Page:A Literary Courtship (1893).pdf/16

 "If that is so," Kent answered, "it is mighty queer that so many of the best heads among the women should have chosen to take a man's name."

"A man's name is a more effectual concealment," Blunt maintained.

"Then why don't men sometimes do the same thing for the sake of concealment? Why didn't Dickens call himself Ruth instead of Boz? Why didn't Samuel Clemens pass himself off as Mary Twain? Why were not the "Sonnets of Proteus" called the sonnets of Io or Persephone or some other classic girl, just as changeable, I warrant you, as Proteus ever was?"

"Because the author was not as muddled in his mythology as you are, Kent!"

"Poh! My mythology is miles ahead of your logic, Brunt. There's a reason in things, and Currer Bell, and George Sand, and George Eliot knew what they were about—you may depend upon it!

Singularly enough, we found this a much more fruitful theme than civil-ser-