But women wish to please men, aside from their power of winning them.  Whereas if men can get the girls without any change on their part, they consider themselves a howling success.  But they might be a little bit surprised if they could read the minds of these very wives whom they have won, whose life-work often may be only to improve them so that they will make some other woman the kind of a husband they should have made at first, and then to lie down and die.

So let men beware how they criticise us unfavorably, no matter what their ages, for the truth of the matter is that, be we frivolous or serious, vain or sensible, clever or stupid, rich or poor, we are what the American man has made us.  We are supremely grateful to him for the most part, for he has literally made us what we are by the sweat of his brow.  But let him beware how he cavils at his own handiwork.  ’Tis not for the untrained man under thirty-five to complain of us, when now he knows why we are so.

“I’m not denyin’ that women are foolish,” says George Eliot.  “God Almighty made ’em to match the men.”

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES

 “Last night in blue my little love was dressed;
    And as she walked the room in maiden grace,
    I looked into her fair and smiling face. 
  And said that blue became my darling best. 
  But when, this morn, a spotless virgin vest
    And robe of white did the blue one displace,
    She seemed a pearl-tinged-cloud, and I was—­space! 
  She filled my soul as cloud-shapes fill the West.

 “And so it is that, changing day by day—­
    Changing her robe, but not her loveliness—­
  Whether the gown be blue or white or gray,
    I deem that one her most becoming dress. 
  The truth is this:  In any robe or way,
    I love her just the same, and cannot love her less!”

If you are interested in the spectacle of letting people paint their own portraits, at the same time entirely unconscious that they are doing so, ask a number of women and girls whether they dress to please men or other women, and then listen carefully to what they say and watch their faces well while they are saying it.  Most of the girls will say they dress to please women; and the reason I ask you to watch their faces is that you may see the subtle changes going on by which they persuade themselves that they are telling the truth.  Women—­nice, sweet women, the kind we know—­seldom tell a real untruth.  But they have a way of persuading themselves that what they are about to say is the truth.  Women must believe in themselves before they can hope to make other people believe in them; therefore they have themselves to persuade first of all.  Now, when men are going to utter an untruth they never care whether they believe it or not, as long as they can make other people believe it.  And the so-called brutal honesty of man is only brutal want of tact.  That poor, patient, misused word, “honesty”!  How sick it must get of its abuse!