Women are not looking for flaws in men.  They are only too anxious to make the best of sorry specimens, and shut their eyes to faults, and to coax virtues into prominence.  Men have nothing to complain of in the way women in society treat them.  They get better than they deserve and much better than they give.  So all they will have to do to win a better opinion will be to deserve it, and, if they make never so slight an advance, they will see that they are met more than half-way by even the most captious critics of their acquaintance.

Adaptability is a heaven-sent gift.  It is like the straw used in packing china.  It not only saves jarring, but it prevents worse disasters, and without it a man is only safe when he is alone.  The moment he comes into smart contact with his fellow-beings there is a crash, and the assembled company have a vision of broken fragments of humanity, which might have remained whole and suffered no more injury than a possible nick had the combatants been padded with adaptability.  The irresistible man is the man who thinks he can get through the world without it.  The irresistible man is the one who is so perfect in his own estimation that he needs no change.  He is beyond human help.

THE STUPID MAN

His opposite, the clever man, said to me yesterday:  “You know, to be actually interested is as likely to make one grateful as anything in this world, unless it be a realization of the kindness of Fate in sparing us the perpetual society of fools.”

The perpetual society of fools!  Think of it, and then revel, you women, in the thought that we are only bored occasionally—­once a week, say, or once a day, or once every two hours, taking our bores as we do ill-flavored medicine.  It never occurred to me before I heard that phrase that life held anything more wearisome than to be bored occasionally.

I have read Ben-Hur, and thought how awful it would be to be a galley-slave.  I have read The Seats of the Mighty, and shuddered at the idea of being imprisoned for five years alone and without a light.  I have seen a flock of sheep driven by shouting, panting, racing little boys, and have been glad I did not have to drive sheep for my daily bread.  I have rejoiced that my lot was not that of a Paris cab-horse, but I never in all my life thought of any fate so appalling as that contained in those words—­the perpetual society of fools.

Why not reform our penitentiary methods?  What is a prison cell to a clever embezzler, if he can have books and a pipe?  Nothing but a long rest for his worn-out nerves—­possibly a grateful change.

But what would be the feelings of a man of brilliant intellect—­for the accomplished villain is always clever—­who was detected in his crime, and who stood breathless before his accusers, waiting for and expecting a life sentence at hard labor, to hear the judge’s voice pronounce sentence, “Condemned for life to the perpetual society of fools!”