book if the subject goes against their settled opinions. They despise a
novel--howsoever fine and stirring it may be--if there is any taint of
unhappiness to the favorite at the close. But the most flagrant of all
their incapacities in respect to fiction is the inability to appreciate
the admirable achievements of heroes, unless the achievements are solely
in behalf of women. And even in that event they complacently consider
them to be a matter of course, and attach no particular importance to
the perils or the hardships undergone. "Why shouldn't he?" they argue,
with triumphant trust in ideals; "surely he loved her!"

There are many women who nibble at novels as they nibble at
luncheon--there are also some hearty eaters; but 98 per cent of them
detest Thackeray and refuse resolutely to open a second book of Robert
Louis Stevenson. They scent an enemy of the sex in Thackeray, who never
seems to be in earnest, and whose indignant sarcasm and melancholy
truthfulness they shrink from. "It's only a story, anyhow," they argue
again; "he might, at least write a pleasant one, instead of bringing in
all sorts of disagreeable people--some of them positively disreputable."
As for Stevenson, whom men read with the thrill of boyhood rising new
in their veins, I believe in my soul women would tear leaves out of his
novels to tie over the tops of preserve jars, and never dream of the
sacrilege.

Now I hold Thackeray and Stevenson to be the absolute test of capacity
for earnest novel-reading. Neither cares a snap of his fingers for
anybody's prejudices, but goes the way of stern truth by the light of
genius that shines within him.

If you could ever pin a woman down to tell you what she thought, instead
of telling you what she thinks it is proper to tell you, or what she