with posters, "Burlesque of OTHELLO," and the contrast blazed up in

my mind like a bonfire. An unforgettable look it gave me into that
kind man's soul. His acquaintance was indeed a liberal and pious

education. All the humanities were taught in that bare dining-room
beside his gouty footstool. He was a piece of good advice; he was

himself the instance that pointed and adorned his various talk.
Nor could a young man have found elsewhere a place so set apart

from envy, fear, discontent, or any of the passions that debase; a
life so honest and composed; a soul like an ancient violin, so

subdued to harmony, responding to a touch in music - as in that
dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chatting at the eleventh hour, under

the shadow of eternity, fearless and gentle.
The second class of old people are not anecdotic; they are rather

hearers than talkers, listening to the young with an amused and
critical attention. To have this sort of intercourse to

perfection, I think we must go to old ladies. Women are better
hearers than men, to begin with; they learn, I fear in anguish, to

bear with the tedious and infantile vanity of the other sex; and we
will take more from a woman than even from the oldest man in the

way of bitingcomment. Biting comment is the chief part, whether
for profit or amusement, in this business. The old lady that I

have in my eye is a very caustic speaker, her tongue, after years
of practice, in absolute command, whether for silence or attack.

If she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted to curse the
malignity of age. But if you chance to please even slightly, you

will be listened to with a particular laughing grace of sympathy,
and from time to time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol as

heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as well as the
vantage-ground of age, to deal these stunning corrections among the

coxcombs of the young. The pill is disguised in sugar of wit; it
is administered as a compliment - if you had not pleased, you would

not have been censured; it is a personal affair - a hyphen, A TRAIT
D'UNION, between you and your censor; age's philandering, for her

pleasure and your good. Incontestably the young man feels very
much of a fool; but he must be a perfect Malvolio, sick with self-

love, if he cannot take an open buffet and still smile. The
correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have

transgressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your eye. If
a man were made of gutta-percha, his heart would quail at such a

moment. But when the word is out, the worst is over; and a fellow
with any good-humour at all may pass through a perfect hail of

witty criticism, every bare place on his soul hit to the quick with
a shrewd missile, and reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a

fine moral reaction, and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-
third loath, for a repetition of the discipline.

There are few women, not well sunned and ripened, and perhaps
toughened, who can thus stand apart from a man and say the true

thing with a kind of genialcruelty. Still there are some - and I
doubt if there be any man who can return the compliment. The class

of man represented by Vernon Whitford in THE EGOIST says, indeed,
the true thing, but he says it stockishly. Vernon is a noble

fellow, and makes, by the way, a noble and instructivecontrast to
Daniel Deronda; his conduct is the conduct of a man of honour; but

we agree with him, against our consciences, when he remorsefully
considers "its astonishing dryness." He is the best of men, but

the best of women manage to combine all that and something more.
Their very faults assist them; they are helped even by the

falseness of their position in life. They can retire into the
fortified camp of the proprieties. They can touch a subject and

suppress it. The most adroit employ a somewhat elaborate reserve
as a means to be frank, much as they wear gloves when they shake

hands. But a man has the full responsibility of his freedom,
cannot evade a question, can scarce be silent without rudeness,

must answer for his words upon the moment, and is not seldom left
face to face with a damning choice, between the more or less

dishonourable wriggling of Deronda and the downright woodenness of
Vernon Whitford.

But the superiority of women is perpetually menaced; they do not
sit throned on infirmities like the old; they are suitors as well

as sovereigns; their vanity is engaged, their affections are too
apt to follow; and hence much of the talk between the sexes

degenerates into something unworthy of the name. The desire to
please, to shine with a certain softness of lustre and to draw a

fascinating picture of oneself, banishes from conversation all that
is sterling and most of what is humorous. As soon as a strong

current of mutualadmiration begins to flow, the human interest
triumphs entirely over the intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual, and the commerce of words,

consciously or not, becomes secondary to the commencing of eyes.
But even where this ridiculous danger is avoided, and a man and

woman converseequally and honestly, something in their nature or
their education falsifies the strain. An instinct prompts them to

agree; and where that is impossible, to agree to differ. Should
they neglect the warning, at the first suspicion of an argument,

they find themselves in different hemispheres. About any point of
business or conduct, any actual affair demanding settlement, a

woman will speak and listen, hear and answer arguments, not only
with natural wisdom, but with candour and logicalhonesty. But if

the subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an
excuse for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater

instantlyabandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be
supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the

woman said first, that (unless she has forgotten it) she will
repeat at the end. Hence, at the very junctures when a talk

between men grows brighter and quicker and begins to promise to
bear fruit, talk between the sexes is menaced with dissolution.

The point of difference, the point of interest, is evaded by the
brilliant woman, under a shower of irrelevant conversational

rockets; it is bridged by the discreet woman with a rustle of silk,
as she passes smoothly forward to the nearest point of safety. And

this sort of prestidigitation, juggling the dangerous topic out of
sight until it can be reintroduced with safety in an altered shape,

is a piece of tactics among the true drawing-room queens.
The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place; it is so by our

choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the ideal
imposed upon them from the cradle, and worn, like a hair-shirt,

with so much constancy; their motherly, superior tenderness to
man's vanity and self-importance; their managing arts - the arts of

a civilised slave among good-natured barbarians - are all painful
ingredients and all help to falsify relations. It is not till we

get clear of that amusingartificial scene that genuine relations
are founded, or ideas honestly compared. In the garden, on the

road or the hillside, or TETE-A-TETE and apart from interruptions,
occasions arise when we may learn much from any single woman; and

nowhere more often than in married life. Marriage is one long
conversation, chequered by disputes. The disputes are valueless;

they but ingrain the difference; the heroic heart of woman
prompting her at once to nail her colours to the mast. But in the

intervals, almost unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the
whole material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck

out and shared, the two persons more and more adapt their notions
one to suit the other, and in process of time, without sound of

trumpet, they conduct each other into new worlds of thought.
CHAPTER XII. THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

THE civilisation, the manners, and the morals of dog-kind are to a
great extent subordinated to those of his ancestral master, man.

This animal, in many ways so superior, has accepted a position of
inferiority, shares the domestic life, and humours the caprices of

the tyrant. But the potentate, like the British in India, pays
small regard to the character of his willingclient, judges him

with listless glances, and condemns him in a byword. Listless have
been the looks of his admirers, who have exhausted idle terms of

praise, and buried the poor soul below exaggerations. And yet more
idle and, if possible, more unintelligent has been the attitude of

his express detractors; those who are very fond of dogs "but in
their proper place"; who say "poo' fellow, poo' fellow," and are

themselves far poorer; who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or
heat his oven; who are not ashamed to admire "the creature's

instinct"; and flying far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate
the theory of animal machines. The "dog's instinct" and the

"automaton-dog," in this age of psychology and science, sound like
strange anachronisms. An automaton he certainly is; a machine

working independently of his control, the heart, like the mill-
wheel, keeping all in motion, and the consciousness, like a person

shut in the mill garret, enjoying the view out of the window and
shaken by the thunder of the stones; an automaton in one corner of

which a living spirit is confined: an automaton like man. Instinct
again he certainly possesses. Inherited aptitudes are his,