Our days pass, and our nights, and some nights are darker than others,
otherwise they are all the same and no one of our days is less good
than another. They vary only in the variety of our expeditions and
every new place reveals a beauty equal to the first. This morning I
allowed Dick to visit the secret place amidstream where I come to
write. He took off his garment to bathe, and standing naked in the
sun, on a rock above the waterfall, his body burnt brown, and, with
his pet ant-eater round his neck, he looked the embodiment of Mowglie
in Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book,” the boy who was suckled by the
she-wolf, and grew up in the woods, and could speak the language of the
animals.
Mowglie could look into the eyes of the Black Panther and make him
blink and turn his head away. Mowglie defeated the Tiger, he led the
wolves. Mowglie, the Man-cub, learned great wisdom and philosophy from
the jungle. This new primæval life seems to have revealed something
even to me.
At this moment lying full length in the sun on my rock, I am out of
sight, and well out of sound of any human (Oh! No I am not! Here comes
an Indian--he is going to cross the stream--he has not seen me--he
stops to sharpen his knife on a stone--he has cut a hazel switch--he
has crossed the stream--he is gone--)....
I lie here contemplatively, and find myself saying: “If I were a
man!....” It is revealed to me that to be a man must be a wonderful
accident of birth. To be the right kind of man is to be a king. Now
to be a queen, one need not necessarily be the best kind of woman, and
being a queen is not worth while anyway. Whereas to be a king means
Power. “King by Divine Right.” That defines the finest type of man.
[Illustration: DICK SAILING HIS BATTLESHIP IN THE TURBULENT MEXICAN
RIVER
(Photograph by Clare Sheridan)
]
If I were a man: I mean young, sound of mind and limb, body well
conditioned and muscled--indefatigable. Equipped mentally with a moral
code and a sense of honor, and fearless. I would feel that I could
hold my own with anyone in the world. That I would not be unfairly
matched with any other physical force. That in the fight, in play, in
competition, I had but to exert my capacity to the utmost to be sure of
the issue. Though I were unendowed I would own the world.
If I were a man, I would awake in the morning, stretch my limbs and
say: “Thank God!” When I was a girl, I wished I were a boy, and a man
(I have never forgotten, though I was very young) said to me: “As
wishing won’t change you, you had better try to become the best kind of
woman,” but at best, what is to be a woman?
My short hair and man’s garb have temporarily added an aggressive
personality to my six foot stature and my strength. But, at a turn
in the road I am likely to meet a physical strength greater than my
own, which in conflict would utterly defeat me. The world is not
mine, it is another’s to whom I am obliged to entrust myself. I am a
childbearer, and of what worth are my physical powers of endurance?
I am a woman; I am vain, jealous, changeable, dependant, and ever must
remain so.
Oh God! I pray, in my next incarnation, make me the best kind of man,
and meanwhile as a compensation give me the consolation of having made
one.