hey do any small personal office, or attempt to do it, making
believe to tie a shoestring, comb out a curl, fasten a button, they are
Charities in graceful attitudes, and expect you to think them both
charitable and graceful. Nine times out of ten they can neither tie a
string nor fasten a button with ordinary deftness, for they have a trick
of using only the ends of their fingers when they do anything with their
hands, as being more graceful, and altogether fitting in better than
would a firmer grasp with the delicate womanliness of the character;
and the less sweet and more commonplace woman who does not attitudinize
morally, and never parades her womanliness, beats them out of the field
for real helpfulness, and is the Charity which the other only plays at
being.

This kind, too, affects, in theory, wonderful submissiveness to man. It
upholds Griselda as the type of feminine perfection, and--still in
theory--between independence and being tyrannized over, goes in for the
tyranny. "I would rather my husband beat me than let me do too much as I
liked," said one before she married, who, after she was married, managed
to get entire possession of the domestic reins, and took good care that
her nominal lord should be her practical slave. For, notwithstanding the
sweet submissiveness of her theory, the intensely womanly woman has the
most astonishing knack of getting her own way and imposing her own will
on others. The real tyrant among women is not the one who flounces and
splutters, and declares that nothing shall make her obey, but the
self-mannered, large-eyed, and intensely womanly person, who says that
Griselda is her ideal, and that the whole duty of woman lies in
unquestioning obedience to man.

In contrast with this special affectation is the mannish woman--the
woman who wears a double-breasted coat with big buttons, of which she
flings back the lappels with an air, understanding the suggestiveness of
a wide chest and the need of unchecked breathing; who wears
unmistakeable shirtfronts, linen collars, vests, and plain ties, like a
man; who folds her arms or sets them akimbo, like a man; who even
nurses her feet and cradles her knees, in spite of her petticoats, and
makes believe that the attitude is comfortable because it is manlike. If
the excessively womanly woman is affected in her sickly sweetness, the
mannish woman is affected in her breadth and roughness. She adores dogs
and horses, which she places far abov