"I should think that would depend on yourself. I do not quite understand whom you wish to be the equal of—of men? Men are a very large class—some are very low indeed."
"Oh! You know what I mean—of course, I don't mean that sort."
"You mean gentlemen?"
"Certainly."
"Then I assure you you cannot discuss indecent subjects in mixed company; gentlemen never do. Nor write coarse books—gentlemen never do nowadays—nor discuss them either."
"Do you mean to say that great novelists never discuss such questions?" she demanded triumphantly.
"No, but it is all in the manner—the motive. I have no objection to the matter—generally, provided it be properly handled—but the obvious intention—the rank indecentness of it. See how Scott or George Eliot, or Tolstoi or Turgénieff, or, later on, even Zola, handles such vital themes. How different their motive from the reeking putrescence of the so-called problem-novel."
"Oh! dear! they must be very bad indeed!" exclaimed a lady, shocked by the sound of my adjectives.
"They are," suddenly put in my oldest neighbor, who had been listening intently with his hand behind his ear, "only you ladies don't know how bad they are or you would not discuss them with men."
This closed the discussion and a group of ladies near me suddenly branched off into another subject and one which interested me more than the discussion of such literature as the trash which goes by the name of the problem novel.