III

TEMPERAMENT

[Greek: 'Andros kai gunaikos ae autae antae aretae.]--ANTISTHENES in
Diogenes Laertius, vi. i, 5.

"Virtue in man and woman is the same."


THE INVISIBLE LADY


The Invisible Lady, as advertised in all our cities a good many years ago,
was a mysterious individual who remained unseen, and had apparently no
human organs except a brain and a tongue. You asked questions of her, and
she made intelligent answers; but where she was, you could no more discover
than you could find the man inside the Automaton Chess-Player. Was she
intended as a satire on womankind, or as a sincere representation of what
womankind should be? To many men, doubtless, she would have seemed the
ideal of her sex, could only her brain and tongue have disappeared like the
rest of her faculties. Such men would have liked her almost as well as that
other mysterious personage on the London signboard, labelled "The Good
Woman," and represented by a female figure without a head.

It is not that any considerable portion of mankind actually wishes to