including the two national conventions first following the extension
of the suffrage. I am surely no fastidious fellow--in fact, I prefer a
certain melancholy decay in women to the loud, circus-wagon
brilliance of youth--but I give you my word that there were not five
women at either national convention who could have embraced me
in camera without first giving me chloral. Some of the chief
stateswomen on show, in fact, were so downright hideous that I felt
faint every time I had to look at them.


The reform-monging suffragists seem to be equally devoid of the
more caressing gifts. They may be filled with altruistic passion, but
they certainly have bad complexions, and not many of them know
how to dress their hair. Nine-tenths of them advocate reforms
aimed at the alleged lubricity of the male-the single standard,
medical certificates for bridegrooms, birth-control, and so on. The
motive here, I believe, is mere rage and jealousy. The woman
who is not pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive
to her sex, and wants to make it a felony. No genuinely attractive
woman has any such desire. She likes masculine admiration,
however violently expressed, and is quite able to take care of
herself. More, she is well aware that very few men are bold enough
to offer it without a plain invitation, and this awareness makes her
extremely cynical of all women who complain of being harassed,
beset, storied, and seduced. All the more intelligent women that I
know, indeed, are unanimously of the opinion that no girl in her
right senses has ever been actually seduced since the world began;
whenever they bear of a case, they sympathize with the man. Yet
more, the normal woman of lively charms, roving about among
men, always tries to draw the admiration of those who have