All this is mainly the work of women.  The men are sometimes admitted, are even hired to perform and be encouraged and criticised; that is, men who are already highly cultivated, or who are in sympathy with the noble feminization of the age.  It is a glorious movement.  Its professed object is to give an intellectual lift to society.  And no doubt, unless all reports are exaggerated, it is making our great leisure class of women highly intellectual beings.  But, encouraging as this prospect is, it gives us pause.  Who are these young women to associate with? with whom are they to hold high converse?  For life is a two-fold affair.  And meantime what is being done for the young men who are expected to share in the high society of the future?  Will not the young women by-and-by find themselves in a lonesome place, cultivated away beyond their natural comrades?  Where will they spend their evenings?  This sobering thought suggests a duty that the young women are neglecting.  We refer to the education of the young men.  It is all very well for them to form clubs for their own advancement, and they ought not to incur the charge of selfishness in so doing; but how much better would they fulfill their mission if they would form special societies for the cultivation of young men!—­sort of intellectual mission bands.  Bring them into the literary circle.  Make it attractive for them.  Women with their attractions, not to speak of their wiles, can do anything they set out to do.  They can elevate the entire present generation of young men, if they give their minds to it, to care for the intellectual pursuits they care for.  Give the men a chance, and——­

Musing along in this way we are suddenly pulled up by the reflection that it is impossible to make an unqualified statement that is wholly true about anything.  What chance have I, anyway? inquires the young man who thinks sometimes and occasionally wants to read.  What sort of leading-strings are these that I am getting into?  Look at the drift of things.  Is the feminization of the world a desirable thing for a vigorous future?  Are the women, or are they not, taking all the virility out of literature?  Answer me that.  All the novels are written by, for, or about women—­brought to their standard.  Even Henry James, who studies the sex untiringly, speaks about the “feminization of literature.”  They write most of the newspaper correspondence—­and write it for women.  They are even trying to feminize the colleges.  Granted that woman is the superior being; all the more, what chance is there for man if this sort of thing goes on?  Are you going to make a race of men on feminine fodder?  And here is the still more perplexing part of it.  Unless all analysis of the female heart is a delusion, and all history false, what women like most of all things in this world is a Man, virile, forceful, compelling, a solid rock of dependence, a substantial unfeminine being, whom it is some satisfaction and glory and