“Do you remember ever to have been in the least degree like other people?” she asked, speaking after a long silence, as he was returning his notes to his pocket.
“I believe not,” he answered. “Nature spared me that indignity—or denied me that happiness—as you may look at it. I am not like other people, as you justly remark. I need not say that it is the other people who are the losers.”
“The strange thing is, that you should be able to believe so much of yourself when you find it so hard to believe good of your fellow-men.”
“I object to the expression, ‘fellow-men,’” returned Keyork promptly. “I dislike phrases, and, generally, maxims as a whole, and all their component parts. A woman must have invented that particular phrase of yours in order to annoy a man she disliked.”
“And why, if you please?”
“Because no one ever speaks of ‘fellow-women.’ The question of woman’s duty to man has been amply discussed since the days of Menes the Thinite—but no one ever heard of a woman’s duty to her fellow-women; unless, indeed, her duty is to try and outdo them by fair means or foul. Then why talk of man and his fellow-men? I can put the wisest rule of life into two short phrases.”
“Give me the advantage of your wisdom.”
“The first rule is, Beware of women.”
“And the second?”
“Beware of men,” laughed the little sage. “Observe the simplicity and symmetry. Each rule has three words, two of which are the same in each, so that you have the result of the whole world’s experience at your disposal at the comparatively small expenditure of one verb, one preposition, and two nouns.”