Imagine my feelings when I read the following letter. It lay quite
innocently on my breakfast-table in a heap of others. It was stamped
in the ordinary way, post-marked in the ordinary way, and addressed
correctly, though how the charming writer discovered my address
I cannot undertake to say; in fact, there was nothing in its
outward appearance to distinguish it from the rest of my everyday
correspondence. I opened it carelessly, and this is what I read:--
[Illustration]
RIDICULOUS BEING,--In the course of a fairly short life I have read
many absurd things, but never in all my existence have I read anything
so absurd as your last letter. I don't say that your amiable story
about HERMIONE MAYBLOOM is not absolutely true; in fact, I knew
HERMIONE _very slightly_ myself when everybody was raving about her,
and I never _could_ understand what all you men (for, of course,
you are a man; no woman could be so foolish) saw in her to make you
lose your preposterous heads. To me she always seemed _silly_ and
_affected_, and _not in the least_ pretty, with her snub nose, and her
fuzzy hair. So I am rather glad, not from any personal motive, but
for the sake of _truth_ and _justice_, that you have shown her up.
No; what I do complain of is, your evident intention to make the world
believe that only women are vain. You pretend to lecture us about
our shortcomings, and you don't seem to know that there is no vainer
creature in existence than a man. No peacock that ever strutted with
an expanded tail is one-half so ridiculous or silly as a man. I
make no distinctions--_all men are the same_; at least, that's my
experience, and that of every woman I ever met.
How do you suppose a woman like HERMIONE succeeds as she does? Why she
finds out (it doesn't take long, I assure you) the weak points of the
men she meets; their wretched jealousies, affectations and conceits,
and then artfully proceeds to flatter them and make each of them think
his particular self the lord of creation, until she has all the weak
and foolish creatures wound round her little finger, and slavishly
ready to fetch and carry for her. And all the time you go about and
boast of your conquest to one another, and imagine that _you_ have
subjugated her. But she sits at home and laughs at you, and _despises_
you all from the flinty bottom of her heart. Bah! you're a pack of
fools, and I've no patience with you. As for you personally, if you
_must_ write any more, tell your fellow men something about their own
follies. It won't be news to _us_, but it may open _their_ eyes. If
you can't do that, you had better retire into your tub, and cease your
painful barking altogether. I've got my eye on you, so be careful. I
remain (thank goodness)