* * * * *
So what more is there for me to say?
As for Angelica--but no matter. I hope she may be comparatively happy
with Kitten Brown. Yet, as I have said before, handsome men never last.
But she should have thought of that in time.
I absolve myself of all responsibility. She had her chance.
ONE OVER
I
Professor Farrago had remarked to me that morning:
"The city of New York always reminds me of a slovenly, fat woman with her
dress unbuttoned behind."
I nodded.
"New York's architecture," said I, "--or what popularly passes for
it--is all in front. The minute you get to the rear a pitiable condition
is exposed."
He said: "Professor Jane Bottomly is all facade; the remainder of her is
merely an occiputal backyard full of theoretical tin cans and broken
bottles. I think we all had better resign."
It was a fearsome description. I trembled as I lighted an inexpensive
cigar.
The sentimental feminist movement in America was clearly at the bottom of
the Bottomly affair.
Long ago, in a reactionary burst of hysteria, the North enfranchised the
Ethiopian. In a similar sentimental explosion of dementia, some sixty
years later, the United States wept violently over the immemorial wrongs
perpetrated upon the restless sex, opened the front and back doors of
opportunity, and sobbed out, "Go to it, ladies!"
They are still going.
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