Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/612

578 shot, short and blunt Saxon sufficing for daily warfare. But, when fierce battle rages, then the "abominable tergiversations and hallucinations of our respectable contemporary" are employed with great effect. And, besides, it is not often that an editor can meet the charge of "tergiversation" in a way to satisfy his readers that he is all right.

— was probably both the ability and the cynicism (for both they have) of the "Saturday Review" essays on "The Girl of the Period" which procured their re-publication in a volume of their own. Their savage vigor is no less striking on the second reading; but, after all, it is sorry business for the ablest of weekly reviews to expend so much of its strength in this direction. To lash vices is the eminent work of the satirist; but while the "anti-woman" space in the "Saturday" is so disproportionately great, it never finds a line to spare for feminine worth. The judgment, of course, that we must pass is that it is not the critic but the detractor of womankind. In truth, the objection to "The Girl of the Period" lies at its threshold—at its first word. It is not The Girl of the Period that is there described, but A Girl of the Period. And it is in this false premise that all the bitterness lies. Undoubtedly a class of women is there described—we can see them not in London only, but in New York—in every city by winter and in summer, from Newport to Cape May. But, thank Heaven, it is so small a class! To describe this as "The Girl of the Period" or as the representative woman of fashion or of society, is either to use a slang phrase, deceptive by its slang, or a slanderous phrase, doubly unchivalric in its slander toward those women of society on whom it casts suspicion and unjustly wounds. To define the narrow limit of the class satirized would have been to rob the article of all its sensation—a blunder which an editor could not commit. But it would have made the essay more just, if less notorious.

To write over a man's fresh grave that "he hated women and America" is an act of questionable kindness; but this is the unenviable epitaph wherewith some of his own friends epitomize the career of John Douglass Cooke. It is precisely that which we would willingly forget, and, in its place, remember that he greatly loved, and respected, and adorned the editor's profession, and put himself at its head. To the satirist, feminine faults are as fair game as masculine; and it must be owned, too, that as great pains have been taken to discuss them in all ages, from the day of Solomon. But they have usually been treated in a way that gives no suspicion of spleen or fright, and not with that gall and venom of the "Saturday," which imply woman to be a kind of horrid monster, maintaining a mastery in the world none the less cruel because unsuspected.

The Girl of the Period is apt to be what The Boy of the Period makes her. It is hardly logical to cry out in one moment against woman's inferiority, and in the next to charge her with demoralizing a soietysociety [sic] whereof men form, at least numerically, a half. If The Boy of the Period were worthier, the Girl of the Period would possibly render herself worthier of his companionship. Scheming, icy, false-hearted, or frivolous women do not find themselves so utterly shamed by the profusion of knightly, saintly, or even freshly-ingenuous traits in the men they encounter in the drawing-room. Keen and racy Mrs. Poyser cuts very adroitly when she "does not wonder that the women are so foolish—God Almighty made them to match the men!" The Boy of the Period finds no more congenial pastime than to loll at his club window, and plaintively descant on the ills and expenses of matrimony. But the Boy has seldom more than money and social position to offer; and what is he, when he cannot give these, but a contemptible cipher? He is disgusted that the Girl of the Period is flinging herself at the heads of richer or taller people than himself; but if it be a choice between them and him, why should she choose a man of the same pattern made on a smaller scale? He rails at her arts and devices; but why, then, does he consort with her alone among women? It is only the Boy of the Period who is tied to the Girl of the Period, and is troubled by her.

The fitter retort, accordingly, to "The