ginary. One
often encounters references to her in literature, but who has ever
met hex in real life? As for me, I doubt that such a monster has ever
actually existed. There are, of course, women who spend a great deal of
time denouncing and reviling men, but these are certainly not genuine
man-haters; they are simply women who have done their utmost to
snare men, and failed. Of such sort are the majority of inflammatory
suffragettes of the sex-hygiene and birth-control species. The rigid
limitation of offspring, in fact, is chiefly advocated by women who run
no more risk of having unwilling motherhood forced upon them than so
many mummies of the Tenth Dynasty. All their unhealthy interest in such
noisome matters has behind it merely a subconscious yearning to attract
the attention of men, who are supposed to be partial to enterprises that
are difficult or forbidden. But certainly the enterprise of dissuading
such a propagandist from her gospel would not be difficult, and I know
of no law forbidding it.

I'll begin to believe in the man-hater the day I am introduced to a
woman who has definitely and finally refused a chance of marriage to
aman who is of her own station in life, able to support her, unafflicted
by any loathsome disease, and of reasonably decent aspect and
manners--in brief a man who is thoroughly eligible. I doubt that any
such woman breathes the air of Christendom. Whenever one comes to
confidential terms with an unmarried woman, of course, she favours one
with a long chronicle of the men she has refused to marry, greatly
to their grief. But unsentimental cross-examination, at least in my
experience, always develops the fact that every one of these suffered
from some obvious and intolerable disqualification. Either he had a wife
already and was vague about his ability to get rid of her, or he was
drunk when he was brought to his proposal and repudiated it or forgot
it the next day, or he was a bankrupt, or he was old and decrepit, or he
was young and plainly idiotic, or he had diabetes or a bad heart, or his
relatives were impossible, or he believed in spiritualism, or democracy,
or the Baconian theory, or some other such nonsense. Restricting the
thing to men palpably eligible, I believe thoroughly that no sane woman
has ever actually muffed a chance. Now and then, perhaps, a miraculously
fortunate girl has two victims on the mat simultaneously, and has to
lose one. But they are seldom, if ever, both