, 1890-07-11
FAVORITES OF THE MEN.
DO THE LORDS OF CREATION LIKE
THE BEST WOMEN BEST

And So Say Bitter ThinEs-PhysieAl
Beaut-ch.rminx Women
Copyright By American Press Assoei.tIonl
Do men like the best women best; No,
they don't, and II is one of the most re-
mArkable things in the study of the
cruder ser to sec how they pride them
selves upon their discrimination with
regard TO women, and how very, very,
uery little they know about them.
And this no doubt Is one ground for
the cynical, jaundioed, bitter SCOTS and
taunts flying about the world with re-
gard to women, and all emanating from
men. They thought they knew some.
thing about women, these poor cynics,
and they found they didn't, and instead
of blaming their own stupidity they
turned and rent the elusive objects Of
their mistaken theories.
1t 10 very annoying, I grant you, for q
man to build up a fine ideal temple
wherein to enshrine his own image and
watch the goddess Of that temple sitting
at the feet of her chosen lord, and then
to suddenly discover that the temple
was founded o the Laughing
sands" and In some unusual quake the
whole affair tumbles down, and his
image is left i-gnominiously stranded In
the ruinsi
suppose one pould be tempted to re-
vile the goddess who had mortified us
50 sorely.
No, they don't understand women at
all, these poor dear men, and nothing
ve1es them more than to have this con-
seriousness brought home to them; they
are so accustomed to feeling that the
world uns on the lines that they have
laid down that there Is nothing in
heaven or earth beyond or above their
comprehension, and that they are, as
Alexander Selkrk remarks of himself,
Lord of the fab and the BRUTE that,
although woman Is neither a fish nor .
brute, they consider her as surely the
vassal Of man as either Of these.
And then, when all this has been CON-
fortably arranged and Milford Man has
settled himself pleasantly upon his
throne, 10 and behold the chief vassal
isn't at all in the place he had arranged
for her, but has shot of in an eccentric
orbit Of her own and Is away out Of
reach. Such conduct as these" natu-
rally annoys ''the monarch of all he sur
veys," and rs 1t Ia impossible for him to
do anything about 1t he vents his wrath
in saying n great deal, sometimes in the
style Of the fox who thought the grapes
we're sour because he couldn't reach
them. n again, in tho light and fippant
fashion of a majestic intellect stopping
to tifes, he ficks the woman question
aside As one quite unworthy of his con-
sideration, declaring that the habits and
manners Of the ephemers who dance for
an hour above q sunny summer pool arc
more deserving of n mans attention
than the yet lighter ~ephemeron, woman.
One consequence OF this process Is that
. tradition has grown up In the mAscu-
line mind and Is transmitted from IA
Their to son as carefully Is the unwritten
laws Of the Incas to the effect that
women are deoeitful exceedingly, are fair
to the eye but deadly poison to the tasts,
are trivial and shallow Of mind, and yet
past masters In the art Of hoodwinking
men; that they are at once the weakest
and most formidable form of creation,
and although an unhappy instinct of
mans nature, but no-men don't have
instincts-aithough the profound pro
oesses Of reason show that the world
would not long continue without wom-
an, and tharafore 1t IL necessary that
mAn should oondone hsr ofenses and
seek hsr society, he should do 20 with
the same fear and trembling that he
handles dynamite or introduces electric
wires into his warehouse.
They all arc powerful agents and the
Lord of Creation does not intsnd to CON
fess any object In his dominion to be too
many for him 30, although quite
aware that dynamite may blow him and
his to the farthsstlimit of limbo, and cleo
tricity viii most likely set his buildings
on FIRE, and woman wi1l-oh, dear me,
what words can describe the indescrib-
able Ills that woman can work In his
Gfel still he docs not, and does not in
tend to, do without any one Of the three
p~otencies and feels quite sure that
though other men have been hoisted
with their own dynamite, c~onfasrstsd
by their own electrics and destroyed
with nAmeleos horrors by the woman
whom they had either made or wished
to make their own, they should escape.
But just as every man tries 10 secure the
safest form of dynamite and the best
protected electric wires would it not be
supposed hat he would be very careful
W LSd Az WY OS1k oAAa Aouo alk
GUS kind Of womanf
But here the vaunted wisdom of the
Lord of Creation seems to utterly fail
him, and in choosing a wife he shows no
more discrimination than the child who
dives into a grab bag at a fair. If there
Is any method at al In the matter It
seems to operate the wrong way, for it is
very, very seldom that a man Axes his
affections upon the best woman Of his
acquaintance, or vsn upon the best wo-
man for him.
What are the grounds of his choice,
then? What kind Of women do men Hike
better than the bestl
Well, Of course, youth and beauty are
always sure cards, and I should be sorry
indeed to lose the pleasure I derive from
contemplating them myself; but we all
know that there are beauties and beau
ties, and while some pretty faces arc as
attractive INT refreshing as a handful Of
dewy flowers others are as monotonous
as . photographed smile, and others
again as deadly sweet as nougat.
And when we come to the matter of
choosing a wife, which Is Of course the
only very important result Of mems
preference of one woman over another,
~prettiness becomes merely . detail and
not the one nine quo non-at least 1t
ought to 80 become IL the man is capable
Of looking before he leaps-
$500 - &z.l