After all, I fear the odious individual whose existence and attributes we have discussed must be accepted as a scourge sent to punish us for past sins of the race.  Certainly women had a very bad time in days gone by—­they were slaves; and at odd moments I am tempted to conclude that the slave instinct survives in some of them, and they take their revenge in true servile fashion.  This line of thought would carry me back over more ages than I care to traverse; I am content with knowing that the shrews are in a minority, and that the majority of my countrywomen are sweet and benign.

X.

ARE WE WEALTHY?

Among the working-classes shrewd men are now going about putting some very awkward questions which seem paradoxical at first sight, but which are quite understood by many intelligent men to whom they are addressed.  The query “Are we wealthy?” seems easy enough to answer; and of course a rapid and superficial observer gives an affirmative in reply.  It seems so obvious!  Our income is a thousand millions per year; our railways and merchant fleets can hardly be valued without putting a strain on the imagination; and it seems as if the atmosphere were reeking with the very essence of riches.  A millionaire gives nearly one thousand pounds for a puppy; he buys seventeen baby horses for about three thousand pounds apiece; he gives four thousand guineas for a foal, and bids twenty thousand pounds for one two-year-old filly; his house costs a million or thereabouts.  Minor plutocrats swarm among us, and they all exhibit their wealth with every available kind of ostentation; yet that obstinate question remains to be answered—­“Are we wealthy?” We may give the proletarians good advice and recommend them to employ no extreme talk and no extreme measures; but there is the new disposition, and we cannot get away from it.  I take no side; the poor have my sympathy, but I endeavour to understand the rich, and also to face facts in a quiet way.  Supposing that a ball is being given that costs one thousand pounds, and that within sound of the carriages there are twenty seamstresses working who never in all their lives know what it is to have sufficient food—­is not that a rather curious position?  The seamstresses are the children of mighty Britain, and it seems that their mother cannot give them sustenance.  The excessive luxury of the ball shows that some one has wealth, but does it not also seem to show that some one has too much?  The clever lecturers who talk to the populace now will not be content with the old-fashioned answer, and an awkward deadlock is growing more nearly imminent daily.  Suppose we take the case of the sporting-man again, and find that he pays three guineas per week for the training of each of his fifty racers, we certainly have a picture of lavish display; but, when we see, on the other hand, that nearly half the children in some London districts never know what it is to have breakfast before they