e sex, and
consequentially my heart is not capable of contracting at the mere
aspect of a rodent. This is not to blow the triumphant trumpet of sexual
superiority, but to prove a simple undenied fact by dint of an _a
fortiori_.

"Having pulverised my pinched-nose predecessor, I pass on to a speaker
of a very very opposite personality--the well-proportioned, beauteous
maiden with azure starry eyes, gilded hair, and teeth like the seeds of
a pomegranate (oh, _si sic omnes!_), who vaunted, in the musical accents
of a cuckoo, her right to work out her own life, independently of
masculine companionship or assistance, and declared that the saccharine
element of courtship and connubiality was but the exploded mask of man's
tyrannical selfishness.

"Had such shocking sentiments been aired by some of the other lady
orators in this room, I must facetiously have recalled them to a certain
fabular fox which criticised the unattainable grapes as too immature to
merit mastication; but the particular speaker cannot justly be said to
be on all fours with such an animal. Understand, please, I am no
prejudiced, narrow-minded chap. I would freely and generously permit
plainfaced, antiquated, unmarriageable madams and misses to undertake
the manufacture of their own careers _ad nauseam_; but when I behold a
maiden of such excessive pulchritude---- (_Second intervention by
Hon'ble Chairwoman desiring me to abstain from personal references._) I
assure the Hon'ble Miss CHAIRWOMAN that I was not alluding to herself,
but since she has spoken in my wheel with such severity, I will conclude
with my peroration on the subject for debate, namely, the theatrical
dramas of Hon'ble IBSEN. When, Madams and Misses, I make the odious
comparison of these works, with which I am completely unacquainted, to
the productions of Poet SHAKSPEARE, where I may boast the familiarity
that is a breeder of contempt, I find that, in _Hamlet's_ own words, it
is the 'Criterion of a Satire,' and I shall assert the unalterable _a
priori_ of my belief that the melodious Swan of Stony Stratford, whether
judged by his longitude, his versical blankness, or the profoundly of
his attainments in Chronology, Theology, Phrenology, Palmistry,
Metallurgy, Zoography, Nosology, Chiropody, or the Musical Glasses, has
outnumbered every subsequent contemporary and succumbed them all!"

With this, I sat down, leaving my audience as _sotto voce_ as fishes
with admiration and amazement at