sult; the coster does not argue with another
coster in order to convince him, but in order to enjoy at once the sound
of his own voice, the clearness of his own opinions and the sense of
masculine society. There is this element of a fine fruitlessness about
the male enjoyments; wine is poured into a bottomless bucket; thought
plunges into a bottomless abyss. All this has set woman against the
Public House--that is, against the Parliament House. She is there to
prevent waste; and the "pub" and the parliament are the very palaces of
waste. In the upper classes the "pub" is called the club, but that makes
no more difference to the reason than it does to the rhyme. High and
low, the woman's objection to the Public House is perfectly definite and
rational, it is that the Public House wastes the energies that could be
used on the private house.

As it is about feminine thrift against masculine waste, so it is about
feminine dignity against masculine rowdiness. The woman has a fixed
and very well-founded idea that if she does not insist on good manners
nobody else will. Babies are not always strong on the point of dignity,
and grown-up men are quite unpresentable. It is true that there are
many very polite men, but none that I ever heard of who were not either
fascinating women or obeying them. But indeed the female ideal of
dignity, like the female ideal of thrift, lies deeper and may easily
be misunderstood. It rests ultimately on a strong idea of spiritual
isolation; the same that makes women religious. They do not like being
melted down; they dislike and avoid the mob. That anonymous quality we
have remarked in the club conversation would be common impertinence in
a case of ladies. I remember an artistic and eager lady asking me in her
grand green drawing-room whether I believed in comradeship between
the sexes, and why not. I was driven back on offering the obvious and
sincere answer "Because if I were to treat you for two minutes like a
comrade you would turn me out of the house." The only certain rule on
this subject is always to deal with woman and never with women. "Women"
is a profligate word; I have used it repeatedly in this chapter; but
it always has a blackguard sound. It smells of oriental cynicism and
hedonism. Every woman is a captive queen. But every crowd of women is
only a harem broken loose.

I am not expressing my own views here, but those of nearly all the women
I have known. It is quite unfair to say t