passage near the beginning of one of Myrtle
Reed's stories--_The Master's Violin_--and, towards the end, I found
this:

'"Iris, I have been miserable ever since I told you I wrote the
letters."

'"Why, dear?"

'"_Because!_"'

And then, in quite another book--Maurice Thompson's _Sweetheart
Manette_--I came upon this:

'"Why can't you tell me?" asked Rowland Hatch.

'"I don't know that I have the right," replied Manette.

'"Why?"

'"_Because!_"'

Now, that word '_because_' is very interesting. 'It is a woman's
reason,' Miss Reed confides to us. That may, or may not, be so. I
know nothing about that. It is not my business. I only know that it
is the oldest reason, and the safest reason, and by far the strongest.

Now, really, no man can say why. As Miss Reed says in another passage
lying midway between the two quoted: 'We all do things for which we can
give no reason.' We do them _because_. No man can say why he prefers
coffee to cocoa, or mutton to beef. He likes the one better than the
other _because_. No man can say why he chose his profession. He
decided to be a doctor or a carpenter _because_. No man can say why he
fell in love with his wife. It would be an affectation to pretend that
she is really incomparably superior to all other women upon the face of
the earth. And yet to him she is not only incomparably superior, and
incomparably lovelier, and incomparably nobler, but she is absolutely
the one and only woman on the planet or off it. No other swims into
the field of vision. She is first, and every other woman is nowhere.
Why? '_Because!_' There is no other reason.

The fact is that we get into endless confusion when we sail out into
the dark, mysterious seas that lie beyond that 'because.' Nine times
out of ten our conclusions are unassailable. And nine times out of ten
our reasons for reaching those conclusions are absurdly illogical,
totally inadequate, or grossly mistaken. Everybody remembers the fable
of the bantam cock who assured the admiring farmyard that the sun rose
every morning because of its anxiety to hear him crow! The fact was
indisputable; the sun did certainly rise every morning. It was only at
the attempt to ascribe a specific reason for its rising that the
argument broke down. It is always safer to say that the sun rises
every morning _because_. Ministers at least will recall the merriment
that Hugh Latimer made of Master More. The good man had been app