hold, and would figure in public
affairs only through the intermediary of their fathers and their
husbands. I would like to sacrifice myself for woman, but not to obey
her. I repel her domination, but I crave for her influence.'

The name of woman will ever be glorious so long as it is synonymous
with beauty, tenderness, sweetness, devotion, all the sacred troop of
virtues. It will be glorious, thanks to the Lucretias, the Penelopes,
the Cornelias, ancient and modern, the devoted daughters, the loving
wives, the adorable mothers, to the thousands of obscure heroines, who
remind us, in the words of the great poet of antiquity, that the best
women have been those whom the world has heard least of.

The loveliest picture in the world is that which represents a soldier
lying on the battlefield with a woman kneeling by his side tending his
wounds. Let the field be that of the everyday battle of life.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE KIND OF WOMAN I LOVE

Another answer to critics--Distorted minds--The portrait of a
womanly woman.

I once wrote an article on 'The Woman I Hate,' which brought me an
avalanche of letters, not all very pleasing reading. Many of them
conveyed to me the wrath of viragos, women's-righters, petticoated
males, trousered females, misunderstood and unclaimed women, ripe,
spectacled spinsters, cockatoos of all sorts and conditions, who
happened by the irony of fate and freaks of nature to be born of a sex
of which they failed to be an ornament.

One of these correspondents accused me of 'possessing a nasty mind' for
sneering at lady doctors. 'You insult women,' she says. 'Can you
imagine, for instance, a respectable woman submitting to an examination
by a man?' My dear lady, I am afraid I must return you the compliment.
Let me assure you that, just as an artist will see nothing in a female
figure beyond beauty and perfect harmony of lines, and will admire her
with as cool a mind as he would a statue, just so a doctor will examine
a woman as he would a piece of anatomy, and your mind must be fearfully
distorted and impure, if you imagine for a moment that a single
objectionable thought will pass through the mind of this man of
science.

If you really do think so, let me assure you that I pity you, or even
must despise you, from the bottom of my heart. And, while on this
subject, allow me to remind you that an eminent American man exclaimed
only the other day: 'In our country we have a great ma