philosopher in one of Trollope's tiresomely clever novels who said: "My
word for it, John, a husband ought not to take a cane to his wife
too soon. He should fairly wait till they are half-way home from the
church--but not longer, not longer." Of course every man with a spark
of intelligence and gallantry wishes that women COULD rise to real
novel-reading Think what courtship would be! Every true man wishes to
heaven there was nothing more to be said against women than that they
are not novel-readers. But can mere forgetting remove the canker? Do not
all of us know that the abstract good of the very existence of woman is
itself open to grave doubt--with no immediate hope of clearing up? Woman
has certainly been thrust upon us. Is there any scrap of record to show
that Adam asked for her? He was doing very well, was happy, prosperous
and healthy. There was no certainty that her creation was one of that
unquestionably wonderful series that occupied the six great days.
We cannot conceal that her creation caused a great pain in Adam's
side--undoubtedly the left side, in the region of the heart. She
has been described by young and dauntless poets as "God's best
afterthought;" but, now, really--and I advance the suggestion with
no intention to be brutal but solely as a conscientious duty to the
ascertainment of truth--why is it, that--. But let me try to present the
matter in the most unobjectionable manner possible.

In reading over that marvelous account of creation I find frequent
explicit declaration that God pronounced everything good after he had
created it--except heaven and woman. I have maintained sometimes to
stern, elderly ladies that this might have been an error of omission by
early copyists, perpetuated and so become fixed in our translations. To
other ladies, of other age and condition, to whom such propositions
of scholarship might appear to be dull pedantry, I have ventured the
gentlemanlike explanation that, as woman was the only living thing