had given his mind to it, or else she thinks small beer of poetry in comparison with an occupation or accomplishment purely vegetable.  It is touching to see the look of pride with which the wife turns to her husband from any more brilliant personal presence or display of wit than his, in the perfect confidence that if the world knew what she knows, there would be one more popular idol.  How she magnifies his small wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in his face as if it were a sign of wisdom!  What a councilor that man would make!  What a warrior he would be!  There are a great many corporals in their retired homes who did more for the safety and success of our armies in critical moments, in the late war, than any of the “high-cock-a-lorum” commanders.  Mrs. Corporal does not envy the reputation of General Sheridan; she knows very well who really won Five Forks, for she has heard the story a hundred times, and will hear it a hundred times more with apparently unabated interest.  What a general her husband would have made; and how his talking talent would shine in Congress!

Herbert.  Nonsense.  There isn’t a wife in the world who has not taken the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled him in her own mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered him after designs and specifications of her own.  That knowledge, however, she ordinarily keeps to herself, and she enters into a league with her husband, which he was never admitted to the secret of, to impose upon the world.  In nine out of ten cases he more than half believes that he is what his wife tells him he is.  At any rate, she manages him as easily as the keeper does the elephant, with only a bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end.  Usually she flatters him, but she has the means of pricking clear through his hide on occasion.  It is the great secret of her power to have him think that she thoroughly believes in him.

The young lady staying with Us.  And you call this hypocrisy?  I have heard authors, who thought themselves sly observers of women, call it so.

Herbert.  Nothing of the sort.  It is the basis on which society rests, the conventional agreement.  If society is about to be overturned, it is on this point.  Women are beginning to tell men what they really think of them; and to insist that the same relations of downright sincerity and independence that exist between men shall exist between women and men.  Absolute truth between souls, without regard to sex, has always been the ideal life of the poets.

The mistress.  Yes; but there was never a poet yet who would bear to have his wife say exactly what she thought of his poetry, any more than he would keep his temper if his wife beat him at chess; and there is nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by a woman.

Herbert.  Well, women know how to win by losing.  I think that the reason why most women do not want to take the ballot and stand out in the open for a free trial of power, is that they are reluctant to change the certain domination of centuries, with weapons they are perfectly competent to handle, for an experiment.  I think we should be better off if women were more transparent, and men were not so systematically puffed up by the subtle flattery which is used to control them.