Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/20

 æsthetic sense, but all the moral qualities as well. Every grace of every fair woman he has ever met—the best attributes of his mother, his sister, and his aunt—are freely hers. None of the slight blemishes which occasionally tarnish the high lustre of virtue, none of the caprices to which sirens are constitutionally liable, are permitted. Faultless wife and faultless mother must she be, faithful lover and long-suffering friend, or he will have none of her in his temple. Now, this is surely a wholly unreasonable, an utterly extravagant demand on the part of man, and if analysed carefully, will, we believe, be found to yield egoism and gluttony in about equal parts. How, we venture to inquire, would he meet a like claim, were it in turn presented to him? A witty and light-hearted lady—a remnant yet remains, in spite of the advent of the leaping, bounding, new womanhood—once startled a selected audience by the general statement, "All men are widowers." But even if this generous utterance can be accepted as absolutely accurate, it can hardly be taken as a proof of man's fitness for both the important roles involved.

For our own part, we are convinced that, broadly speaking, the exception only proving the rule—whatever that supporting phrase may mean—woman, fresh from Nature's moulding, is, so far as first intention is concerned, a predestined wife or mother. She is not both, though doubtless by constant endeavour, art and duty taking it turn and turn about, the dual end may, with hardness, be attained unto. For Nature is not economic. Far from her is the fatal utilitarian spirit which too often prompts the improver man (or—dare we confess it?—still more frequently woman) to attempt to make one object do the work of two. From all such sorry makeshifts Nature, the great modeller in clay, turns contemptuously away. Not long ago we read in a lady's journal of a 'combination gown' which by some cunning arrangement, the