were
unflinchingly honest with the men who love us?) No one will deny that
we would even countenance a certain amount of corruption. We fully
agree with those men who tell us weakly questioning women that
campaign funds are a necessity. We never have been able to discover
just where the money in politics went to, but the expenses of a
campaign in our line are more in evidence. I doubt if the most
straitlaced Puritan will gainsay me when I declare that bribery from
the candidates, in the form of theatres, opera-boxes, flowers,
bonbons, and books, would not only be tolerated, but even, in a modest
manner, encouraged--having, of course, a keen eye as to the elasticity
of the campaign fund. But, of course, just as vulgar bribery, _per
se_, only catches the easy and unthinking voter in politics, so, in
like manner, would these evidences of generosity only capture the less
desirable voter in love. When you men are trying for a woman's vote
you need give yourselves no uneasiness. If she is worth having,
character wins every time. You don't believe that. That is why you
trust to bribery to do it all. And it is also why so many of you get
the girl you try for--which is about the richest punishment you could
receive.

I adore Hamlet. Not because he was so noble as to give up his life to
avenge his father's most foul murder. Not because he was a chivalrous
King Arthur, to protect Ophelia's womanly pride from the jeers of a
coarse court by openly declaring that he had loved her when he hadn't.
Not for any of Shakespeare's reasons for painting him a hero. But for
two much more reasonable reasons. One that he said, "I myself am
indifferent honest"--oh, the humanity of Hamlet!--and the other that,
when under the spell of her beauty and in the tentative, interested
stage when he cared for her all but enough to ask her to marry him, he
had the wit to discover that she was a fool. Imagine the calamity of
Hamlet married to Ophelia! That _would_ have been a tragedy. Think of
a man clever enough to discover that his idol was made of putty--that
his sweetheart was a Rosamond Vincy! Hamlet was a wise man. He
withdrew in time. Most men have to be married ten years to discover
that they have married an Ophelia or a Rosamond.

It is a trite saying that the whole world is behind a woman urging her
to marry. But I find much to interest me in trite sayings. I like to
get hold of them, and look them through, and turn them wrong side out,
and pul