What is to happen to the world if women are to acquire a fondness for the mere symbols of sex, if femininity is to become disembodied, is a vast and vital question which prudence well might refer to one of their own eager and tireless committees.
The other day I boldly put the thing to the Professor. “What,” I asked, “is going to happen to the world if the number of old maids keeps on increasing?”
“Well,” mused rather than replied the Professor, “the present rate of increase in the number of old maids—”
“By which,” I said, “I assume that you mean hopelessly unmarried women.”
“I do not like that word,” retorted the Professor, a little sharply, “it makes me think of hopelessly insane. I should prefer to say affirmatively unmarried—the present rate of increase in the number of affirmatively unmarried American women might suggest at the first glance that something very annoying to evolution was going to happen by-and-by. Indeed the conditions might seem to be positively detrimental to the Darwinian hypothesis.”
“Not at all,” I protested, “if you remember the married old maids. Their transmitted instinct is bound to count sooner or later.”
“But I have no fear that anything absurd is going to happen.” (I adored the smile of which the Professor was guilty at this point.) “Nature will work out the scheme. I mean supply and demand.”
“I hope you cannot mean,” I protested, “that the American girl has deliberately set about creating a corner in wives for the sake of raising the market—”
“Not precisely that,” returned the Professor; “though in the evolution of altruism that might not be so absurd. But you must see that old-maidism will not flourish unless it advantages the race somehow. You cannot think that a girl would set about being an old maid for any other reason than to please or profit herself—”
“Unless,” I said, “it were to get even.”