unwilling motherhood forced upon them than so many mummies of
the Tenth Dynasty. All their unhealthy interest in such noisome
matters has behind it merely a subconscious yearning to attract the
attention of men, who are supposed to be partial to enterprises that
are difficult or forbidden. But certainly the enterprise of dissuading
such a propagandist from her gospel would not be difficult, and I
know of no law forbidding it.


I'll begin to believe in the man-hater the day I am introduced to
a woman who has definitely and finally refused a chance of
marriage to aman who is of her own station in life, able to support
her, unafflicted by any loathsome disease, and of reasonably decent
aspect and manners--in brief a man who is thoroughly eligible. I
doubt that any such woman breathes the air of Christendom.
Whenever one comes to confidential terms with an unmarried
woman, of course, she favours one with a long chronicle of the men
she has refused to marry, greatly to their grief. But unsentimental
cross-examination, at least in my experience, always develops the
fact that every one of these suffered from some obvious and
intolerable disqualification. Either he had a wife already and was
vague about his ability to get rid of her, or he was drunk when he
was brought to his proposal and repudiated it or forgot it the next
day, or he was a bankrupt, or he was old and decrepit, or he was
young and plainly idiotic, or he had diabetes or a bad heart, or his
relatives were impossible, or he believed in spiritualism, or
democracy, or the Baconian theory, or some other such nonsense.
Restricting the thing to men palpably eligible, I believe
thoroughly that no sane woman has ever actually muffed a chance.
Now and then, perhaps, a miraculously fortunate girl has two