Of course, some of us get very much disgusted with the debutantes.  But, aside from the great superiority they have over girls with thinking powers (in regard to the number of men who admire them, for all men admire cooing girls with dimples)—­aside from this, I say, there is something to be said on their behalf.  Don’t you believe, you dear, unsuspicious men, who dote upon their pliability and the trustfulness of their innocent, limpid blue or brown-eyed gaze, which meets your own with such implied flattery to your superior strength and intelligence—­don’t you believe for one moment that the simple little dears do not know exactly the part they are playing.  They are twice as clever as the cleverest of you.  They feel that they are needed just as they are.  The fashionable schools are turning them out every year exactly as the untrained men under thirty-five would wish them to be.  They know this.  Therefore they remain as art has made them.  Feeling themselves admired by the class of men they most wish to attract, they have no incentive to improve.

And yet, I suppose, untrained men under thirty-five have their use in the world, aside from the part they play in the discipline of discriminating young women.  Girls even marry these men.  Lovely girls, too.  Clever girls—­girls who know a hundred times more than their husbands, and are ten times finer grained.  I wonder if they love them, if they are satisfied with them, if ennui of the soul is not a bitter thing to bear?

I am always wondering why girls marry them.  Every week brings me knowledge that some lovely girl I know has found another man under thirty-five, or that some of my men friends of that persuasion have married out-of-town girls.  It does not surprise me so much when girls from another city marry them.  Most men do not like to write letters, and visits are only for over Sunday.

Men are always saying, “Well, why don’t you tell us the kind of men you would like us to be?” And their attitude when they say it is with their thumbs in the arm-holes of their waistcoats.  When a man is thoroughly satisfied with himself he always expands his chest.

There is something very funny to me in that question, because I suppose they really think they would change to please us.  I do not mind talking about it, because I am sociable, and I like conversation; but I never for a moment dream that they will do it.  They intend to, and their inclination is always to please us, even to spoil us; but they either cannot or will not change; and they think if they can refuse pleasantly, and mentally chuck us under the chin and make us smile, that they have succeeded in getting our minds off a troublesome subject.

Of course, it is partly our fault that we do not insist, but no one wants to be disagreeable.  Therefore we choose personal discomfort for ourselves rather than to demand radical changes in the men, which might bring on contention.