Ambrose Bierce - "A Son of the Gods and A Horseman in the Sky"

Laura Lee Hope - "The Story of a White Rocking Horse"

Stephen Leacock - "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town"

Edgar Rice Burroughs - "The Return of Tarzan"

The Woman Hater

C >> Charles Reade >> The Woman Hater




"He then went into our own little preliminary examination, and gave the
statistics: In Latin were examined 55 men and 3 women: 10 men were
rejected, but no women; 7 men were respectable, 7 _optimi,_ or
first-rate, 1 woman _bona,_ and 1 _optima._ In mathematics were examined
67 men and 4 women, of whom 1 woman was _optima,_ and 1 _bona:_ 10 men
were _optimi,_ and 25 _boni;_ the rest failed. In German 2 men were
examined, and 1 woman: 1 man was good, and 1 woman. In logic 28 men were
examined, and 1 woman: the woman came out fifth in rank, and she had only
been at it a month. In moral philosophy 16 men were examined; and 1
woman: the woman came out third. In arithmetic, 51 men and 3 women: 2 men
were _optimi,_ and 1 woman _optima;_ several men failed, and not one
woman. In mechanics, 81 men and 1 woman: the woman passed with fair
credit, as did 13 men; the rest failing. In French were examined 58 men
and 4 women: 3 men and 1 woman were respectable; 8 men and 1 woman
passed; two women attained the highest excellence, _optimoe,_ and not one
man. In English, 63 men and 3 women: 3 men were good, and 1 woman; but 2
women were _optimoe,_ and only 1 man."

"Fancy you remembering figures like that," said Vizard.

"It is all training and habit," said she, simply.

"As to the study and practice of medicine degrading women, he asked if it
degraded men. No; it elevated them. They could not contradict him on that
point. He declined to believe, without a particle of evidence, that any
science could elevate the higher sex and degrade the lower. What evidence
we had ran against it. Nurses are not, as a class, unfeminine, yet all
that is most appalling, disgusting, horrible, and _unsexing_ in the art
of healing is monopolized by them., Women see worse things than doctors.
Women nurse all the patients of both sexes, often under horrible and
sickening conditions, and lay out all the corpses. No doctor objects to
this on sentimental grounds; and why? Because the nurses get only a
guinea a week, and not a guinea a flying visit: to women the loathsome
part of medicine; to man the lucrative! The noble nurses of the Crimea
went to attend _males only,_ yet were not charged with indelicacy. They
worked gratis. The would-be doctresses look _mainly to attending women,_
but then they want to be paid for it: there was the rub--it was a mere
money question, and all the attempts of the union to hide this and play
the sentimental shop-man were transparent hypocrisy and humbug.

"A doctor justly revered in Edinburgh answered him, but said nothing new
nor effective; and, to our great joy, the majority went with us.

"Thus encouraged, the university court settled the matter. We were
admitted to matriculate and study medicine, under certain conditions, to
which I beg your attention.

"The instruction of women for the profession of medicine was to be
conducted in separate classes confined entirely to women.

"The professors of the Faculty of Medicine should, for this purpose, be
permitted to have separate classes for women.

"All these regulations were approved by the chancellor, and are to this
day a part of the law of that university.

"We ladies, five in number, but afterward seven, were matriculated and
registered professional students of medicine, and passed six delightful
months we now look back upon as if it was a happy dream.

"We were picked women, all in earnest. We deserved respect, and we met
with it. The teachers were kind, and we attentive and respectful: the
students were courteous, and we were affable to them, but discreet.
Whatever seven young women could do to earn esteem, and reconcile even
our opponents to the experiment, we did. There was not an anti-student,
or downright flirt, among us; and, indeed, I have observed that an
earnest love of study and science controls the amorous frivolity of women
even more than men's. Perhaps our heads are really _smaller_ than men's,
and we haven't room in them to be like Solomon--extremely wise and arrant
fools.

"This went on until the first professional examination; but, after the
examination, the war, to our consternation, recommenced. Am I, then,
bad-hearted for thinking there must have been something in that
examination which roused the sleeping spirit of trades-unionism?"

"It seems probable."

"Then view that probability by the light of fact:

"In physiology the male students were 127; in chemistry, 226; 25 obtained
honors in physiology; 31 in chemistry.

"In physiology and chemistry there were five women. One obtained honors
in physiology alone; four obtained honors in both physiology and
chemistry.

"So, you see, the female students beat the male students in physiology at
the rate of five to one; and in chemistry, seven and three-quarters to
one.

"But, horrible to relate, one of the ladies eclipsed twenty-nine out of
the thirty-one gentlemen who took _honors_ in chemistry. In capacity she
surpassed them all; for the two, who were above her, obtained only two
marks more than she did, yet they had been a year longer at the study.
This entitled her to 'a Hope Scholarship' for that year.

"Would you believe it? the scholarship was refused her--in utter defiance
of the founder's conditions--on the idle pretext that she had studied at
a different hour from the male students, and therefore was not a member
of the chemistry class."

"Then why admit her to the competition?" said Vizard.

"Why? because the _'a priori_ reasoners took for granted she would be
defeated. Then the cry would have been, 'You had your chance; we let you
try for the Hope Scholarship; but you could not win it.' Having won it,
she was to be cheated out of it somehow, or anyhow. The separate-class
system was not that lady's fault; she would have preferred to pay the
university lecturer lighter fees, and attend a better lecture with the
male students. The separate class was an unfavorable condition of study,
which the university imposed on us, as the condition of admitting us to
the professional study of medicine? Surely, then, to cheat that lady out
of her Hope Scholarship, when she had earned it under conditions of study
enforced and unfavorable, was perfidious and dishonest. It was even a
little ungrateful to the injured sex; for the money which founded these
scholarships was women's money, every penny of it. The good Professor
Hope had lectured to ladies fifty years ago; had taken their fees, and
founded his scholarships with their money: and it would have done his
heart good to see a lady win and wear that prize which, but for his
female pupils, would never have existed. But it is easy to trample on a
dead man: as easy as on living women.

"The perfidy was followed by ruthless tyranny. They refused to admit the
fair criminal to the laboratory, 'else,' said they, 'she'll defeat more
men.

"That killed her, as a chemist. It gave inferior male students too great
an advantage over her. And so the public and Professor Hope were
sacrificed to a trades-union, and lost a great analytical chemist, and
something more--she had, to my knowledge, a subtle diagnosis. Now we have
at present no _great_ analyst, and the few competent analysts we have do
not possess diagnosis in proportion. They can find a few poisons in the
dead, but they are slow to discover them in the living; so they are not
to be counted on to save a life, where crime is administering poison.
That woman could, and would, I think.

"They drove her out of chemistry, wherein she was a genius, into surgery,
in which she was only a talent. She is now house-surgeon in a great
hospital, and the public has lost a great chemist and diagnostic
physician combined.

"Up to the date of this enormity, the Press had been pretty evenly
divided for and against us. But now, to their credit, they were
unanimous, and reprobated the juggle as a breach of public faith and
plain morality. Backed by public opinion, one friendly professor took
this occasion to move the university to relax the regulation of separate
classes since it had been abused. He proposed that the female students
should be admitted to the ordinary classes.

"This proposal was negatived by 58 to 47.

"This small majority was gained by a characteristic maneuver. The queen's
name was gravely dragged in as disapproving the proposal, when, in fact,
it could never have been submitted to her, or her comment, if any, must
have been in writing; and as to the general question, she has never said
a public word against medical women. She has too much sense not to ask
herself how can any woman be fit to be a queen, with powers of life and
death, if no woman is fit to be so small a thing, by comparison, as a
physician or a surgeon.

"We were victims of a small majority, obtained by imagination playing
upon flunkyism, and the first result was we were not allowed to sit down
to botany with males. Mind you, we might have gathered blackberries with
them in umbrageous woods from morn till dewy eve, and not a professor
shocked in the whole faculty; but we must not sit down with them to an
intellectual dinner of herbs, and listen, in their company, to the
pedantic terms and childish classifications of botany, in which kindred
properties are ignored. Only the male student must be told in public that
a fox-glove is _Digitalis purpurea_ in the improved nomenclature of
science, and crow-foot is _Ranunculus sceleratus,_ and the buck-bean is
_Menyanthis trifoliata,_ and mugwort is _Artemesia Judaica;_ that, having
lost the properties of hyssop known to Solomon, we regain our superiority
over that learned Hebrew by christening it _Gratiola officinalis._ The
sexes must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and
inexpressive terms as snow-drop, meadow-sweet, heart's-ease, fever-few,
cowslip, etc., and learn to know the cowslip as _Primula veris_--by
class, _Pentandria monogynia;_ and the buttercup as _Ranunculus
acnis_--_Polyandria monogynia;_ the snow-drop as _Galanthus
nivalis_--_Hexandria monogynia;_ and the meadow-sweet as _Ulnaria;_ the
heart's ease as _Viola tricolor;_ and the daisy as _Bellis
perennis_--_Syngenesia superflua."_

"Well," said Vizard, "I think the individual names can only hurt the jaws
and other organs of speech. But the classification! Is the mild luster of
science to be cast over the natural disposition of young women toward
_Polyandria monogynia?_ Is trigamy to be identified in their sweet souls
with floral innocence, and their victims sitting by?"

"Such classifications are puerile and fanciful," said Miss Gale; "but,
for that very reason, they don't infect _animals_ with trigamy. Novels
are much more likely to do that."

"Especially ladies' novels," suggested Vizard, meekly.

"Some," suggested the accurate Rhoda. "But the sexes will never lose
either morals or delicacy through courses of botany endured together. It
will not hurt young ladies a bit to tell them in the presence of young
gentlemen that a cabbage is a thalamifioral exogen, and its stamens are
tetradynamous; nor that the mushroom, _Psalliata campestris,_ and the
toad-stool, _Myoena campestris,_ are confounded by this science in one
class, _Cryptogamia._ It will not even hurt them to be told that the
properties of the _Arum maculatum_ are little known, but that the males
are crowded round the center of the spadix, and the females seated at the
base."

Said Vizard, pompously, "The pulpit and the tea-table are centers of
similar phenomena. Now I think of it, the pulpit is a very fair calyx,
but the tea-table is sadly squat."

"Yes, sir. But, more than that, not one of these pedants who growled at
promiscuous botany has once objected to promiscuous dancing, not even
with the gentleman's arm round the lady's waist, which the custom of
centuries cannot render decent. Yet the professors of delicacy connive,
and the Mother Geese sit smirking at the wall. Oh, world of hypocrites
and humbugs!"

"I am afraid you are an upsetter general," said Vizard. "But you are
abominably sincere; and all this is a curious chapter of human nature.
Pray proceed."

Miss Gale nodded gravely, and resumed.

"So much public ridicule fell on the union for this, and the blind
flunkyism which could believe the queen had meddled in the detail, that
the professors melted under it, and threw open botany and natural history
to us, with other collateral sciences.

"Then came the great fight, which is not ended yet.

"To qualify for medicine and pass the stiff examination, by which the
public is very properly protected, you must be versed in anatomy and
clinical surgery. Books and lectures do not suffice for this, without the
human subject--alive and dead. The university court knew that very well
when it matriculated us, and therefore it provided for our instruction by
promising us separate classes.

"Backed by this public pledge, we waited on the university professor of
anatomy to arrange our fees for a separate lecture. He flatly refused to
instruct us separately for love or money, or to permit his assistants.
That meant, 'The union sees a way to put you in a cleft stick and cheat
you out of your degree, in spite of the pledge the university has given
you; in spite of your fees, and of your time given to study in reliance
on the promise.'

"This was a heavy blow. But there was an extramural establishment called
Surgeons' Hall, and the university formally recognized all the lecturers
in this Hall; so we applied to those lecturers, and they were shocked at
the illiberality of the university professors, and admitted us at once to
mixed classes. We attended lectures with the male students on anatomy and
surgery, and _of all the anticipated evils, not one took place, sir._

"The objections to mixed classes proved to be idle words; yet the
old-fashioned minds opposed to us shut their eyes and went on reasoning
_'a priori,_ and proving that the evils which they saw did not arise
_must_ arise should the experiment of mixed classes, which was then
succeeding, ever he tried.

"To qualify us for examination we now needed but one thing more--hospital
practice. The infirmary is supported not so much by the university as the
town. We applied, therefore, with some confidence, for the permission
usually conceded to medical students. The managers refused us the _town
infirmary._ Then we applied to the subscribers. The majority, not
belonging to a trades-union, declared in our favor, and intimated plainly
that they would turn out the illiberal managers at the next election of
managers.

"But by this time the war was hot and general, and hard blows dealt on
both sides. It was artfully suppressed by our enemies in the profession
and in the Press that we had begged hard for the separate class which had
been promised us in anatomy, and permission to attend, by ourselves, a
limited number of wards in the infirmary; and on this falsehood by
suppression worse calumnies were built.

"I shall tell you what we really were, and what foul mouths and pens
insinuated we must be.

"Two accomplished women had joined us, and we were now the seven wise
virgins of a half-civilized nation, and, if I know black from white, we
were seven of its brightest ornaments. We were seven ladies, who wished
to be doctresses, especially devoted to our own sex; seven good students,
who went on our knees to the university for those separate classes in
anatomy and clinical surgery which the university was bound in honor to
supply us; but, our prayer rejected, said to the university, 'Well, use
your own discretion about separate or mixed classes; but for your own
credit, and that of human nature, do not willfully tie a hangman's noose
to throttle the weak and deserving, and don't cheat seven poor,
hard-working, meritorious women, your own matriculated students, out of
our entrance-fees, which lie to this day in the university coffers, out
of the exceptionally heavy fees we have paid to your professors, out of
all the fruit of our hard study, out of our diplomas, and our bread.
Solve the knot your own way. We will submit to mixed classes, or
anything, except professional destruction.'

"In this spirit our lion-hearted leader wrote the letter of an uninjured
dove, and said there were a great many more wards in the infirmary than
any male student could or did attend; we would be content to divide the
matter thus: the male students to have the monopoly of two-thirds, we to
have the bare right of admission to one-third. By this the male students
(if any) who had a sincere objection to study the sick, and witness
operations, in our company, could never be troubled with us; and we,
though less favored than the male students, could just manage to qualify
for that public examination, which was to prove whether we could make
able physicians or not.

"Sir, this gentle proposal was rejected with rude scorn, and in
aggressive terms. Such is the spirit of a trades-union.

"Having now shown you what we were, I will now tell you what our enemies,
declining to observe our conduct, though it was very public, suggested we
_must_ be-- seven shameless women, who pursued medicine as a handle for
sexuality; who went into the dissecting-room to dissect males, and into
the hospital to crowd round the male patient, and who _demanded_ mixed
classes, that we might have male companions in those studies which every
feminine woman would avoid altogether.

"This key-note struck, the public was regaled with a burst of hypocrisy
such as Moli'ere never had the luck to witness, or oh, what a comedy he
would have written!

"The immodest sex, taking advantage of Moli'ere's decease without heirs
of his brains, set to work in public to teach the modest sex modesty.

"In the conduct of this pleasant paradox, the representatives of that
sex, which has much courage and little modesty, were two professors--who
conducted the paradox so judiciously that the London Press reprimanded
them for their foul insinuations--and a number of young men called
medical students.

"Now, the medical student surpasses most young men in looseness of life,
and indecency of mind and speech.

"The representatives of womanhood to be instructed in modesty by these
animals, old and young, were seven prudes, whose minds were devoted to
study and honorable ambition. These women were as much above the average
of their sex in feminine reserve and independence of the male sex as they
were in intellect.

"The average girl, who throughout this discussion was all of a sudden
puffed as a lily, because she ceased to be _observed,_ can attend to
nothing if a man is by; she can't work, she can't play, she is so eaten
up with sexuality. The frivolous soul can just manage to play croquet
with females; but, enter a man upon the scene, and she does even that
very ill, and can hardly be got to take her turn in the only thing she
has really given her mind to. We were angels compared with this paltry
creature, and she was the standing butt of public censure, until it was
found that an imaginary picture of her could be made the handle for
insulting her betters.

"Against these seven prudes, decent dotards and their foul-mouthed allies
flung out insinuations which did not escape public censure; and the
medical students declared their modesty was shocked at our intrusion into
anatomy and surgery, and petitioned against us. Some of the Press were
deceived by this for a time, and _hurlaient avec les loups._

"I took up, one day, my favorite weekly, in which nearly every writer
seems to me a scholar, and was regaled with such lines as these:

"'It appears that girls are to associate with boys as medical students,
in order that, when they become women, they may be able to speak to men
with entire plainness upon all the subjects of a doctor's daily practice.

"'In plain words, the aspirants to medicine and surgery desire to rid
themselves speedily and effectually of that modesty which nature has
planted in women.' And then the writer concludes: 'We beg to suggest that
there are other places besides dissecting-rooms and hospitals where those
ladies may relieve themselves of the modesty which they find so
troublesome. But fathers naturally object to this being done at their
sons' expense."

"Infamous!" cried Vizard. "One comfort, no man ever penned that. That is
some old woman writing down young ones."

"I don't know," said Rhoda. "I have met so many womanish men in this
business. All I know is, that my cheeks burned, and, for once in the
fight, scalding tears ran down them. It was as if a friend had spat upon
me.

"What a chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by
minds impure! To _us_ the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an
awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds
the Creator's hand in structural beauties that the trained can
appreciate, if wicked dunces can't.

"And as to the infirmary, we should have done just what we did at Zurich.
We held a little aloof from the male patients, unless some good-natured
lecturer, or pupil, gave us a signal, and then we came forward. If we
came uninvited, we always stood behind the male students: but we did
crowd round the beds of the female patients, and claimed the inner row:
AND, SIR, THEY THANKED GOD FOR US OPENLY.

"A few awkward revelations were made during this discussion. A medical
student had the candor to write and say that he had been at a lecture,
and the professor had told an indelicate story, and, finding it palatable
to his modest males, had said, 'There, gentlemen: now, if female students
were admitted here, I could not have told you this amusing circumstance.'
So that it was our purifying influence he dreaded in secret, though he
told the public he dreaded the reverse.

"Again, female patients wrote to the journals to beg that female students
might be admitted to come between them and the brutal curiosity of the
male students, to which they were subjected in so offensive a way that
more than one poor creature declared she had felt agonies of shame, even
in the middle of an agonizing operation.

"This being a cry from that public for whose sake the whole clique of
physicians--male and female--exists, had, of course, no great weight in
the union controversy.

"But, sir, if grave men and women will sit calmly down and fling dirt
upon every woman who shall aspire to medicine in an island, though she
can do so on a neighboring continent with honor, and choose their time
when the dirt can only fall on seven known women-- since the female
students in that island are only seven--the pretended generality becomes
a cowardly personality, and wounds as such, and excites less
cold-hearted, and more hot-headed blackguards to outrage. It was so at
Philadelphia, and it was so at Edinburgh.

"Our extramural teacher in anatomy was about to give a competitive
examination. Now, on these occasions, we were particularly obnoxious.
Often and clearly as it had been proved, by _'a priori_ reasoning, that
we _must_ be infinitely inferior to the average male, we persisted in
proving, by hard fact, that we were infinitely his superior; and every
examination gave us an opportunity of crushing solid reasons under hollow
fact.

"A band of medical students determined that for once _'a priori_
reasoning should have fair play, and not be crushed by a thing so
illusory as fact. Accordingly, they got the gates closed, and collected
round them. We came up, one after another, and were received with hisses,
groans, and abusive epithets.

"This mode of reasoning must have been admirably adapted to my weak
understanding; for it convinced me at once I had no business there, and I
was for private study directly.

"But, sir, you know the ancients said, 'Better is an army of stags with a
lion for their leader, than an army of lions with a stag for their
leader.' Now, it so happened that we had a lioness for our leader. She
pushed manfully through the crowd, and hammered at the door: then we
crept quaking after. She ordered those inside to open the gates; and some
student took shame, and did. In marched our lioness, crept after by
her--her--"

"Her cubs."

"A thousand thanks, good sir. Her does. On second thoughts, 'her hinds.'
Doe is the female of buck. Now, I said stags. Well, the ruffians who had
undertaken to teach us modesty swarmed in too. They dragged a sheep into
the lecture-room, lighted pipes, produced bottles, drank, smoked, and
abused us ladies to our faces, and interrupted the lecturer at intervals
with their howls and ribaldry: that was intended to show the professor he
should not be listened to any more if he admitted the female students.
The affair got wind, and other students, not connected with medicine,
came pouring in, with no worse motive, probably, than to see the lark.
Some of these, however, thought the introduction of the sheep unfair to
so respected a lecturer, and proceeded to remove her; but the professor
put up his hand, and said, 'Oh, don't remove _her:_ she is superior in
intellect to many persons here present.'

"At the end of the lecture, thinking us in actual danger from these
ruffians, he offered to let us out by a side door; but our lioness stood
up and said, in a voice that rings in my ear even now, 'Thank you, sir;
no. There are _gentlemen_ enough here to escort us safely.'

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.