consent), has her outing, spends her little "pile," and returns
after three or four months to the home of her delighted spouse.

Do these two stories need any comment? Let our sisters and their
friends think twice before they make themselves irrevocably wheels
in a machine whose working is unknown to them, lest they be torn to
pieces as it moves. Having the good luck to be born in the
"paradise of women," let them beware how they leave it, charm the
serpent never so wisely, for they may find themselves, like the
Peri, outside the gate.





CHAPTER 6 - The Complacency of Mediocrity


FULL as small intellects are of queer kinks, unexplained turnings
and groundless likes and dislikes, the bland contentment that buoys
up the incompetent is the most difficult of all vagaries to account
for. Rarely do twenty-four hours pass without examples of this
exasperating weakness appearing on the surface of those shallows
that commonplace people so naively call "their minds."

What one would expect is extreme modesty, in the half-educated or
the ignorant, and self-approbation higher up in the scale, where it
might more reasonably dwell. Experience, however, teaches that
exactly the opposite is the case among those who have achieved
success.