Of the two classes, those who administer and those who swallow this pleasant mixture, it is needless to say that in the lower class are those who administer soft-soap. If in course of time the soft-soaper proves that he is possessed of transcendent abilities he graduates after hard, hard struggles, resigns his bucket, and proceeds to enjoy the superior privilege of being soft-soaped in turn; and the curious fact is that, after having administered it so long, when he comes to taste it himself he does not recognise the familiar article at all. Of course there are some soft-soapers who never advance and never aspire.
As one strolls observingly through society, one discovers it is some people's mission in life to draw other people out. It is rare to find two persons talking together who give and take with equal facility, who contribute equally to the charm and brightness of the occasion. One of the two is sure to lead the other into those conversational oases where he loves to gambol—and very hard work it sometimes is!
Alas! the pioneers who soft-soap are usually women. You dear and uncomplaining sex, how hard you have to work to be called charming by that other sex that so greedily laps up the invention of the great humourist! From artisans of soft-soap you have indeed become artists. To you we owe those delightful multitudes of spoilt men who sulk or sniff or shoulder their pretentious way through society. Yes, your product! If society consisted only of men it would be quite sincere, even if rather brutal, and as for soft-soap, it wouldn't exist. It would be interesting to know the sex of that historical serpent in the Garden of Eden!
A man, if he ever soft-soaps another man, does it for a definite object and hardly realises his own insincerity, but a woman—well, it is a woman's religion to make a man think her charming, and I am afraid—desperately afraid—that she does this most successfully when she makes him talk about himself. Women, poor things, are like the heathen: first they create an idol, sometimes out of very common clay it is to be feared, and then they proceed to worship it.
How often does a man turn over in his mind what subject of conversation the woman will talk about best with whom accident has thrown him, especially if she be plain and shy? Now, what about women, on the other hand? Why, a man must be a great idiot indeed if he does not find some woman to coo little nothings at him; to lead him tenderly out of narrow, monosyllabic paths into the glowing buttercup and dandelion fields of conversation where he can gambol joyfully. "I came out strong, by Jove!" he congratulates himself proudly as they separate, and the goose never realises, as he supports himself against his usual wall and stares vacantly at the crowd, that the beguiling young thing, who smiled up at him like a rising sun, laboured with him with an energy which would have appalled a coal-heaver. Now, would a man fatigue himself as much to chatter with an empty-headed unattractive girl? Hand on heart, gentlemen, confess!
It was Thackeray who said that any woman not disfigured with a hump might marry any man. It is presumption to contradict the immortal master, but I don't believe it. Rather do I believe the words of wisdom of our old family cook. She finished a dissertation on matrimony with the following profound reflections:—
"Women ain't so particular as men. There ain't a man but'll find some woman to have him! If every woman could get a man there wouldn't be so many old maids. Down to our village there was a man who hadn't any arms or legs, but goodness me! even he got a wife. She came to call with him one day, and she'd fixed up a soap-box on wheels and was drawing him along as comfy as you please, and she never made a cent out of him, for he wa'ant a freak. Now I'd just like to see a man up and do that for a woman, I guess! No, women ain't so particular."
Surely it holds good in society. If we don't drag around a gentleman without the usual complement of arms and legs, we more often than not support a gentleman without brains or manners, and we make him more insufferable than he naturally is by giving him a false valuation, in which he proceeds at once to believe, because, if there is one thing the stupidest man can do, it is, he can get conceited. Indeed the weaker sex has much to answer for, for she has created the twentieth century man, who would be a dear if only the women would leave him alone.
However, it is not only men women soft-soap—they soft-soap each other as well. The motives are twofold. Sometimes the wielder of the bucket has an axe to grind, or she likes to be popular at a cheap price. She always says something agreeable, and it is indeed a steel-clad heart that can resist. How feel anything but friendly when a dear feminine gusher declares that you have the loveliest clothes, the most wonderful brains, the brightest eyes, the most agreeable husband, and the best cook in the world! The chances are that you hated her as she swam up and favoured your unyielding hand with cordial pumping; but she thought—no, she didn't think, the process is automatic, she merely dropped a penny in the slot of your evident antagonism on the chance of its possibly resulting in a cool invitation to call, a crush tea or a lunch: nothing is to be despised, for you never can tell!
When a woman decides to say something real nice she stops at nothing. She even sacrifices her nearest and dearest.