There's a difference of so many feet between 'em, an' in that
fork here, 'tween my fingers, we shall - '
'I see. Irrigate on the strength of the little difference in the
levels. How many acres?'
Again Los Angeles was told. He expanded like a frog in a shower. 'An' I
thought,' he murmured, 'Egypt was all mummies and the Bible! I used to
know something about cotton. Now we'll talk.'
All that day the two paced the deck with the absorbed insolente of
lovers; and, lover-like, each would steal away and tell me what a
splendid soul was his companion.
That was one type; but there were others - professional men who did not
make or sell things - and these the hand of an all-exacting Democracy
seemed to have run into one mould. They 'were not reticent, but no
matter whence they hailed, their talk was as standardised as the
fittings of a Pullman.
I hinted something of this to a woman aboard who was learned in their
sermons of either language.
'I think,' she began, 'that the staleness you complain of - '
'I never said "staleness,"' I protested.
'But you thought it. The staleness you noticed is due to our men being
so largely educated by old women - old maids. Practically till he goes to
College, and not always then, a boy can't get away from them.'
'Then what happens?'
'The natural result. A man's instinct is to teach a boy to think for
himself. If a woman can't make a boy think as she thinks, she sits
down and cries. A man hasn't any standards. He makes 'em. A woman's the
most standardised being in the world. She has to be. Now d'you see?'
'Not yet.'
'Well, our trouble in America is that we're being school-marmed to
death. You can see it in any paper you pick up. What were those men
talking about just now?'
'Food adulteration, police-reform, and beautifying waste-lots in towns,'
I replied promptly.
She threw up her hands. 'I knew it!' she cried. 'Our great National
Policy of co-educational housekeeping! Ham-frills and pillow-shams. Did
you ever know a man get a woman's respect by parading around creation
with a dish-clout pinned to his coat-tails?'
'But if his woman ord - - told him to do it?' I suggested.
'Then she'd despise him the more for doing it. You needn't laugh.
'You're coming to the same sort of thing in England.'
I returned to the little gathering. A woman was talking to them as one
accustomed to talk from birth. They listened with the rigid attention of
men early trained to listen to, but not to talk with, women. She was, to
put it mildly, the mother of all she-bores, but when she moved on, no
man ventured to say as much.
'That's what I mean by being school-manned to death,' said my
acquaintance wickedly.
