should be said of him can not be said;
By too great splendor is his name attended;
To blame is easier those who him offended,
Than reach the faintest glory round him shed.
This man descended to the doomed and dead
For our instruction; then to God ascended;
Heaven opened wide to him its portals splendid,
Who from his country's, closed against him, fled.
Ungrateful land! To its own prejudice
Nurse of his fortunes; and this showeth well,
That the most perfect, most of grief shall see.
Among a thousand proofs let one suffice,
That as his exile hath no parallel,
Ne'er walked the earth a greater man than he.

--_Longfellow_

[Illustration: DANTE]

It was George Bernard Shaw who placed in the pillory of letters what he
was pleased to call "The Disagreeable Girl."

And he has done the deed by a dry-plate, quick-shutter process in a way
that surely lays him liable for criminal libel in society's assize.

I say society's assize advisedly, because it is only in society that the
Disagreeable Girl plays a prominent part, assuming the center of the
stage. Society, in the society sense, is built on vacuity, its favors
being for those who reveal a fine capacity to waste and consume. Those
who would write their names high on society's honor-roll need not be
either useful or intelligent--they need only seem.

And this gives the Disagreeable Girl her opportunity. In the paper-box
factory she would have to make good; Cluett, Coon and Company ask for
results; the stage demands a modicum at least of intellect, in addition
to shape; but society asks for nothing but pretense, and the palm is
awarded to palaver.

But do not, if you please, imagine that the Disagreeable Girl does not
wield an influence.

That is the very point: her influence is so far-reaching that George
Bernard Shaw, giving cross-sections of life, in the form of dramas, can
not write a play and leave her out.

She is ubiquitous, omniscient and omnipresent--is the Disagreeable Girl.
She is a disappointment to her father, a humiliation to her mother, a
pest to brothers and sisters, and when she finally marries, she saps the
inspiration of her husband and often converts a proud and ambitious man
into a weak and cowardly cur.

Only in society does the Disagreeable Girl shine: everywhere else she is
an abject failure. The much-vaunted Gibson Girl is a kind of deluxe
edition of