Young brain delights in the complex, old in the simple.  Woman’s love of the complex has been illustrated abundantly during the last few years, in her enthusiasm for certain great imperfect writers, who have been able to stir up the mud in the fountain of life (doubtless, to medicinal ends) but unable to bring it clear again.  An eternal enigma herself, woman is eternally in love with enigmas.  Like a child, she loves any one who will show her the ‘works’ of existence, and she is still in that inquisitive stage when one imagines that the inside of a doll will afford explanation of its fascinating exterior.  It is no use telling her that analysis can never explain the mystery of synthesis.  Like an American humourist, she still goes on wanting ‘t’know.’

Even more than man, she exaggerates the value of the articulate, the organised.  She has always been in love with ‘accomplishments,’ and she loves natures that are minted into current coin of ready gifts and graces.  She cares more for the names of things than for the things themselves.  Of things without names she is impatient.  Talkative as she is said to be, and in so many modern languages, she knows not yet how to talk with Silence—­unless she be the inspired Simple Woman—­for to talk with Silence is to apprehend the mystic meanings of simplicity.  For this reason, mystics are more often found among men than women—­a fact on which the Pioneer Club is at liberty to congratulate itself.  What advanced woman understands that saying of Paracelsus:  ’who tastes a crust of bread tastes the heavens and all the stars.’  Else would she understand also that the ‘humblest’ ministrations of life, those nearest to nature, are the profoundest in their significance:  that it means as much to bake a loaf as to write a book, and that to watch over the sleep of a child is a liberal education—­nay, an initiation granted only to mothers and those meek to whom mysteries are revealed.  It has always been to the simple woman that the angel has appeared—­to Mary of Bethany, to Joan of Arc.  Is it impious to infer that the Angel Gabriel himself dreads a blue-stocking?  What chance indeed would he have with our modern viragoes of the brain, the mighty daughters of the pen?

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Other people’s poetry—­I don’t mean their published verse, but their absurdly romantic view of unromantic objects—­is terribly hard to translate.  It seldom escapes being turned into prose.  It must have happened to you now and again to have had the photograph of your friend’s beloved produced for your inspection and opinion.  It is a terrible moment.  If she does happen to be a really pretty girl—­heavens! what a relief.  You praise her with almost hysterical gratitude.  But if, as is far more likely, her beauty proves to be of that kind which exists only in the eyes of a single beholder, what a plight is yours!  How you strive to look as if she were