OCCASIONALLY a friend will ask me some such question as this, Do you
prefer dark women or fair? Another will say, Do you like tall women or
short? A third, Do you think light-hearted women, or serious, the more
agreeable company? I find myself in the position that, once upon a time,
overtook a certain charming young lady of taste who was asked by an
anxious parent, the years mounting, and the family expenditure not
decreasing, which of the numerous and eligible young men, then paying
court to her, she liked the best. She replied, that was her difficulty.
She could not make up her mind which she liked the best. They were all
so nice. She could not possibly select one to the exclusion of all the
others. What she would have liked would have been to marry the lot, but
that, she presumed, was impracticable.
I feel I resemble that young lady, not so much, perhaps, in charm and
beauty as indecision of mind, when questions such as the above are put to
me. It is as if one were asked one’s favourite food. There are times
when one fancies an egg with one’s tea. On other occasions one dreams of
a kipper. To-day one clamours for lobsters. To-morrow one feels one
never wishes to see a lobster again; one determines to settle down, for a
time, to a diet of bread and milk and rice-pudding. Asked suddenly to
say whether I preferred ices to soup, or beefsteaks to caviare, I should
be nonplussed.