The pin! The pin!
Well, there buzzes Eve Effingham, snobbishly, impaled. She is a perfect American heroine, and I'm sure she wore the first smartly-tailored "suit" that ever woman wore. I'm sure she spoke several languages. I'm sure she was hopelessly competent. I'm sure she "adored" her husband, and spent masses of his money, and divorced him because he didn't understand LOVE.
American women in their perfect "suits." American men in their imperfect coats and skirts!
I feel I'm the superior of most men I meet. Not in birth, because I never had a great-grandfather. Not in money, because I've got none. Not in education, because I'm merely scrappy. And certainly not in beauty or in manly strength.
Well, what then?
Just in myself.
When I'm challenged, I do feel myself superior to most of the men I meet. Just a natural superiority.
But not till there enters an element of challenge.
When I meet another man, and he is just himself—even if he is an ignorant Mexican pitted with small-pox—then there is no question between us of superiority or inferiority. He is a man and I am a man. We are ourselves. There is no question between us.
But let a question arise, let there be a challenge, and then I feel he should do reverence to the gods in me, because they are more than the gods in him. And he should give reverence to the very me, because it is more at one with the gods than is his very self.