ost of the newspaper correspondence--and write it for women. They are
even trying to feminize the colleges. Granted that woman is the superior
being; all the more, what chance is there for man if this sort of thing
goes on? Are you going to make a race of men on feminine fodder? And here
is the still more perplexing part of it. Unless all analysis of the
female heart is a delusion, and all history false, what women like most
of all things in this world is a Man, virile, forceful, compelling, a
solid rock of dependence, a substantial unfeminine being, whom it is some
satisfaction and glory and interest to govern and rule in the right way,
and twist round the feminine finger. If women should succeed in reducing
or raising--of course raising--men to the feminine standard, by
feminizing society, literature, the colleges, and all that, would they
not turn on their creations--for even the Bible intimates that women are
uncertain and go in search of a Man? It is this sort of blind instinct of
the young man for preserving himself in the world that makes him so
inaccessible to the good he might get from the prevailing culture of the
leisure class.

THE ADVENT OF CANDOR

Those who are anxious about the fate of Christmas, whether it is not
becoming too worldly and too expensive a holiday to be indulged in except
by the very poor, mark with pleasure any indications that the true spirit
of the day--brotherhood and self-abnegation and charity--is infusing
itself into modern society. The sentimental Christmas of thirty years ago
could not last; in time the manufactured jollity got to be more tedious
and a greater strain on the feelings than any misfortune happening to
one's neighbor. Even for a day it was very difficult to buzz about in the
cheery manner prescribed, and the reaction put human nature in a bad
light. Nor was it much better when gradually the day became one of Great
Expectations, and the sweet spirit of it was quenched in worry or soured
in disappointment. It began to take on the aspect of a great lottery, in
which one class expected to draw in reverse proportion to what it put in,
and another class knew that it would only reap as it had sowed. The day,
blessed in its origin, and meaningless if there is a grain of selfishness
in it, was thus likely to become a sort of Clearing-house of all
obligations and assume a commercial aspect that took the heart out of
it--like the enormous receptions for paying social debts