"'How could he talk of them?' she triumphantly retorted. 'Did he ever read the Daily Nail or Ladies' Wold?'
"'No,' I said, 'he never did, which is one of the many reasons of his divine genius. But he does speak of temperance, and simple life, and the superman, and all the other so-called discoveries of this age, with the full knowledge of a sage who has actually experienced those eccentricities.'
"My fascinating friend could stand it no longer. Interrupting me she said:
"'Why, every child knows that Plato talked of nothing else than of Platonic love. We all expected to hear about nothing else than that curious love which all of us desire, if it is not too long insisted upon. We went to the course to revive in ourselves long-lost shivers not only of idealism, but even of bimetallism, or as it were the double weight of it.
"'We thought, since Plato is evidently named after platinum, which we know to be the dearest of precious metals, his philosophy must treat of such emotions as cost us the greatest sacrifice.
"'Platonic love is the most comfortable of subjects to talk or think about. It makes you look innocent, and yet on its brink there are such nicely dreadful possibilities of plunging into delightful abysses. Each thing gets two values; one Platonic, the other,—the naughty value. A whole nude arm may be Platonic; but a voluptuous wrist peeping out of fine laces may be only—a tonic.
"'Now these are precisely the subjects of which we desired to hear in those lectures. Instead of which the man said nothing about them, nothing about that dear Platonic love; in fact, he said that Plato never speaks of what is now called Platonic love. And that man calls himself a scholar? Why, my very chamber-maid knows better. The other day she saw the lecturer's photo in a paper and, smiling in an embarrassed way, she said to the cook: "That's the man what talks at Cliradge's about miscarriages." Was she not right? Is not Platonic love the cause of so many miscarriages, before, during, or after the wedding ceremony?
"'And then,' she added with a gasp, 'we all knew that Plato was a mystic, full of that shivery, half-toney, gruesomely something or other which makes us feel that even in everyday life we are surrounded by asterisks, or, as they also call them, astral forces. Was not Plato an intimate friend of Mrs Blavatsky, the sister of Madame Badarzewska, who was the composer of "A Maiden's Prayer"? There! why then did that lecturer not talk about palmistry, auristry, sorcery, witchcraft, and other itch-crafts? Not a word about them! We were indignant.
"'A friend of mine, Mrs Oofry Blazing, who talks French admirably, and whose teeth are the envy of her nose, declared: "Cet homme est un fumiste." Of course, he sold us fumes, instead of perfumes. One amongst us, an American woman of the third sex, told the man publicly straight into his face, and with inimitable delicacy of touch: "Sir, what are you here for?" Quite so; what was he there for? We wanted Plato, and nothing but Plato. One fairly expected him to begin every sentence with P's, or Pl's. Instead of that he wandered from one subject to another. One day he talked about the general and the particular; the other day about the particular and the general. But what particular is there in a general, I beg of you? Is an admiral not much more important? We do not trouble about the army at all. And then, and chiefly, what has a general to do with Plato? The lectures were not on military matters, but on the most immaterial matters, which yet matter materially. But, of course, now that you tell me that Socrates, Plato's master, was a he-midwife, I can very well understand that his modern disciples are philosophical miscarriages!'"