable. So I think, at any rate.

The woman I love is the woman who possesses all the womanly virtues and qualities—sweetness, devotion, reliability. The little failings I forgive in her are those of her sex—frivolity and the divine right of changing her mind. If in any way woman apes man, she is intolerable and hateful.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN THE WORLD

The Irish, Hungarian and Spanish women — The beauty of the English and French women — The redeeming feature of every American woman.

If I were asked to name the spots of the earth where my eyes had the privilege of beholding the most beautiful specimens of womanhood, I think I would name the streets of Buda-Pesth and the drawing-rooms of Ireland. If, on the other hand, I were asked to say whether there is not, perchance, a spot of the earth where no woman is absolutely, helplessly plain, where she always has a redeeming feature to speak in her favour, I would unhesitatingly answer: 'Yes, the United States of America; for in that country, let a woman have as unpleasant a face as possible, as bad a figure as "they make them," there is an air of independence, a deliberate gait, a pair of intelligent eyes, that will go a long way towards making you forget or overlook the shortcomings of the body.'

On the whole, I think the Hungarian women are the most beautiful in the world. They have the faces of Madonnas and the figures of Greek statues; both Raphael and Phidias would have chosen them for models. They are not languishing, diaphanous creatures; they are the embodiment of health and strength. They stand erect and straight, are hearty and vigorous to the core, perfect pictures of abounding vitality. Yet their limbs and features are full of delicacy. They have large eyes and small feet, full arms, plump hands with small, tapering fingers, and delicious ankles. The inclination of the shoulders is perfect, and the bosom absolutely classical. No curve is exaggerated, but every one is there, the right size in the right place. The sun has spread a reddish golden tint, like the colour of a beautiful ripe peach, over her complexion.

She seldom presents a riddle to the psychologist, and effeminate ethereal poets do not sing of her. She is the vigorous embodiment of sensible womanhood. As her exterior, so her whole character is enchantingly fresh and matter-of-fact. She eats well and heartily, and is an athlete. She swims, dances, rides, walks. In England, you find very pretty faces among the lowest class people; in France, you seldom do. In Hungary, grace and beauty know no difference between high and low, and often bestow upon a poor, barefooted, short-skirted peasant girl (with her beautiful oval face framed in a kerchief tied under her chin) the same ravishing form, the same graceful carriage, the same magically attractive glance as upon her more favoured sister.

But who can touch—even approach—the Irish woman with her dark hair, her blue, sometimes light purple large eyes, her glorious complexion, her soft, velvety skin, her beautiful, graceful form? Sometimes the lower portion of the face is a little too long, but her brow is beyond competition. The Irish woman is a symphony in white satin. Add to these physical attractions the brightness of her expression, the amiability of her smile, and you will come to the conclusion that her charm is unapproachable.

There is so much patriotism in the world, or, I should rather say, so much provincialism, that men all over the earth give the palm for beauty to the women of their own country. Now, dear American friends, you know this is true. Would any of you deny that the American women are the most beautiful women in the world?

I am sorry to say that the beauty of French women is praised by my compatriots only.

I am such a cosmopolitan that I have no biassed mind. I have been a traveller for thirty years. In 1870 I shed a pint of blood and lost the use of my right arm (for military purposes at any rate), so that France and myself are quits, and I feel I have a right to express myself on French topics quite as freely and independently as on any other country. I thoroughly believe that the French women are the most charming and certainly the most sensible women (where would France be now but for the women?), but they are far from being beautiful. They have not the eyes of the Spanish women, nor the complexion and shapely figures of the English, nor the brilliant faces of the American women; but what makes them charming is that they have a little bit of everything, of which they know how to make the best. The French woman is an ensemble.

It must be admitted that, after praising the women of their own country, most men award to Spanish women the palm for beauty. The conclusion must naturally be that the Spanish woman is very beautiful; but, to my mind, it is a kind of beauty that does not appeal to the heart or the soul as it does to the senses. Her large eyes, veiled by thick lashes, her delicate nose and well-formed, ever-moving nostrils, her undulating form, the suppleness, almost boneless, beautifully moulded limbs and figure, her vigour, her languor—every fibre of the Spanish woman's body, I say, appeals to the senses. She does not make you dream of sentimental walks by moonlight, much less still of a quiet, happy life in some retired, secluded little cottage. In her company, you would never dream of being mayor of your city and father of a numerous family. No, the Spanish woman strikes you as a bewitchingly beautiful creature, jealous, sensitive, proud, a sort of mixture of lioness and tigress that would suggest to you the idea of spending your life sailing on a stormy sea. On looking at her, you would almost like to start an acquaintance with a quarrel. If I were married to a fair woman of Andalusia, I would feel that the best moments of my life would be 'making it up' with her.

If the law of my country made polygamy compulsory, I would make love to an English woman or a fair daughter of Virginia; I would have my house kept by a German wife; my artistic inclinations I would trust to a French woman; my intellectual ones to an American one. Then, when life got a bit dull and I wanted my blood stirred up, I would call on my Spanish wife. I would get it.

CHAPTER XXXIII

BLONDES AND BRUNETTES

Characteristics of blondes and brunettes — The ingénue and the villainess — Which of the two do men like better? — Sauterne and Burgundy — I like both — All women cannot afford to be blondes — Blondes with dark eyes — Brunettes with blue eyes.

The ideal beautiful woman of the painters is a blonde.

Eve, Venus, Helen of Troy, all the celebrated beauties of antiquity and mythology, are invariably represented as blondes.

Only Cleopatra escaped it.

The reason is no doubt that the very colouring of the blonde, her fair white skin, her light blue or gray eyes, suggest in her the possession, the embodiment of all that is womanly. The blonde is the woman par excellence.

Some people declare that blondes appeal to the imagination, to the heart and to the soul, and brunettes to the senses—that the former are sentimental, sweet, modest, good-tempered, obedient, nay, angelical, whereas brunettes are strong-minded, assertive, conceited, quick-tempered, passionate, often revengeful, and sometimes devilish.

I have known brunettes to be perfect angels, and sweet blondes to be perfect little devils, and so have we all.

However this may be, most women desire to be blondes, and the proof of it is that, whereas a blonde never dyes her hair black, many brunettes dye theirs gold, blond cendré, light mahogany, and other hues of the blonde family.

On the stage the ladies of the ballet and the chorus wear blonde wigs, and the only possible reason to give for this is that managers believe they will look more attractive to the audience as blondes than as brunettes.

In the modern melodrama, the ingénue is blonde and the adventuress or villainess is dark, especially in England and America, where every member of the caste has to be well labelled from the beginning. If the villainess were a blonde, the gallery would take her for the heroine, and things would get terribly mixed. The gallery would no more understand a blonde villainess than they could take for a villain a man who did not wear a chimney-top hat and patent leather boots, smoke a cigarette, squint all the time to the right and to the left, and hiss like a snake every time he took breath.

Poets are quite as partial as artists to blondes. Alfred de Musset sang of her who was blonde comme les blés. Petrarch's sonnets were addressed to the blonde and blue-eyed Laura. The ancient Greeks used to call young blondes 'children of the gods.' For that matter, blondes especially appeal to the men of the south on account of their rarity.

Large, dreamy blue eyes, fair and soft skin, dainty features, slender figure, such are the characteristics of the blonde which help to make her the ideal young girl; but there is another beauty besides that of the young girl, it is the beauty of the full-grown woman of thirty to forty, a beauty that you will find oftener in the brunette than in the blonde, a beauty more piquant, more solid, and more lasting; but I know brunettes of thirty who are passées, and blondes of forty who are beautiful. You cannot lay down any rule.

Did I hear you ask me which I prefer? How can you ask such a question? How can any man answer it? Good light sauterne is an exquisite wine; full-bodied Burgundy is a most excellent beverage.

I like both.

It is not every woman who can afford to be a blonde. If I were a rich woman of leisure, I think I would ask to be a blonde. The blonde requires much more care than the brunette. She has to avoid exposure, and her beauty will last only as long as her appearance remains youthful. The brunette does not suffer from exposure; on the contrary, the sun improves her beauty as it does peaches.

In northern countries you very seldom see a pretty woman among the working classes; they are faded, wrinkled or freckled, and lack expression.

In Italy and Spain you see, in the streets, flower-girls and fruit-sellers who could have given sittings to Raphael and Murillo.

But I will tell you what I like, although you do not ask me, and that is a blonde with brown eyes or, better still, a fine, tall brunette with dark-blue eyes and the fine delicate skin of a blonde; and, if you want to see the latter, go to Ireland, you will find her there in plenty.

CHAPTER XXXIV

FLIRTS AND COQUETTES

The difference between the two — Points of resemblance.

There is a great difference between the flirt and the coquette. The flirt accepts, even invites, your attentions, without expecting intentions. The coquette is a woman who gives you a promissory note with a firm intention of dishonouring her signature. Just as the prude often says No when she means Yes, the coquette whispers Yes all the time meaning No. The flirt promises nothing. She has nothing to refuse, because she does not allow you to ask for anything. She does not compromise herself in any way. She says neither Yes nor No. She encourages you to go on. You say to yourself, 'Will it be Yes or No? Who knows? Perhaps Yes, perhaps No.'

The coquette is generally a cold-hearted, cold-blooded woman, as perfectly sure of herself as those famous Mexican horsemen who can ride at full speed toward a precipice and stop suddenly dead on the edge of it. The coquette has no capacity for love; she does not seek love, but admiration and homage only. Unlike the flirt, she lacks cheerfulness and humour. To obtain admiration and boast of a new conquest she will risk even her reputation, compromise herself; yet her virtue is in safe keeping, for she has neither heart nor passion. In the comedy of love the coquette is the villain of the play.

The coquette uses man as she does her dresses: she likes to be seen with a new one every day. She kills for the sake of killing. She hunts, but does not eat the game she brings down. She plays on man's vanity to satisfy hers. The moment she has received a man's homage she will leave him to occupy herself with one who has refused it to her. She is dull and dreary. She may be as beautiful as you like, she is never lovable. She should be shunned like the card-sharper, whom she resembles all the more that against your good money she has nothing but counterfeit coin.

The flirt, on the contrary, is cheerful, jolly, often full of fun, and if you can make up your mind to accept her for what she is worth, she may help you pass a very pleasant time. She is not serious, and she does not want you to take her seriously. She is honest. She wants fun, innocent fun. The coquette tries to lead you as far as she wishes you to go; the flirt does not lead you any further than you wish to go. And it may be added that, while flirts have often been known to make very good wives, coquettes have invariably proved detestable ones.

Winthrop was helplessly wrong when he said, 'A woman without coquetry is as insipid as a rose without scent, champagne without sparkle, or corned beef without mustard,' unless he meant (which he did not) to use the French adjective, and not the noun, and say that a coquette is a woman who, by the care she bestows on her dress and general appearance and many other ways, knows how to make herself attractive and show herself in the most advantageous light.

The French language expresses the difference to a nicety. The word as an adjective is complimentary, but certainly not as a noun. Elle est coquette means 'she dresses very elegantly, and has very winning manners,' whereas C'est une coquette means 'she is a coquette,' that is to say, 'she tries to fascinate for the mere sake of fascinating.'

The coquette plays on man's vanity and makes a fool of him. The flirt displays her accomplishments and personal charms either to make you have a pleasant time with her, or, when more serious, to lead you on to an offer of marriage, which she will honestly accept, often with the best results for yourself.

It is only when you say of a woman that she is a 'desperate flirt' that you may come to the conclusion that she is a coquette. Of course, when the flirt is a married woman, she is a coquette; but when she is a young girl, I would call her a very harmless person. On the other hand, in opposition to that epithet of harmless, the adjective that is most commonly coupled with the word 'coquette' is not 'harmless,' but 'heartless.'

The word 'flirt' comes from the French fleureter, which means to go from flower to flower, to touch lightly; but although the word is of French origin, the thing itself is not French. Flirtation is a pastime which is most essentially English. We do not flirt in France; we are more serious than that in love-affairs. After all, flirtation is trifling with love, and that game would be a dangerous one to play with a Frenchman. A woman who flirts would pass in France for giddy, if not worse. She knows her countryman well, and is aware what she would expose herself to if she flirted with him.

The English girl in flirting does not play with fire. Englishmen are reserved, cold. The customs of the country grant liberty to the women, and they accept flirtation for what it is worth. The worst they might say of a girl who flirted with them would be, 'She is an awful flirt,' with a mixed expression of pity and contempt. An English girl who has had a good time at a party, a picnic, a ball, can say, 'I have had such a flirtation!' Why, she could say that to her own mother, and if that mother was still fairly young and good-looking, she might answer, 'And so have I.'

I take the American woman to be too intelligent—I had almost said too intellectual—to enjoy that childish pastime.

I hate the coquette and somewhat pity, if not despise, the flirt. I love straightforwardness. I admire that woman who blooms in the shade, who is earnest in her affections, and who waits until she is in love to allow the curtain to rise; then who honestly, devotedly, straightforwardly, goes through the whole comedy.

In everything I hate imitations. If I cannot get the real article, I do without it.

CHAPTER XXXV

WHAT IS A PERFECT LADY?

'Am I the man as wants a gentleman to drive him?' — How can you tell a lady? — A lady is a woman who adds to the virtues of a woman the qualities of a gentleman.

In a clever article, Lady Violet Greville recently asked, 'What is a lady?'

A friend of mine was once asked in New York by a coachman if he was 'the man as wanted a gentleman to drive him.'

I was myself told once by a negro hotel-porter, whom I had asked a question about some baggage of mine, to apply 'to that gen'l'man over there'—another negro porter.

A lady friend of mine who visits the poor of her district once called at a tenement house to inquire after a poor woman who was ill. The woman who answered the door shouted to someone upstairs: 'Will you tell the lady on the second floor that a young person from the district has called to see her?'

A lady acquaintance, who once happened to be alone in her home with a maid who was ill, out of consideration for that girl, went herself to open the door to a friend she had seen go up the steps of her house, so as to save the maid the trouble of coming upstairs. The following day that maid told a servant next door that 'her mistress was no lady,' as she answered her door herself.

'What is a lady?' asks Lady Violet Greville.

Well, it is hard to tell in these democratic days, when every class strives to ape the others above, when all people are equal to their superiors and superior to their equals.

With the modern extravagance in dress, the boisterous hats, the outrageously decollété dresses in restaurants and other public places, the cigarette-smoking, the card-playing for high stakes, and what not, I shall feel inclined to answer: 'You can tell a lady by the efforts she makes to be taken for—anything but a lady.'

Every class of society has its own definition of a lady. To the inhabitants of the slums it is a woman who stops her nose when in contact with them; to servants, it is one who does not do a stroke of work in her house, pays their wages regularly, throws at them her left-off clothes, and treats them like dirt; to tradespeople, it is one who pays cash for what she buys; for dressmakers and milliners, it is a woman who never bargains, and is known never to wear her gowns and hats more than half a dozen times.

What is that new supreme desire to pass for a lady?

'It proceeds purely,' said Lady Violet Greville, 'from a wish to imitate; it is vulgarity pure and simple.

'It is the aspiration after gentility, the longing to appear what we are not, the desire of the fly for the dinner-lamp.

'It is the natural consequence of the religion of the Anglo-Saxon race—make-believe.

'A real lady's existence,' continues her ladyship, 'seems to outsiders to be all sweetness, and passed in a land of milk and honey; whereas, in reality, could her poor, crawling admirers realize it, the modern lady's life is a compound of hard work, exhausting excitement, anxious ease, and infinite disillusion. To begin with, she is often poorer than her prosperous neighbour, compelled to practise petty and galling economies, travel second class, wear cleaned gloves, and spend unpleasant moments in street-cars and omnibuses. It is the vulgar nouveaux riches who own the carriages, the horses, the jewels, and the money.'

Yet the vulgar rich may be as lavish as they please, may throw gold out of the windows, give a small fortune for their horses and carriages, they have not enough money to buy what that lady possesses, her delicacy and refinement. Even their servants know that, for they can take the measure of the mushroom nobility to a T.

In a few years more, no doubt, the word 'lady,' entirely divested of the original meaning, far away buried in the mists of time, will merely be the equivalent of the feminine gender, the female of the male, and then the gentler bred and wiser of the sex will exult in bravely calling themselves women. And they will be right. 'A perfect woman' sounds to my ears far more sweetly than 'a perfect lady.' There is no misunderstanding about the former. 'I am not an angel,' says an ingénue to her fiancé in some French play, the name of which now escapes me; 'don't expect too much from me. I am only a woman.' A woman—only a woman. Heavens! that is good enough for anybody!

Lady Violet Greville concludes her clever article by a beautiful definition of a lady:

'The real lady settles her debts, does not forget her liabilities, would as soon cheat as commit murder, and actually considers an engagement a binding duty. She has a soft voice and a pleasant manner; she is the daughter of evolution and the survival of the fittest. If she has nerves, she does not show them. She has courage of the finest sort, the courage of her opinions and the moral courage to deny herself.'

I feel almost inclined to draw myself up, and say of the real lady: 'In short, she possesses all the qualities that make up a gentleman.'

Tell me, ladies, if this is not just like a man.

CHAPTER XXXVI

MAMMIES AND GRANNIES

Cupboard love — Every kind of love is more or less selfish except maternal love — Maternal love over-rated — If you never had a grannie, do get one — Reminiscences of grannies — A sacrifice — Grannies are not at all prejudiced in favour of their grandchildren.

Every kind of love is more or less cupboard love. I mean to say that love, whatever form it may assume, requires, or, at any rate, expects, some equivalent for it in return in the shape of affection, happiness, or pleasure. I only make one exception in favour of maternal love. The most loving sweetheart, husband, wife, or child expects to be loved, almost demands it. The loving mother expects nothing, demands nothing.

A mother will love her child, however bad that child may be, however unloving and ungrateful, whatever unhappiness and even sorrow he or she may cause to her. A mother will love and bless a child whom the whole world has condemned. A mother's love and forgiveness will follow a child to the scaffold. There is no limit to it. It is infinite.

Maternal love, far above others, is the very sentiment that keeps us in touch with heaven. It is the only holy love.

And that love is so inborn in woman that you see it already written on the face of the little girl who plays with her doll. It is so inborn in woman that I find something incongruous in such a remark as, 'She was a good and loving mother!' All mothers are good and loving. All rules have exceptions, but this one has none.

Therefore it is no extraordinary testimonial for a woman to be fond of her children, because all mothers are fond of their children and good to them, 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 her child, a woman loves part of herself. It is not selfishness, but, somehow, a little self-love. In her love for her child, whether returned or not, she finds happiness.

But for disinterestedness, never mind mammie: give me grannie's love. God ought to spare grandmammas; they never ought to die, the dear, lovely grannies!

'Haven't you a grandma?' once asked a little boy of another. 'No? Well, you should get one!' True, no child should be without one.

Victor Hugo said he submitted to one tyranny only, that of children. The author of 'The Art of being Grandfather' was right: that tyranny ought not only to be submitted to, but proclaimed. And who better than a grandmother will submit to the tyranny of a child? The sacrifices they will be capable of are superhuman, epic. I know one who charms away the last days of her life by a dainty little supper of biscuit and cream-cheese brought to her every day. She never now comes down in the evening, and that frugal repast is taken up to her when dinner is about over.

Her little granddaughter once came up to her room crying bitterly. She was in disgrace, and had been sent away from table before the appearance of the pudding.

'Grannie,' she said, 'I am not to have any pudding; you ought not to have your cream-cheese.'

'But, darling,' pleaded grandmamma, throwing a loving glance at the little dish of her predilection, 'I haven't been naughty.'

'Never mind; you ought not to have any when your little girl cannot have any pudding.' And the little tyrant cried more bitterly than ever.

Grannie rang the bell, ordered the favourite cream-cheese to be taken away, and, drying the little girl's tears, supped that night off a bit of bread-and-butter.

Antiquity has not recorded anything like it.

People say that mothers are prejudiced in favour of their children. Of course they are. We are all of us prejudiced in favour of what belongs to us, especially if it is of our own manufacture. But for the opinion held of a child, give me grannie's—that is sublime.

Once a lady of my acquaintance, on a visit to her mother, was in the drawing-room with her own little girl on her knees. Grandmamma, in ecstasy, was worshipping baby, challenging the world to produce such another. A lady called, took some notice of the child, and talked a great deal about her own baby, a great deal too much to please grandmamma, at any rate. When the visitor had gone, the dear old lady gave expression to her feelings:

'How silly women are, to be sure! Did you hear that woman talk and talk about her child? Good heavens! one would imagine, to hear her praise her baby, that there was no such a one in the world.'

And she laughed heartily at the presumption of that silly, conceited young mother.

'But, grandmamma,' quickly said my lady friend, 'you must forgive her. I have heard you many times declare that this, our baby, was by far the best and finest the world has ever seen.'

'Ah, my dear,' replied grannie, not in the least disconcerted and in absolute earnestness, 'that's quite different. In our case it's the truth, and no one could deny it.'

Certainly not! Who would dare?

The love of a grandmother, with its delightful weaknesses, with that complete collapse of all power of resistance to a child, is no sign of senility; it is only the love of a mother multiplied by two.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ON MOTHERS-IN-LAW

How to deal with them — Difference between a misfortune and an accident — 'That will spoil the whole thing' — Shoot her!

Adam, they say, must have been a happy man: he had no mother-in-law.

I once heard a Frenchman give the following definition of the difference that exists between an accident and a misfortune. Suppose you walk along the bank of a river in the company of your mother-in-law. If she should fall into the water and be drowned, it is an accident; if she fall into the water and be pulled out alive, it is a misfortune.

The mother-in-law is not dreaded in England. An English mother has no authority over her son: how could she dream of having any over a son-in-law? The mother-in-law is an object of terror in France, where the ascendancy of woman over man is a powerful factor in the social life of the country.

The French woman leads her husband by the nose, and her sons are submissive to her as long as they remain unmarried, and even when they are married they remain more or less under her influence until she dies. That French mother is queen at home, and when she sees that her daughter has started an establishment of her own, she generally at once goes there to settle for a little while, sometimes for a long while, to put her daughter up to a few points about the management of man.

That often causes difficulties and spoils the game; but as nine times out of ten the young wife will take her mother's part in any little unpleasantness that may arise, the husband submits. He knows that the mother-in-law is the drawback of matrimony. He has taken his wife for better and for worse, and 'worse' includes mamma. The bargain is fair. He has signed, and he honours his signature. Besides, he has a consolation, that of knowing that his mother-in-law will give his wife plenty of good and useful advice on housekeeping, teach her economy, and be ever ready to come to her help in times of need.

I know very little of private life in America, but I know, at all events, the supremacy of woman in social and family life, and, therefore, I should feel inclined to suspect the American mother-in-law to be as unpopular as the French one. The most striking point of resemblance between America and France is the way in which women treat men and are treated by them.

Was it not in America that I heard the following story? A man enjoyed the possession of a beautiful and loving wife and a very uncongenial mother-in-law. The latter fell ill, and her daughter went to nurse her. At last the husband one day received the following telegram: 'Mother dead; shall we have her embalmed, cremated, or buried?' The husband wired back: 'Do the three; take no chance.'

How like the following, which is French: A man loses his wife. As the funeral is about to leave the house he is ushered into the first mourning-carriage. His mother-in-law is there. 'I cannot, I will not go in that carriage!' he exclaims. 'My mother-in-law is in it.' 'But you must,' he is told; 'you are the husband of the corpse.' 'Must I?' he says. 'Well, if I must I will, but it will spoil the whole thing.'

I have always wondered how it is that men so much complain of their mothers-in-law and that women so seldom do. Poor, dear little women! They do have mothers-in-law, too—mothers-in-law to find fault with their housekeeping, and to remind them that before they married their sons were attended at home by most devoted sisters. The mother-in-law of a man, no doubt, is often in the way. You sometimes wish she was not there, but with a little diplomacy you can manage her, and even get rid of her.

I recommend the following plan; it proved a big success with a friend of mine. A short time after his marriage his mother-in-law arrived and installed herself in his house. My friend welcomed her, and lavished the most assiduous attentions upon her. He was not a church-goer; he went to church, and insisted on carrying the excellent lady's books of devotion. When a walk was taken, it was to her he offered his arm. 'Your mother is old,' he said to his wife, 'and so kind, too! I am getting awfully fond of her.' In the evening, after his wife had retired, he sat up with his mother-in-law and took a hand at piquet. At the end of the week the mamma-in-law had vanished as if by magic. The young and neglected wife had managed the affair.

But for a woman to get rid of her mother-in-law I am afraid I have no advice to offer, not even that offered by the greatest French dramatist, Victorien Sardou, who says in that delightful play 'Seraphine': 'If ever you have to choose between living with your mother-in-law or shooting yourself, do not hesitate a single moment—shoot her.'

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ON WIDOWS

Women do have grievances — Various specimens of widows — The jolly widow — The inconsolate widow — The plump widow — Marriageable widows — Mourning and black — Last wills and testaments — How long should a widow mourn her husband? — 'You should have seen me yesterday!'

Mothers-in-law are for ever a target for men's sarcasms. Stepmothers are supposed to be the embodiment of everything that is mean. On the other hand, I have never heard fathers-in-law turned into ridicule, and stepfathers are invariably painted by novelists as unselfish, devoted men who come to the rescue of widows, and help them to bring up their children in comfort and happiness.

Poor women do have grievances, and no mistake!

And the widows—oh, the widows! Now, what have they done that they should be the butts for the jokes that are made at their expense? Why should they provoke the sarcasms and excite the scorn of men instead of their pity or, at all events, their kind sympathy?

If a widow's grief is great and she wears the deepest mourning, she is called an 'inconsolable, desolate widow,' and people smile, saying with a sneer: 'She will soon be cured.' If she bears up bravely and well, she is called a 'jolly widow,' and people say: 'She is already better.' If she remains amiable and attractive, she is immediately baptized a 'wily widow,' and if her good constitution is such that even her sorrows and worries do not make her get thin, but the contrary, she is called a 'plump widow,' and people wink. And all the time the widower escapes scot-free. Men respect his sadness, are prepared to write odes about him if he remain faithful to the memory of his wife, and send him hearty congratulations if he remarry. Never a smile; no sarcasm, no scorn!

What awful cowards men are! And what surpasses me is that, as a rule, women are to be found who join them in all the jovial remarks that are passed on widows.

However, widows are not altogether without their revenge. They get many advantages. They have the best of young girls in the matrimonial market. The most-courted woman in the world is the rich young widow. She has a fascination that very few unmarried women possess, and many men prefer her. Why? Don't ask me. Widows know the world, have experience in dealing with men. There are teachers, destitute of patience, who prefer advanced pupils to beginners. Mere laziness, my dear friends, nothing else!

Men are so conceited, too! If they were not, how would they dare marry a widow and constantly run the risk of being found far less loving, pleasant, and attractive than number one was? It is true that if, after a quarrel, a man's wife should exclaim, 'How I do regret my first husband!' he would have a chance to cure her of that expression, by remarking quietly: 'My dear, you will never regret him as much as I do!' But all this does not suggest to the mind a happy condition of matrimonial affairs.

Widows are less marriageable in England than in other countries, for this reason: that their husbands, in their wills, almost invariably stipulate that they leave so much to their wives on the condition that they will not remarry. If they do, they forfeit everything. Of course, to a certain extent, I understand that a man does not feel anxious to know that if, by his industry and carefulness, he has succeeded in amassing a plump little fortune, Smith, Brown, or Robinson will one day enjoy it in the company of his wife. Still, why not? What does it matter? If his wife has been good to him and she is still young when he dies, why should he condemn her to solitude for the rest of her days? What good does it do to him, when he is under the grass, to have his wife lonely and miserable? If I were a woman ever so fond of my husband, I would so much resent that stipulation that I would tear his will in pieces and marry the first respectable and attractive man who sought my hand.

Compared to the Englishman who makes such a will, how I admire that Frenchman who penned the following one: 'I leave to my dear wife, for her sole and absolute use, everything I possess and everything I may become possessed of. She may remain a widow or remarry, just as she pleases. I am not afraid of competition!' I cannot help thinking that this is the proper way to treat a woman who has been a true friend to you, the partaker of your pleasures, of your joys and sorrows, and that, on leaving her, you may as well pay her the compliment of taking it for granted that she will know what is best for her and act accordingly.

In France, a widow wears deep mourning for her husband during a year, and half mourning during another year. Many a French widow wears mourning during her lifetime. For that matter, there is no country in the world where mourning is worn so long as in France, in the provinces especially, where half the population is in black for somebody or other. This outside show of grief may be exaggerated, for real mourning is worn in the heart, not in the clothes; yet if a French widow in a small provincial town should shorten her widow's veil by an inch, people would say: 'If she never cared for her husband, she might have the decency not to advertise the fact and fish already for another!' And you have to conform to the usages of a country, especially when you live in one which, like provincial France, is built of glass houses.

How long should a widow mourn the loss of her husband?

Two days after the funeral of her husband, a young widow received the visit of a friend, who remarked, on seeing the sadness engraven on her face:

'Poor dear! how sad, how haggard you look!'

'Ah, dear, that's nothing,' sighed the young widow; 'you should have seen me yesterday!'

As a rule husbands are mourned as long as they deserve.

And so are we all.

CHAPTER XXXIX

ON OLD MAIDS

Different types of old maids — Many of them are undisguised blessings — Few men are good enough for women — Old bachelors and old maids.

Next to the mother-in-law, the stepmother, and the widow, it is the old maid who comes in for the largest share of scorn and sarcasm, and this is all the more mean that, nine times out of ten, she is not responsible for her position. The more generous-minded call her 'unclaimed blessing,' but many are found, women amongst them, who whisper 'Cat!' And all this is perhaps nothing compared to 'ancient spinster.'

I cannot help thinking, however, that feelings of quite a different nature ought to be entertained towards the old maid. If it is owing to her bad looks or her poverty that her hand has not been sought, or if she was once engaged to be married and then jilted and disgusted out of all idea of ever marrying, she should be pitied. If she has had offers of marriage and has declined them, she should be respected for not having married a man she could not love. If she was once engaged, and her lover died, she should be admired for wishing to remain faithful to his memory. If she simply wished to remain free and independent and use her fortune, as many old maids do, in philanthropic work, she should be blessed. If she refused to accept matrimony as a means of livelihood (the hardest and most thankless of all), her example should be followed. And, finally, if there do exist old maids crabby, sulky, peevish, selfish, and with all the other defects that are generally and most ungenerously attributed to old maids, they should be thanked by a grateful community for having spared men the risk of leading with them a life of wretchedness and misery.

I am of opinion that old maids and widows should inspire nothing but generous feelings of sympathy in the heart of man. Old maids are the wallflowers of that great dancing-party which is called Life. Let men who have overlooked them and women who have found partners be charitable, and let men whom they declined to associate with in the bonds of matrimony be gentlemanly, manly enough to take no mean revenge by scorning them.

No doubt there are despicable old maids—women who shirk all their duties in life, and on whom not even a dog or a parrot depends for its happiness, but they are the great exception, and for selfishness and self-indulgence I should decidedly feel inclined to give the palm to old bachelors. Some old maids are the comfort of parents in their old age, others are the devoted mothers of brothers' and sisters' children, while others are the friends of the poor and the nurses of the sick.

A great prejudice on the subject of old maids is that they are poor forlorn creatures, who spend their lives wailing and mourning over the absence of that man who never proposed. There is nothing to mourn over in that. It is no loss, nothing to regret; not more than one man out of ten is worth having. Most old maids ought to spend their lives in glee and gratitude for a narrow escape. I know very little about women, but I am afraid I do a great deal about men, and it is my firm conviction, and I will express it with all the frankness, all the brutality I am capable of, that there are very few men indeed who are good enough for women.

I know of nothing more pleasant than the company of a jolly, broad-minded, intelligent old maid, who knows that she can let herself 'go' and be a good 'pal' to you, without running the risk of hearing remarks passed of a more or less objectionable character. I know of nothing more enjoyable than the pleasure of such an old maid's company. I count old maids among my most cheerful and companionable friends.

The old bachelor is a social failure, a sort of rebellious outcast, who ought to pay an income-tax of ten shillings in the pound. But the old maid who is bright, clever, cheerful, generous, charitable, hospitable, is an ornament to society and one of its most useful members.

CHAPTER XL

SHOULD PEOPLE REMARRY?

The excuse most people give for remarrying — St. Peter's opinion of men who have been married more than once — Stepmothers.

In some countries of the Far East the question has been settled, so far as women are concerned: they burn their widows. In many places much nearer home it is not unfrequent to hear the opinion expressed that widows should be disposed of as in Malabar. Our genial friend Mr. Sam Weller, senior, entertained, on the subject, views which did not much differ from those of the sages of Malabar.

In the case of widowers I should feel inclined to answer the question in the negative. If you have been happy in your first marriage, do not risk comparisons which might be odious. If you have been unhappy, do not ask for a second dose. In both cases, therefore, I come to the conclusion that the answer should be, Don't!

People who remarry, men or women, have invariably the same excuse. They apologize by saying that they take the important step for their children's sake. If they were to follow their own inclination, they would spend the rest of their natural lives weeping over the graves of the beloved defunct, but they must not be selfish and think of themselves alone, they must remember that they have children who depend on them for their welfare, and they are ready to do their duty and sacrifice their own inclinations and feelings. The devotion of which the human heart is capable, man's especially, will save the race from oblivion when it is gone from the earth.

A widower who remarries invariably reminds his friends that children should be brought up under the sweet and beneficial care of a woman, and he tells them that he remarries to give a mother to his dear little ones—nine times out of ten an indifferent one, and not unfrequently a bad one. If he has no children, he says he is so lonely that he must have a companion, also a housekeeper, and he gives you to understand that all this is 'en tout bien, tout honneur.' And he says it to his friends, and he repeats it to himself so often that he finishes by believing it is so.

The widow with children will tell you that she cannot support her children and that she wants a protector for them and for herself. And she often speaks the truth. At any rate, if you listen to them all, not one will ever tell you frankly that he remarries because he has fallen in love with a woman, and she because she has met a man who appeals to her fancy. When people apologize for what they do, I always suspect them of having done something of which they are not particularly proud, if not absolutely ashamed.

No man has ever been in the next world and returned to earth to tell his fellow-creatures what he saw there except Lazarus; but his contemporaries neglected to interview him, and we are as much in the dark on the subject as if he had never left his grave. However, there is a rumour, in Catholic countries at all events, that St. Peter admits all married men, without any other qualification than the fact that they were married and, therefore, had their purgatory on earth, but that he invariably and rigorously turns out any man who has been married more than once. It is said that, when they protest, suggesting that if he lets in men who have been married once and have thus had their purifying martyrdom on earth, surely he ought to let them in who have been married more than once, he slams the door in their faces, saying: 'Do you take this place for a lunatic asylum?'

I know a Scotchman who, the other day, married his fourth wife. He is only sixty-seven years old, and no widow or old maid should give up hope in the little village of five hundred inhabitants where he lives. He is proud to say that he has never taken a wife out of that village. All his wives have made him happy, and he has made them all happy, as you can ascertain from the epitaphs he has written himself on the tombstone that stands over the grave where they are all at rest in chronological order. He specially praises them for the love and care they bestowed on the children of those that went before.

I believe, in spite of what is said, that such a thing as a good stepmother can be found. Stepmothers, like mothers-in-law, get more abuse than they deserve.

I know stepmothers who have been devoted mothers to their husband's children. I even know some who had children of their own, and who continued to be excellent mothers to the children by a former wife; but it is expecting too much of a woman to ask her to love other people's children as dearly as she does her own. Two broods will seldom live happily huddled together in the same nest. If it sometimes happens to be so, it is the exception.

The world is crowded with young girls who have preferred a rough life of toil and misery to living with cold, indifferent stepmothers, who made them keenly feel the loss they had sustained when their own mothers died.

When the children are grown up, there is no excuse for a man to remarry. Yet he sometimes marries a young girl, but then it is, on his part, a sacrifice again. He wants to give a companion and a playfellow to his daughters, and, to attain that end, he does not hesitate to commit an infamy. Sometimes he marries an old one, and commits an act of profanity, of lèse amour. A man, fond of his wife, does not see her grow old; but no woman above fifty can inspire in a man of any age any other sentiments than those of friendship and respect. He may be the friend of such a woman, but he should not be her husband.

We might philosophize at great length on such topics.

I loathe giving advice, yet I cannot refrain from saying as much as this: If either a widower or a widow fall in love again, let them remarry by all means; but if the real inducement is the love of their children, let them, for the sake of Heaven, for the very sake of their children, engage the services of a good, motherly housekeeper. This has invariably proved to answer very well.

CHAPTER XLI

THE LAWS AND CEREMONY OF MARRIAGE

Laws that will be altered during the twentieth century — People will have to pass examinations before they are allowed to marry — The Church should give young couples a happy start, and change the ceremony of marriage.

It is my sincere belief, as it is my fond hope, for the sake of humanity, that the laws of marriage will be altered before this century is fifty years old. Just as the Legislatures of all the civilized nations will change the laws relating to inheritance and the tenure of the land and the treasure therein, so that the earth may be enabled to feed her children and keep her workers in comfort, and that none may enjoy the privileges of wealth who does not return some equivalent for it to the community, just so will these Legislatures alter the present laws of marriage, which now bind people unfit to live together and allow the production of species which ought to get extinct. I believe that by-and-by people will not be allowed to get married just as they please, and simply because they please. Insane, sickly persons will not be permitted to marry and bring insane and sickly children into the world. There will be some careful pruning done for the good of the human race, which, as it is, threatens to overcrowd the earth.

Before the law allows couples to marry, I believe—upon my word, I do!—that it will require them to pass an examination and to prove that they are fit persons for the undertaking, that their bodies and their minds are sound and healthy, that they have means of living and the prospect of keeping the families that may be born to them. Their antecedents will be thoroughly investigated. It will be ascertained that there is no insanity, no hereditary disease in the family of either of them.

Old men of seventy will not be allowed to marry young girls of eighteen or twenty. Old ladies of temporarily unsound minds will not be permitted to be taken to the altar by calculating young men eager to live without working, whatever indemnity the said young men may receive for their adoption by the said old ladies. Marriage will be held sacred, and no one will be allowed to trifle with the institution.

Then it will no longer be the custom to commit adultery or acts of cruelty in order to obtain a divorce. No couples will be compelled to remain fastened together, living a life of misery. If they find it impossible to live happily and comfortably together, their mutual consent to a divorce will be sufficient to secure their freedom.

By the adoption of such laws, with the daily improvement of all sanitary arrangements and the progress of science, disease and misery will disappear, the human race will become more healthy, happy, and beautiful, and more than ever men and women will fall in love with each other.

Then I hope that the Church will institute a new ceremony of marriage that will give young couples a cheerful start, and do away with the present one, which is dismal and brutal enough to disgust people out of matrimony.

Fancy bringing a sweet, innocent girl, maybe still in her teens, to hear a dull, awful, solemn clergyman say to her, in front of her, close to her: 'Dearly beloved brethren, we are gathered together here, in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honourable estate ... not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding.' And then he goes on to tell you things sufficient to make your hair stand on end. He tells you that matrimony was ordained for a remedy against sin. Yes, you bring your darling young bride to hear herself called a remedy against sin, almost a penance for your sins. There, behind you, stand half a dozen young bridesmaids, blushing, wondering what those brute beasts, that have no understanding, have to do with you, and you feel ready to fall on your knees and implore the forgiveness of the beloved young bride at your side for having brought her there to hear such things. When, finally, that minister says to her, 'Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband? Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honour him?' I wonder she does not exclaim indignantly: 'Not I, indeed, thanks—not for the world!'

I do hope the Church will invent a ceremony that will make a wedding, instead of a fearful ordeal, a thing of beauty never to be forgotten by those who go through it; the Church made a bower of flowers, sweet music, a short address consisting of the most beautiful and pathetic verses from the Proverbs and the Song of Solomon, and a shower of flowers thrown on the path of the bride, when the ceremony is over.

If I had my own way, I would read to them two or three chapters from the second part of that inimitable book which has filled so many French married lives with poetry, 'Monsieur, Madame et Bébé'—only in French; that book cannot possibly be translated into English.

CHAPTER XLII

ON NURSES

Nurses look the happiest women in the world — Their lives and their privileges — True story of a nurse.

If I were a woman of robust health, rich or poor, and I had no fascination for men, and matrimony had no fascination for me, I would become a nurse. The great, the only problem to solve in life, after all, is happiness, and the only possible way to be happy is to feel that you are wanted and you cause happiness in others; in a word, that somebody is glad and grateful that you are alive. I know I should find a great deal of happiness in nursing. I have had to deal with nurses in France during nine months in a military hospital after the Commune, when a compatriot of mine, an insurgent, of whom I never had the pleasure of making the personal acquaintance, shot me in the arm, and also in Great Britain, during a severe illness which I contracted in the North of Scotland, far away from home.

Nurses look all cheerful and happy, and the beauty of their faces, in England, is enhanced, I must say, by a pleasing, very becoming semi-nunlike attire, that gives them a peculiar charm which you find in no other women. There is engraven on their faces that joy of living which Heaven seems to stamp upon the faces of women who devote themselves to the well-being and happiness of their fellow-creatures and to the assuaging of their pains and sufferings. Yes, nurses all look beautiful, and if I were a woman, theirs is the kind of beauty which I should like to possess.

I remember seeing one by the death-bed of a little girl whom she had tenderly nursed, standing at the bedside, motionless, beautiful in her impassive grace, and looking like one of those angels that painters delight in representing at the bedside of children whose souls they have come to bear to the abode of the seraphim.

Another thing that would induce me to embrace that profession—or vocation I ought rather to call it—is the absolute freedom that nurses enjoy. Their very dress inspires respect in all alike, high and low. They can go wherever they like with their uniform on—into a first tier box at the opera or into the lowest slums of the city. Everybody will stand back to let them pass; all will throw at them a glance of sympathy and admiration. The upper tens treat the nurse like the lady that she is, the submerged ones like the angel that brings them a ray of sunshine. The nurse may be ever so beautiful, the worst roué in the street will not only never think of following her, much less annoying her by his loathsome assiduities, but he will allow her to pass unnoticed in perfect freedom and security, and will not unlikely leave the pavement to make room for her. I believe that the pickpocket in an omnibus would hesitate to help himself to her purse, even if that light companion of hers made itself conspicuous to him by its proximity and easiness of access. If he should yield to the temptation and be caught, he would run the risk of being lynched.

I have heard it said that many women become nurses, hospital nurses especially, with a keen eye on matrimony. It is a fact that a good many nurses marry doctors they have come in contact with, hospital students they have worked with, and even sometimes patients they have nursed during a protracted and painful illness. The wounded officer and his nurse have been the hero and the heroine of many plays and novels; but very few women undertake to lead a life of seclusion and slavery, of abnegation and devotion, a life which entails work day and night, and even danger of contracting infectious disease, with a view to matrimony.

On the other hand, I dare say that a fair number of women have become nurses after the sad ending of some love-affair, in order to divert their thoughts from the death of a beloved sweetheart or the unfaithfulness of a light-hearted lover.

At all events, if the mother-in-law, the stepmother, the widow, the old maid, the strong-minded woman, the ruling wife, the woman's-righter, the woman this and the woman that, have supplied themes for the entertainment and the gaiety of nations, the humourist has invariably left the nurse alone.

I was just now mentioning the fact that many women became nurses in order to bestow on their suffering fellow-creatures the love which the death of a dear lover prevented them from bestowing on a man.

As an illustration, I will give a little story that I extract from my early reminiscences.

We were fast getting the better of the Communards in 1871, and my men were warming to the work in grand style, when a piece of burst shell hit me, and some of the fellows carried me off to the hospital. I remember being puzzled that there should be relatively no pain in a wound of that sort; but the pain came soon enough when the fever set in. The doctor of the Versailles Hospital was a rough specimen, as army doctors often are—in France, at any rate—and you may fancy that the groans and moans of the other wounded were not soothing either. One day the doctor told me I should soon be able to be removed to a country hospital. That was after I had been under his treatment for six weeks.

The sights, sounds, and smell of the place had grown so sickening to me, that I think I could have kissed him when he talked of sending me to St. Malo. He came in one morning, and, in his brusque way, said, as he probed the wound for bits of shattered bone:

'We shall be able to pack you off in a few days. You would like to get transferred to St. Malo, would you not? You come from that part of the country, don't you? The air will suit you.'

He was a brute, but he had awfully good cigars, and used to make me smoke one when he was going to have an extra 'go' at my wound. I suppose he hoped the goodness might prove infectious. I used to call him strings of bad names while he was digging away at his work on my arm. Somehow it relieved me, and, truth to tell, he took it all in good part.

In a few days, then, I saw the last of him and he of me, and glad enough was I to find myself in the clean, quiet, nun-tended hospital in the dear old Breton town. There I had a room to myself, as each officer had, and to lie there in that sweet sunny room and hear no groans but my own was almost like being in heaven. The daily cleanings of the wound, still pretty painful, were recommenced under the hands of another surgeon, who proved to be a very good fellow. He and I struck up quite a friendship after a while.

Well, life was, if not exactly rosy, at any rate once more worth living. The brightness and calm were very sweet after the horrors of the Versailles hospital, and a serenity filled the air, like an echo of organ tones brought in by the nuns from chapel.

The nun who attended to me was an angel. I was there in St. Malo three months. Before one month had passed I had grown to love her as I should have loved my sister if she had lived. I loved the sound of her voice and the touch of her deft, gentle hands. I would have gone through the surgeon's probings without a groan if she might have re-bandaged the arm afterwards. But Dr. Nadaud always did that himself. Sister Gabrielle—that was what they called her—would come directly he had done with me, and would try the bandages to make sure they were not hurting, arrange the pillows afresh, and smooth out the wrinkles in the counterpane and my brow at the same time, sympathizing with me all the while in the sweetest fashion possible. Her voice was a great part of her charm, very low, and yet the clearest voice in the world. She had a way of looking at one all the time, too, with a gaze that was almost like a mother's caress, and that wrapped one around with a delicious feeling of security and well-being. Sometimes she would sit and talk with me about the battles, and lead me into chats about my mother, who was ill herself at this time and not able to come to see me.

How old was Sister Gabrielle? Oh, I suppose she must have been about twenty-four or five then, perhaps a little more. She had the Norman blue eyes and a fair complexion, which the white wrappings about her face seemed to heighten and irradiate. Is it the white lawn, or is it a beauty that the self-denying life lends to them which makes the faces of so many of those women look so lovely? I called Sister Gabrielle an angel just now, but you must not fancy there was any cold saintliness about her; in fact, it was her very ready sympathy with all my accounts of my young life in the outer world that drew out my heart towards her. It was her very womanliness that soon set me wondering who she could have been, and what had led her to shut herself away from the world. There was little to do, lying there in bed week after week, and hundreds of times, as I looked at that sweet woman moving about the room, I pictured her without the coif, and said to myself that if she were not then a beloved wife, with a husband's protecting arm around her, and children climbing about her knees, it was not because the love that should have led to this had been wanting, but certainly because some marring chance had prevented the realization of such happiness. It amused me to make a pretty history to myself, with Sister Gabrielle for the heroine. A woman with a voice like hers and such a smile was bound to have loved deeply and to have inspired deep love. Sometimes, when she was not speaking, her eyes had a sad, far-away look. I can only compare it to the look that an emigrant who was toiling along a hot, dusty highroad to embark for a new country might turn and give to the dear spot that he had said a long good-bye to. But that look never lasted more than a minute in Sister Gabrielle's face. It was as if the traveller settled his burden afresh on his shoulders, and, with fresh, vigorous resolution, stepped on into the long expanse of road that went stretching away to the horizon.

One day—I could not help it—I broke into one of those little reveries of hers.

'My sister,' I said, 'sweet and beautiful as you are, how is it that you never married?'

With lifted finger, as one speaks to a too daring child, she said only 'Ssshh!' Then, with the movement of the emigrant readjusting his knapsack, she added, 'Allons! half-past ten! Dr. Nadaud will be here before we are ready for him!'

From that day Sister Gabrielle avoided sitting by my bedside. She watched over me just as tenderly as before, but our talks were shorter, and I never ventured to repeat my question, as you may imagine. Nevertheless, lying there through the long days, it was impossible not to go on wondering what had sent this beautiful woman into the rough groove where I found her.

One day I discovered that Dr. Nadaud came from the same town as herself, and I fell at once to questioning him about her. All that I could elicit from him was that her name in the world had been Jeanne D'Alcourt, and that she came of a good old Norman titled family. I did not learn much by that. It was not necessary to hear that she was noble, for she had the stamp of nobility in every line and in every pose of her body. For a talkative fellow, I thought Nadaud had remarkably little to say about his former townswoman, and, after gently sounding him once or twice on the subject, I came to the conclusion that it was useless to look to him for enlightenment, but I also came to the conclusion that Sister Gabrielle had a history.

August came. I had been three months in St. Malo Hospital, and now the time for leaving it had arrived.

It was early morning. A fiacre stood at the gate with my luggage upon it, and Sister Gabrielle had come to the doorway which led into the courtyard to see me off.

Early as it was, the sun was already well on his day's journey, and perhaps it was the strong glare from the white wall that made her shade her eyes so persistently with her left hand while we were saying 'Good-bye.' As for my own eyes, there was something the matter with them, too, for the landscape, or so much of it as I could see from the St. Malo Hospital doorway, had taken on a strange, blurred look since I saw it from the window ten minutes before.

'Adieu, mon lieutenant, adieu!' cried Sister Gabrielle, in a voice meant to be very cheery.

'Adieu, ma sœur! May I come to see you and the old place if ever I find myself in these latitudes again?'

'Yes, yes, that is it; come back and see who is in your little bed under the window. Take care of the arm!' touching the sling that held it. 'Dr. Nadaud will expect a letter from you in copper-plate style before another month is over. Allons! We will say au revoir, then, not adieu. Bon voyage, mon lieutenant, bon voyage!'

Another hand-grasp, and I made my way to the cab, feeling a strange, intoxicated sensation at being once more on my legs in the open air after such a long stretch between the blankets. Away we rattled down the steep stone-paved street, past the queer old high houses that, as the window-shutters were swung back, seemed to open their eyes and wake up with a spirited relish for another day's bustle and work. Very different to the lazy drawing up of a roller-blind in England is the swinging open of a pair of French persiennes. Whiffs of new bread and freshly-ground coffee floated out from the open doorways of the bakers and the earliest risers of St. Malo, and presently the pungent, invigorating odour of the sea made itself smelt in spite of the mixed odours of the street. It was new life to be out in the open again, and I was going to see my mother; but I could not forget Sister Gabrielle.

Several years passed before I saw again the old steep streets of St. Malo. These years brought great changes to me. My right arm being no longer capable of using the sword, I retired from the army, took to journalism, and eventually accepted an engagement in London. In the English capital I made my home, marrying and settling down to a quasi-English life, which possessed great interest for me from the first.

One summer (six years after the war) I began to make a yearly journey to a town on the borders of Brittany, and always landed at St. Malo to take train for my destination. Trains ran there only twice a day, and so there was generally time enough to climb the dirty, picturesque street to the hospital and see sweet Sister Gabrielle, whose face would light up at sight of her old patient, and whose voice had still the same sympathetic charm. When the now English-looking traveller presented himself, it was always the Mother-Superior who came to him in the bare, cool room reserved for visitors. And then Sister Gabrielle would arrive, with a sweet, grave smile playing about her beautiful mouth, and there would be long talks about all that I had been doing, of the pleasant, free life in England, etc., etc.

One hot August morning, just seven years after I had left the hospital with my arm in a sling, I pulled at the big clanging bell and asked to see Sister Gabrielle. I was ushered into the shady waiting-room, and stood drinking in the perfume of the roses that clambered about the open window. Presently the Mother's steps approached, but when she saw me she had no longer in her voice the cheery notes with which she used to greet me, nor did she offer to send Sister Gabrielle to me.

In a few sad words she told me my sweet nurse was dead, that she had died as she had lived, beloved by all who were privileged to be near her. There was no positive disease, the doctor had said, but some shock or grief of years before must have undermined her health, and the life of self-sacrifice she led had not been calculated to lengthen the frail strand of her life. Gently and without struggle it had snapped, and she had drooped and died with the early violets.

Touched and saddened, I turned down the steep street to the lower town. More than ever I wondered what had been the history of the brave, beautiful woman who had nursed me seven years before.

Turning the corner of the Place Châteaubriand, I ran against a man.

'Pardon, monsieur!'

'Pardon, monsieur!'

The exclamations were simultaneous. Looking up, we two men recognised each other.

'Ah, my dear doctor!' I exclaimed.

'Sapristi, my dear lieutenant! What are you doing in St. Malo?'

Having properly accounted for my presence in the old Breton town, and made known to Dr. Nadaud how glad I was to see him again, we two went off together to lunch at the Hôtel de Bretagne, where I had left my luggage.

Having refreshed ourselves with a light French déjeuner, the doctor and his former patient strolled out of the long dining-room into the central courtyard of the hotel, which the sun had not yet made too warm, and there, installing ourselves at a little round table, we smoked and sipped our coffee.

'I will tell you all I know,' said the doctor, in reply to a question from me. 'It seemed almost a breach of confidence to tell you Sister Gabrielle's story while she lived, for I knew that she had come away out of the world on purpose to work unknown and to bury all that remained of Jeanne D'Alcourt. When she first came, she seemed not at all pleased to see me, no doubt because my presence reminded her of Caen and of the scenes that she had turned her back upon for ever.

'Well,' continued Dr. Nadaud, 'the D'Alcourts had lived for generations in a fine old house on the Boulevard de l'Est, and it was there that Jeanne was born. Next door lived my sister and her husband, M. Leconte, the chief notary of the town, and a man well considered by all classes of his townsmen. It is the old story of affections knotted together in the skipping-rope, and proving to be as unending as the circle of the hoop. My sister had a girl and a boy. The three children played together, walked out with their nurses together, and were hardly ever separated until the time came for Raoul to go to Paris to school. The boy was fourteen when they parted, Jeanne was only eleven, but the two children's love had so grown with their growth, that, before the day of parting came, they had made a solemn little compact never to forget each other.

'Eight years passed, during which Jeanne and Raoul saw little of each other.

'The first time the boy came home, he seemed to Jeanne no longer a boy, and the shyness which sprang up between them then deepened with each succeeding year.

'The boy was allowed to choose his profession, and he chose that of surgery. News reached Jeanne from time to time through his sister of the promising young student, who, it was said, bid fair to win for himself a great name some day.

'At the age of twenty-five Raoul left Paris. His parents, who were growing old, wished their son near them, and steps were taken to establish him in a practice in Caen.

'Time passed on, and Raoul had been six months in partnership with old Dr. Grévin, whom he was eventually to succeed, when Mme. D'Alcourt fell ill of inflammation of the lungs, and so it happened that the two young people often met beside the sick-bed, for the elder partner was not always able to attend the patient, and his young aide was called upon to take his place.