The Spinster Book | Page 5

apt to admire each other, and those who
habitually seek Emerson for new courage may easily find the world
more kindly if they face it hand in hand.
A latter-day philosopher has remarked upon the subtle sympathy
produced by marked passages. "The method is so easy and so unsuspect.
You have only to put faint pencil marks against the tenderest passages
in your favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has
only to leave here and there the dropped violet of a timid, confirmatory
initial, for you to know your fate."

[Sidenote: The High-Priest]
A man never has a platonic friendship with a woman it is impossible
for him to love. Cupid is the high-priest at these rites of reading aloud
and discussing everything under the sun. The two become so closely
bound that one arrow strikes both, and often the happiest marriages are
those whose love has so begun, for when the Great Passion dies, as it
sometimes does, sympathy and mutual understanding may yield a
generous measure of content.
The present happy era of fiction closes a story abruptly at the altar or
else begins it immediately after the ceremony. Thence the enthralled
reader is conducted through rapture, doubt, misunderstanding,
indifference, complications, recrimination, and estrangement to the
logical end in cynicism and the divorce court.
In the books which women write, the hero of the story shoulders the
blame, and often has to bear his creator's vituperation in addition to his
other troubles. When a man essays this theme in fiction, he shows
clearly that it is the woman's fault. When the situation is presented
outside of books, the happily married critics distribute condemnation in
the same way, it being customary for each partner in a happy marriage
to claim the entire credit for the mutual content.
[Sidenote: Pursuit and Possession]
Over the afternoon tea cups it has been decided with unusual and
refreshing accord, that "it is pursuit and not possession with a man."
True--but is it less true with women?
When Her Ladyship finally acquires the sealskin coat on which she has
long set her heart, does she continue to scan the advertisements? Does
she still coddle him who hath all power as to sealskin coats, with
tempting dishes and unusual smiles? Not unless she wants something
else.
Still, it is woman's tendency to make the best of what she has, and
man's to reach out for what he has not. Man spends his life in the effort

to realise the ideals which, like will-o'-the-wisps, hover just beyond
him. Woman, on the contrary, brings into her life what grace she may,
by idealising her reals.
In her secret heart, woman holds her unchanging ideal of her own
possible perfection. Sometimes a man suspects this, and loves her all
the more for the sweet guardian angel which is thus enthroned. Other
men, less fine, consider an ideal a sort of disease--and they are usually
a certain specific.
But, after all, men are as women make them. Cleopatra and Helen of
Troy swayed empires and rocked thrones. There is no woman who does
not hold within her little hands some man's achievement, some man's
future, and his belief in woman and God.
She may fire him with high ambition, exalt him with noble striving, or
make him a coward and a thief. She may show him the way to the gold
of the world, or blind him with tinsel which he may not keep. It is she
who leads him to the door of glory and so thrills him with majestic
purpose, that nothing this side Heaven seems beyond his eager reach.
[Sidenote: The Potter's Hand]
Upon his heart she may write ecstasy or black despair. Through the
long night she may ever beckon, whispering courage, and by her magic
making victory of defeat. It is for her to say whether his face shall be
world-scarred and weary, hiding tragedy behind its piteous lines;
whether there shall be light or darkness in his soul. He cannot escape
those soft, compelling fingers; she is the arbiter of his destiny--for like
clay in the potter's hands, she moulds him as she will.

Concerning Women
[Illustration]

Concerning Women
In order to be happy, a woman needs only a good digestion, a
satisfactory complexion, and a lover. The first requirement being met,
the second is not difficult to obtain, and the third follows as a matter of
course.
[Sidenote: Nagging]
He was a wise philosopher who first considered crime as disease, for
women are naturally sweet-tempered and charming. The shrew and the
scold are to be reformed only by a physician, and as for nagging, is it
not allopathic scolding in homeopathic doses?
A well woman is usually a happy one, and incidentally, those around
her share her content. The