A Miscellany of Men | Page 3

women. It is that votes are unworthy of men, so
long as they are merely votes; and have nothing in them of this ancient
militarism of democracy. The only crowd worth talking to is the crowd
that is ready to go somewhere and do something; the only demagogue

worth hearing is he who can point at something to be done: and, if he
points with a sword, will only feel it familiar and useful like an
elongated finger. Now, except in some mystical exceptions which
prove the rule, these are not the gestures, and therefore not the instincts,
of women. No honest man dislikes the public woman. He can only
dislike the political woman; an entirely different thing. The instinct has
nothing to do with any desire to keep women curtained or captive: if
such a desire exists. A husband would be pleased if his wife wore a
gold crown and proclaimed laws from a throne of marble; or if she
uttered oracles from the tripod of a priestess; or if she could walk in
mystical motherhood before the procession of some great religious
order. But that she should stand on a platform in the exact altitude in
which he stands; leaning forward a little more than is graceful and
holding her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified--well,
I only write here of the facts of natural history; and the fact is that it is
this, and not publicity or importance, that hurts. It is for the modern
world to judge whether such instincts are indeed danger signals; and
whether the hurting of moral as of material nerves is a tocsin and a
warning of nature.

THE POET AND THE CHEESE
There is something creepy in the flat Eastern Counties; a brush of the
white feather. There is a stillness, which is rather of the mind than of
the bodily senses. Rapid changes and sudden revelations of scenery,
even when they are soundless, have something in them analogous to a
movement of music, to a crash or a cry. Mountain hamlets spring out
on us with a shout like mountain brigands. Comfortable valleys accept
us with open arms and warm words, like comfortable innkeepers. But
travelling in the great level lands has a curiously still and lonely quality;
lonely even when there are plenty of people on the road and in the
market-place. One's voice seems to break an almost elvish silence, and
something unreasonably weird in the phrase of the nursery tales, "And
he went a little farther and came to another place," comes back into the
mind.

In some such mood I came along a lean, pale road south of the fens,
and found myself in a large, quiet, and seemingly forgotten village. It
was one of those places that instantly produce a frame of mind which, it
may be, one afterwards decks out with unreal details. I dare say that
grass did not really grow in the streets, but I came away with a curious
impression that it did. I dare say the marketplace was not literally
lonely and without sign of life, but it left the vague impression of being
so. The place was large and even loose in design, yet it had the air of
something hidden away and always overlooked. It seemed shy, like a
big yokel; the low roofs seemed to be ducking behind the hedges and
railings; and the chimneys holding their breath. I came into it in that
dead hour of the afternoon which is neither after lunch nor before tea,
nor anything else even on a half-holiday; and I had a fantastic feeling
that I had strayed into a lost and extra hour that is not numbered in the
twenty-four.
I entered an inn which stood openly in the market-place yet was almost
as private as a private house. Those who talk of "public-houses" as if
they were all one problem would have been both puzzled and pleased
with such a place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an
elaborate cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of
comfortable Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she
was) the original Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour
sat a tall, strong, and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a
pair of scissors stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework.
Two feet behind them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like
wood painted scarlet, with a huge mug of mild beer which he had not
touched, and probably would not touch for hours. On the hearthrug
there was an equally motionless cat; and on the table a copy of
'Household Words'.
I was conscious of some atmosphere,