6o Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



you are and ought to be, grinds these unhappy 

 women to powder. They wish — they will tell 

 you — to keep up with the procession! Where is 

 the American sense of humour? The men know 

 that the double life cannot be lived. Accordingly, 

 they give their undivided attention to business. 

 When success crowns his labours, the Westerner 

 can — and often does — apply himself diligently to 

 art, or letters, or politics, and the powers of con- 

 centration that made him a man of money serve 

 also to make him a man of culture; but what 

 chance has the woman who wishes to make soup 

 and poetry in the same place and at the same 

 time ? She is sure to forget to put salt into either. 

 It is easier to bale out an ocean with a pitchfork 

 than to live successfully the double life. Think of 

 Browning and — basting, of a crying baby and 

 French irregular verbs, of kitchen odours and 

 Herbert Spencer. The end is inevitable. These 

 women die, worn out. Before their first boy is 

 breeched the colour and form and fragrance of 

 life have fled. And they leave to their children — 

 what? A taint, in a sense, as of scrofula, the 

 stigmata of the suffering and sorrow that wait on 

 failure. These children in their turn will try to 

 shave Shagpat. Their mother, in the attempt to 

 do two things at once, has given them indigestible 

 food for mind and body. Upon the graves of these 

 unhappy women should be inscribed the famous 

 French line : " Malheureuse est I'ignorance, et plus 

 malheureux le savoir." 



A feature of home life in the West to which — 

 so far as I know — no writer has drawn attention, 



