The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99.,
December 6, 1890, by Various
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Title: Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890
Author: Various
Release Date: June 25, 2004 [EBook #12739]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUNCH ***
Produced by Malcolm Farmer, William Flis, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOL. 99.
December 6, 1890.
MODERN TYPES.
(_BY MR. PUNCH'S OWN TYPE WRITER._)
NO. XXII.--THE MANLY MAIDEN.
The Manly Maiden may be defined as the feminine exaggeration of those
rougher qualities which men display in their intercourse with one
another, or in the pursuit of those sports in which courage, strength,
and endurance play a part. In a fatal moment she conceives the idea
that she can earn the proud title of "a good fellow" by emulating
the fashions and the habits of the robuster sex. She perceives that
men have a liking for men who are strong, bluff, outspoken, and
contemptuous of peril, and she infers mistakenly, that the same
tribute of admiration is certain to be paid to a woman who, setting
the traditions of her sex at defiance, consciously apes the manly
model without a thought of all that the imitation involves. She
forgets that as soon as a woman steps down of her own free will from
the pedestal on which the chivalrous admiration of men has placed her,
she abandons at once her claim to that flattering reticence of speech,
and that specially attentive courtesy of bearing, which are in men the
outward and visible signs of the spiritual grace which they assume
as an attribute of all women. In spite of what the crazy theorists
of the perfect equality school may say, men still continue to expect
and to admire in women precisely those qualities in which they feel
themselves to be chiefly deficient. Their reverence and affection are
bestowed upon her whose voice is ever soft, gentle and low, and whose
mild influence is shed like a balm upon the labours and troubles of
life. Of slang, and of slaps upon the back, of strength, whether of
language or of body, they get en
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