"Never mind, Maida; you may go to Congress yourself yet, when the woman's suffrage law passes. But you must take to wearing glasses"--she had dropped using her goggles, I must observe, since Gilbert's appearance--"to show that you have intellect. Intellect, short-sight, and high culture, all run together, like a three-abreast Russian team. If it wasn't for their short-sightedness they would drop the high culture altogether, for they would see it don't pay in this country. We have only a few professors and scientists all told, you see. Three or four dozen women could marry them all, and the rest of the men don't care to be kept humble all the time, by living with wives who know more than themselves. That's why so many spectacled women go lecturing. It's because nobody wants to marry them."
"To hear you talk, Gilbert, one would say you were just dreadful. You do not really mean, I'm sure, that you believe a woman makes a better wife for being ignorant or a fool. What companionship can there be between an intelligent man and an empty-headed doll? And perhaps you are not aware, but it is a fact, that the most successful female lecturers are married women; and very poorly off their families and invalid husbands would be, if they could not earn money that way."
"Maybe, Maida; I do not know from personal knowledge. I do not attend many lectures, and I never heard a female lecture in my life; but if you think the average man don't like what you call a doll--which, I suppose, means a nice, soft, pretty little thing, who believes she is not clever, and lets other women trample on her, as regards science and things--you never were more mistaken in your life. Lots of smart men find them the best company in the world; and--well--I know for a fact that a woman may be no end of smart, and the very best of company, though she don't read poetry, and knows nothing about the 'ologies.'"
"Natural intelligence, you mean, without any advantages of education. To be sure, you find that in many a farmhouse--the kind of woman who scrapes and saves to send all her sons to college, and sees one of them elected President of the United States, and has her likeness in all the illustrated papers. But if she had had culture, think what such a woman would have become!"
"She would have become a female lecturer. The men would have been afraid of her. She would never have been married, never had a son, and never got her likeness into the magazines as mother of a President. When men marry, they hope, at least, to be boss at home: and few have the conceit to tackle a female steam-engine, expecting to be able to break her in to quiet paces."
"But in cities you want culture to keep up your place in the community. A poorly educated woman must be a drag on her husband's social advancement."
"Not a bit of it. Our first families in Chicago and elsewhere, in this country, and in every other, are noways remarkable for culture. Sometimes it's money raises them, sometimes it's because their fathers were of first families before them, or their friends. Culture may help now and then--it's a distinction in its way, just like beauty or talent; but there must be money, you bet! You country folks talk a heap of nonsense about the help culture is, to rising in the world; so do the newspapers, though they should know better. They think they have it themselves, you see, so they crack it up for their own sakes."
"Oh, Gilbert! I am sorry to hear you speak like that. You used to think very differently."
"Because I did not know any better, and I believed what I read in print. We're not a highly cultured lot in the cities, I can tell you--we successful folks, I mean. How could we be? It takes all we can do to keep ourselves ahead of our neighbours. If we were to divide ourselves between business and politics, or business and culture, we would have to take a back seat in the community. It is not so much special talent that is wanted, for getting on, as entireness. A man must pour his whole self into the one groove, if he is to make a hit. The whole of a very ordinary fellow is more, you see, and therefore surer to win, than part of one of your superior people dabbling in half-a-dozen different pursuits. Remember that, when you come to many, Maida; and if you want to stand high, choose a man of one idea, and that one his business."
"I know better than that, Gilbert," Maida answered, looking up in his eyes with a fond but rather watery smile. She felt wounded by the advice, but she took comfort, in that he was by her side while he spoke, and could not mean it. It was only a man's thoughtless speech--his rough way of being playful. For had he not kept faithful through ten long years--long after she herself had ceased to expect or hope? Had he not come back to her? and was not his presence the strongest refutation of his worldly and cynical words?