My pal is always around when I am most in need, and I am inspired and spurred ahead. I shall win all things worth while because I have a pal; and there will be no secrets except for the utter freedom and frankness of expression between us, back and forth, which, in itself, becomes a double secret to the world, but no secret at all as far as we are concerned.
If you have a pal you have the world—and no one can take it from you.
* * *
In this day and age of hair dyes and henna, women who are beautiful but unwise, wise but not beautiful, virtuous but neither wise nor beautiful, of good discourse and good music, but neither virtuous, wise nor beautiful, Benedict of “Much Ado About Nothing” would be sorely put to find a wife, it occurs to me. From this Shakespearean play we unearth the following statement of the finical Benedict:
“One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well. But till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.
“Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair, or I’ll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse and excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what color it please God.”
* * *
To hear the common run of comment on the dress of women, it might be supposed that morals grow short with skirts. Of course, if one believes that the human body is nasty, then the more of it covered the better. But if one does not have such an extraordinary view, it is hard to take seriously the arguments of those who would lengthen skirts to preserve virtue.
It needs but very little looking and thinking to reach the conviction that the best cure for curiosity about legs is to see legs.
Since health and comfort are so markedly conserved by the short skirt, one hopes never to see again on our streets the skirt that sweeps the filth of the sidewalk.