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Masculine Logic, Etc.
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (July 2, 1910) : 33
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      Men have harped for so long on the excessive amount of logic with which they are blessed that women are doubly struck by the flightiness of their conversation. They have such a dragon-fly way of darting to distant points, lighting on them for an instant, gathering what they for some reason want from what seems a wholly detached fact, and then off again, hovering and skimming over the entire history of man, in a manner that makes a woman, on principle, forego following them until they have to a certain degree made up their minds where they are going. She is willing to be instructed. Among the first things taught her was to bathe with grateful attentive muteness in the flow of masculine learning, but she does feel, as it is the man who is enjoying himself and she who is accommodatingly listening, that he might restrain the wanderings of his mind somewhat and exhibit a little of that wonderful sequence of thought of which she has heard so much.
      In order to prove the simplest thing, which a woman would state and restate with such authority and decision that its truth would immediately be felt, perhaps indulging in a striking simile or two, but not going farther afield, a man goes back at least two thousand years to a time every one feels very uncertain about, states something as a certainty that authorities differ on, and then picks out an individual characteristic of a Roman Emperor, which he uses as the key-note of the times, in order to prop up more strongly his perfectly simple platitude that does not in the least require so much foraging and learned burrowing. From this he skips to an Egyptian dynasty, wantonly picking up some small object from a tomb as a souvenir of his mental cavortings, dallies with the dates of the Thirty Years’ War; and finally, when his entirely obvious idea is weighted down with untold gleanings, the thing is presented to the woman with the apparent expectation that she and the idea will sink together. Of course she does. Such a load of condensed civilizations, silhouetted personalities, and culled statistics is sufficient to rout any one, but to sink a ship does not prove your own superior speed; it just proves the clumsy irrelevancy of your weapons.
      It is all so unfair. A man rises, pounds down his fist, lifts his voice to thunder, and, by sudden drops on the things that prove his statement, manages to carry them off so swiftly that no one has a chance to see whether they rightly belonged where he found them or whether he had placed them there himself. There are just as many wars and emperors and famines and molecules and things that disprove his statement as there are that prove it, but he never touches on these, and his listeners are too exhausted by the distances he is covering and the skittishness of his gait to rise up and tell him to keep to the point. Any one can prove anything if he goes plodding off to the Dark Ages to do it. No one is going to follow him on such a journey, and he is at perfect liberty to tell any tale he likes of what he found there.
      A man’s therefores are enough to drive one to apoplexy. A man’s therefores are enough to drive one to apoplexy. He rambles on at the greatest length on some side issue that has a very unlikely flavor about it; then all at once, without any warning, he says “therefore” with great gusto, and his conclusion is so ill at ease and out of place and frankly self-conscious that you feel it is as much surprised as you are at the speaker having yanked it from its proper oblivion into the limelight of his volubility.
      Men may be logical, but if they are — and it is much to be doubted — theirs is such long-distance logic that they are always obliged to stop long before they come anywhere near the subject under discussion. Their passion for first causes — it really amounts to a passion — so hampers their effects that nothing but prolonged applause melts and warms the chilled and aching auditors. They are forced to rouse themselves from the lethargy into which the speaker’s thoroughness has sunk them by cordial noise, and its cause is frequently misinterpreted. If an army on the march went back to the starting-point every morning it would never get to fighting. A woman realizes this, and not only sticks to the point, but sits on it and defends it against all comers. She has no need of gradually arriving at it by circuitous routes; she is there from the opening word, and acts as an anchor to hold the tugging, drifting man who is possessed of becoming embedded in the mud at the source of the stream.

      Country rain has so many advantages over city rain. In fact, the number of advantages the country in general has over the city is only equalled by those of the city over the country. City rain is an inconvenience, an expense, a survival of simpler times. Country rain is a delight, a day’s employment, and if it comes at night it quite justifies staying awake to listen to it. The roses outside the window are a little ashamed of the lengths to which they went during the night, and hang their heavy heads, too abashed to explain that they never would have taken so much if the rain-water had not been so exquisitely fresh...
One understands without their explaining and delicately withdraws until they have somewhat recovered. If there are eaves in the town they have never learned the art of dripping with the damp luxuriancy of country eaves. Dripping has been carried to such an advanced stage in some places that one is lost in admiration, first of the individual dripping, and then of the wholly successful orchestration of the countless leaves, branches, eaves, and twigs, with a really stunning solo on the part of the waterspout. The night sounds so intensely wet, so — the word forces itself in by right of its expressiveness — so “squudgy,” alternate form of squdgy, “moist and pliant; squishy”
wiktionary squudgy. The earth is surely put to it to absorb so much rain, and probably has to hurry and puff a bit and keep some rain waiting for many minutes before a place can be found for it. A night rain has a thoroughness about it, a hearty saturation that betokens willingness on the part of every one. Even the birds, though deeply interested, are not in the least put out, but pipe with rare amiability, “This is a night! A little more of the blanket if you please, my dear.”
      And the next morning! Everything is so fresh, and so pleased with itself. The trees smirk in their shining wetness, it being so evident how they spent the night that there is no use in their attempting concealment. Everything is too utterly soaked to permit one to stir out, which is nothing short of providential, as in no other way could one be made to stay indoors long enough to write necessary letters. A wood fire is kindled by way of compensation, and the dogs come dripping in, full of the excessive wetness they found on their hasty excursion around the place. The roses outside the window are a little ashamed of the lengths to which they went during the night, and hang their heavy heads, too abashed to explain that they never would have taken so much if the rain-water had not been so exquisitely fresh. One understands without their explaining and delicately withdraws until they have somewhat recovered. For the rest of the day one is busily employed feeling dry. Everything requires contrast, and it is impossible to enjoy dryness to the utmost unless it is the last word in wetness outside.
 

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