ess microscope of self-analysis to
their carefully tended Ego, to see if, haply, any of these things we
say apply to themselves.

Of course, this is hard on men, because very likely some of those who
have been led by women to believe that they are entertaining, even to
the verge of fascination, are the very ones who are the greatest
bores. But we women do our best. We are hampered by our supposed
amiability, and bound up by a thousand invisible cords of tact and
policy to a line of action which dupes the cleverest of men. And we
are shrewd enough to know that if we should become what they now, in
the smart of their wounded vanity, would call honest, they would
simply turn their broadcloth backs upon our uncalled-for frankness and
seek the honeyed society of some sweet woman who flattered them
exactly as we used to flatter them before we became so "honest."

Ah, well-a-day! Enter the self-made man. And with him the commercial
spirit of the age. Enter the clink of coin and the unctuous corpulence
of a roll of bills. Enter the essence of self-satisfaction, the
glorious spectacle of a man who spells "myself" with a capital M.

Have you never noticed the change in conversation with the entrance of
a new person? How, when a lovely girl enters, the men all straighten
their ties and the women moisten their lips? How, when the new person
is a self-made man, with his newness so apparent that he seems to
exhale the odor of varnish and gilt--how all repose vanishes, and
whatever of crudity there is anywhere suddenly makes itself known, and
rushes forth to meet the wave of self-boasting which sweeps all before
it when the self-made man speaks?

And yet I approve of the self-made man in the abstract. It is the true
spirit of Americanism which caused him to raise himself from the ranks
of the poor and obscure, and educate himself, or, more likely still,
grow rich without education. But is it necessary for him to have the
bad taste to boast of it, and never let you forget for one moment that
he is the product of man's hand and that the Creator only acted in the
capacity of sponsor?

I admire the pluck, the perseverance, the indomitable energy, the
ambition which produced the man of prominence from the raw boy; but,
kind Heaven, let us forget for one brief moment, if we can, that he
did this thing.

It is not the fact that he is a self-made man that bores us--we honor
him for that. But it is his vain boasting--the tactless forcin