I sometimes grow melancholy with the thought that, though I wear trousers and shave once a day, I am not, properly speaking, a Man.  Surely it is from no failure of goodwill, no lack of prayerful striving towards that noble estate:  for if there is one spectacle in this moving phantasmagoria of life that I love to carry within my eye, it is the figure of a true man.  The mere idea of a true man stirs one’s heart like a trumpet.  Therefore, this doubt I am confiding is all the more dreary.  Naturally, I feel it most keenly in the company of my fellows, each one of whom seems to carry the victorious badge of manhood, as though to cry shame upon me.  They make me shrink into myself, make me feel that I am but an impostor in their midst.  Indeed, in that sensitiveness of mine you have the starting-point of my unmanliness.  Look at that noble fellow there.  He is six-foot odd in his stockings, straight, stalwart, and confident.  His face is broad and strong, his close-cropped head is firm and proud on his shoulders—­firm and proud as a young bull’s.  It is a head made, indeed, rather to butt than to think with; it is visited with no effeminacy of thought or dream.  It has another striking quality:  it is hardly distinguishable from any other head in the room—­for I am in an assemblage of true men all, a glorious herd of young John Bulls.  All have the same strong jaws, the same powerful low foreheads.  Noble fellows!  Any one of them could send me to eternity with the wind of his fist.

And, most of all, is their manhood brought home to me, with a sickening sense of inferiority, in their voices.  What a leonine authority in the roar of their opinions!  Their words strike the air firm as the tread of lions.  They are not teased with fine distinctions, possibilities of misconception, or the perils of afterthought.  Their talk is of the absolute, their opinions wear the primary colours, and dream not of ’art shades.’  Never have they been wrong in their lives, never shall they be wrong in the time to come.  Never have they been known to conjecture that another may, after all, be wiser than they, handsomer, stronger, or more fortunate.  They would kill a man rather than admit a mistake.  Noble fellows!  And I?  Do you wonder that I blush in my corner as I gaze upon them, strive to smooth my hair into the appearance of a manly flatness, strive to set my face hard and feign it knowing, strive to elevate my voice to the dogmatic note, strive to cast out from my mind all those evil spirits of proportion?

Can it be possible that any one of my readers has ever been in a like case?  Is there hope for us, my brother?  You have, I perceive, a fine, expressive, sensitive countenance.  That is, indeed, against you in this race for manhood.  It is true that Apollo passed for a man—­but that was long ago, and not in Britain.  You have a pleasant, sympathetic voice.  An excellent thing in woman.  But you, my friend,—­break it, I beseech you.  Coarsen it with raw spirits and rawer opinions; and set that face of thine with hog’s bristles, plant a shoe-brush on thy upper lip, and send thy head to the turner of billiard balls.  Else come not nigh me, for, ’fore Heaven, I love a man!