in literature, and masculine and
feminine hands alike may dabble in fiction, as long as the publishers
are willing.

If we accept Zola's dictum to the effect that art is nature seen
through the medium of a temperament, the thing is possible to many,
though the achievement may differ both in manner and degree. For women
have temperament--too much of it--as the hysterical novelists daily
testify.

The gentleman novelist, however, prances in boldly, where feminine
feet well may fear to tread, and consequently has a wider scope for
his writing. It is not for a woman to mingle in a barroom brawl and
write of the thing as she sees it. The prize-ring, the interior of a
cattle-ship, Broadway at four in the morning--these and countless
other places are forbidden by her innate refinement as well as by the
Ladies' Own, and all the other aunties who have taken upon themselves
the guardianship of the Home with a big H.

Fancy the outpouring of scorn upon the luckless offender's head if one
should write to the Manners and Morals Department of the Ladies' Own
as follows: "Would it be proper for a lady novelist, in search of
local colour and new experiences, to accept the escort of a strange
man at midnight if he was too drunk to recognise her afterward?" Yet a
man in the same circumstances would not hesitate to put an intoxicated
woman into a sea-going cab, and would plume himself for a year and a
day upon his virtuous performance.

All things are considered proper for a man who is about to write a
book. Like the disciple of Mary McLane who stole a horse in order to
get the emotions of a police court, he may delve deeply not only into
life, but into that under-stratum which is not spoken of, where
respectable journals circulate.

Everything is fish that comes into his net. If conscientious, he may
even undertake marriage in order to study the feminine personal
equations at close range. Woman's emotions, singly and collectively,
are pilloried before his scientific gaze. He cowers before one
problem, and one only--woman's clothes!

Carlyle, after long and painful thought, arrives at the conclusion
that "cut betokens intellect and talent; colour reveals temper and
heart."

This reminds one of the language of flowers, and the directions given
for postage-stamp flirtation. If that massive mind had penetrated
further into the mysteries of the subject, we might have been told
that a turnover collar indicated that the woman was a H