Women are too tender-hearted.  A woman cannot bear to hurt a man’s feelings by letting him know that he is killing her by his stupidity.  And even if she did, in the noble spirit of altruism, rather than selfishness, the next woman, with one reproachful glance at her, would pick up the mutilated remains of the man’s vanity and apply the splints of her respectful attention and the balm of her admiration, partly to add a new scalp to her belt, and partly to show off the unamiability of her sister woman.

So it is of no use to kick against the pricks.  Bores are in this world for a purpose—­to chasten the proud spirit of women, who otherwise might become too indolent and ease-loving to be of any use—­and they are here to stay.  We have no conscience concerning women bores.  We escape from them ruthlessly.  And, perhaps, because women are quicker to take a hint is the reason there are fewer of them.  It is only the men who are left helpless in their ignorance, because no woman has the courage to tell them.

Our only defence is in telling the men in bulk what we have not the courage nor the wish to tell the individual, and letting them sit down and think hard, applying the relentless microscope of self-analysis to their carefully tended Ego, to see if, haply, any of these things we say apply to themselves.

Of course, this is hard on men, because very likely some of those who have been led by women to believe that they are entertaining, even to the verge of fascination, are the very ones who are the greatest bores.  But we women do our best.  We are hampered by our supposed amiability, and bound up by a thousand invisible cords of tact and policy to a line of action which dupes the cleverest of men.  And we are shrewd enough to know that if we should become what they now, in the smart of their wounded vanity, would call honest, they would simply turn their broadcloth backs upon our uncalled-for frankness and seek the honeyed society of some sweet woman who flattered them exactly as we used to flatter them before we became so “honest.”

Ah, well-a-day!  Enter the self-made man.  And with him the commercial spirit of the age.  Enter the clink of coin and the unctuous corpulence of a roll of bills.  Enter the essence of self-satisfaction, the glorious spectacle of a man who spells “myself” with a capital M.

Have you never noticed the change in conversation with the entrance of a new person?  How, when a lovely girl enters, the men all straighten their ties and the women moisten their lips?  How, when the new person is a self-made man, with his newness so apparent that he seems to exhale the odor of varnish and gilt—­how all repose vanishes, and whatever of crudity there is anywhere suddenly makes itself known, and rushes forth to meet the wave of self-boasting which sweeps all before it when the self-made man speaks?

And yet I approve of the self-made man in the abstract.  It is the true spirit of Americanism which caused him to raise himself from the ranks of the poor and obscure, and educate himself, or, more likely still, grow rich without education.  But is it necessary for him to have the bad taste to boast of it, and never let you forget for one moment that he is the product of man’s hand and that the Creator only acted in the capacity of sponsor?