Women, as a rule, are stancher than men. There are women that you
feel you could rely upon to the death. But very few men indeed have
this dog-like virtue. Men, taking them generally, are more like cats.
You may live with them and call them yours for twenty years, but you
can never feel _quite_ sure of them. You never know exactly what they
are thinking of. You never feel easy in your mind as to the result of
the next-door neighbor's laying down a Brussels carpet in his kitchen.
We have no school for the turning-out of stanch men in this nineteenth
century. In the old, earnest times, war made men stanch and true to
each other. We have learned up a good many glib phrases about the
wickedness of war, and we thank God that we live in these peaceful,
trading times, wherein we can--and do--devote the whole of our
thoughts and energies to robbing and cheating and swindling one
another--to "doing" our friends, and overcoming our enemies by
trickery and lies--wherein, undisturbed by the wicked ways of
fighting-men, we can cultivate to better perfection the "smartness,"
the craft, and the cunning, and all the other "business-like" virtues
on which we so pride ourselves, and which were so neglected and
treated with so little respect in the bad old age of violence, when
men chose lions and eagles for their symbols rather than foxes.
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