Of course, some of us get very much disgusted with the débutantes.
But, aside from the great superiority they have over girls with
thinking powers (in regard to the number of men who admire them, for
all men admire cooing girls with dimples)--aside from this, I say,
there is something to be said on their behalf. Don't you believe, you
dear, unsuspicious men, who dote upon their pliability and the
trustfulness of their innocent, limpid blue or brown-eyed gaze, which
meets your own with such implied flattery to your superior strength
and intelligence--don't you believe for one moment that the simple
little dears do not know exactly the part they are playing. They are
twice as clever as the cleverest of you. They feel that they are
needed just as they are. The fashionable schools are turning them out
every year exactly as the untrained men under thirty-five would wish
them to be. They know this. Therefore they remain as art has made
them. Feeling themselves admired by the class of men they most wish to
attract, they have no incentive to improve.

And yet, I suppose, untrained men under thirty-five have their use in
the world, aside from the part they play in the discipline of
discriminating young women. Girls even marry these men. Lovely girls,
too. Clever girls--girls who know a hundred times more than their
husbands, and are ten times finer grained. I wonder if they love them,
if they are satisfied with them, if _ennui_ of the soul is not a
bitter thing to bear?

I am always wondering why girls marry them. Every week brings me
knowledge that some lovely girl I know has found another man under
thirty-five, or that some of my men friends of that persuasion have
married out-of-town girls. It does not surprise me so much when girls
from another city marry them. Most men do not like to write letters,