bacco ash off the ledge made
by his abdomen, which he did by pounding the side of his torso with a
bulky volume of the "Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini," "what is the
theme of the most conspicuous portion of our fiction by feminine hands?
In large measure it is a peevish criticism of husbands. We have the
popular creator of a type of husband held up to the scorn and ridicule
of the sorority of her readers, remarking by way of commentary on her
satirical pictures that there should be 'a school for husbands.' It
is, apparently, this lady's complacent belief that the origin of the
domestic difficulties of the world is in the inadequate training of
husbands for their delicate office. One of 'the essential
requirements' for marriage which 'men should go to school to learn' she
mentions as 'understanding.' Wives, presumably, are born perfectly
equipped for their functions and do not require to be made. At any
rate, as the production of fiction nowadays is so largely a feminine
industry, and as a dominant trait of the male, even when recording his
observations, is his chivalrous point of view, there is little or no
opportunity given us on the benches, as you might say, to catch a
glimpse of life pointing a way for us to see it steadily and see it
whole."

The Jovian Colonel blew a heavy cloud of tobacco smoke from out his
massive ebony beard, and sat for a moment looking like some portentous
smouldering volcano; then continued:

"Men with hair on their chests would find the most agreeable society in
the pages of our women novelists to be that of the horrible or, as the
case may be, pitiful scoundrels at whom the authors themselves are most
indignant. These miserable beings, generally amiable though rather
purposeless spirits, are, as Colonel Harvey not long ago remarked of
one of them, of a sort that almost all men like and hardly any woman
can tolerate. Men are free to enjoy their engaging qualities because
men are not subject to possible misfortune by reason of the
corresponding infirmities of such characters, that is, men are not
dependent upon them for their own safety. Women, on the other hand,
fear such characters because instinct tells women that they could not
trust their own comfortable security to them; and, consequently, women
heartily dislike such as these and find them villainous, beings to be
branded in any feminine discussion of life as enemies of the sex.

"In the latest novel by one of our most pr