Sir: At a party last night one of my sex read the recent buffoonery,
"Heliogabalus," by the Smart Set editors. When the reader reached the
choice second act one of the women (the bobbed hair type) refused to
listen to any more of the "salacious rot," and walked over to the
bookcase, from which, after careful study, she picked out Krafft-Ebing's
Psychopathia Sexualis. I ask you, ain't women funny?
Philardee.
No, not in this instance. We quite sympathize
with the lady. We much prefer Havelock Ellis
to "Jurgen," for example. Chacun a son gout.
* * *
This peculiar and unliterary preference of ours may be due to the fact
that once upon a time, in a country job-print, we were obliged to read
the proofs of a great many medical works, made up largely of "Case 1, a
young man of 28," "Case 2, a woman of thirty," etc. These things were
instructive, and sometimes interesting. But when "Case 1" is expanded
to a novel of three or four hundred pages, or "Case 2" expressed in the
form of hectic vers libre, a feeling of lassitude comes o'er us which is
more or less akin to pain.
* * *