Chapter IV. A Chat with Xanthippe

The Enchanted Typewriter

by John Kendrick Bangs

The machine stopped its clicking the moment I spoke, and the
words, "Hullo, old chap!" were no sooner uttered than my face grew
red as a carnation pink. I felt as if I had committed some dreadful
faux-pas, and instead of gazing steadfastly into the vacant chair, as
I had been wont to do in my conversation with Boswell, my eyes fell,
as though the invisible occupant of the chair were regarding me with
a look of indignant scorn.

"I beg your pardon," I said.

"I should think you might," returned the types. "Hullo, old
chap!" is no way to address a woman you've never had the honor of
meeting, even if she is of the most advanced sort. No amount of
newness in a woman gives a man the right to be disrespectful to
her."

"I didn't know," I explained. "Really, miss, I--"

"Madame," interrupted the machine, "not miss. I am a married
woman, sir, which makes of your rudeness an even more reprehensible
act. It is well enough to affect a good-fellowship with young
unmarried females, but when you attempt to be flippant with a married
woman--"

"But I didn't know, I tell you," I appealed. "How should I? I
supposed it was Boswell I was talking to, and he and I have become
very good friends."

"Humph!" said the machine. "You're a chum of Boswell's, eh?"

"Well, not exactly a chum, but--" I began.

"But you go with him?" interrupted the lady.

"To an extent, yes," I confessed.

"And does he go with you?" was the query. "If he does, permit me
to depart at once. I should not feel quite in my element in a house
where the editor of a Sunday newspaper was an attractive guest. If
you like that sort of thing, your tastes--"

"I do not, madame," I replied, quickly. "I prefer the opium
habit to the Sunday-newspaper habit, and if I thought Boswell was
merely a purveyor of what is known as Sunday literature, which
depends on the goodness of the day to offset its shortcomings, I
should forbid him the house."

A distinct sigh of relief emanated from the chair.

"Then I may remain," was the remark rapidly clicked off on the
machine.

"I am glad," said I. "And may I ask whom I have the honor of
addressing?"

"Certainly," was the immediate response. "My name is Socrates,
nee Xanthippe."

I instinctively cowered. Candidly, I was afraid. Never in my
life before had I met a woman whom I feared. Never in my life have I
wavered in the presence of the sex which cheers, but I have always
felt that while I could hold my own with Elizabeth, withstand the
wiles of Cleopatra, and manage the recalcitrant Katherine even as did
Petruchio, Xanthippe was another story altogether, and I wished I had
gone to the club. My first impulse was to call up-stairs to my wife
and have her come down. She knows how to handle the new woman far
better than I do. She has never wanted to vote, and my collars are
safe in her hands. She has frequently observed that while she had
many things to be thankful for, her greatest blessing was that she
was born a woman and not a man, and the new women of her native town
never leave her presence without wondering in their own minds whether
or not they are mere humorous contributions of the Almighty to a too
serious world. I pulled myself together as best I could, and feeling
that my better-half would perhaps decline the proffered invitation to
meet with one of the most illustrious of her sex, I decided to fight
my own battle. So I merely said:

"Really? How delightful! I have always felt that I should like
to meet you, and here is one of my devoutest wishes gratified."

I felt cheap after the remark, for Mrs. Socrates, nee Xanthippe,
covered five sheets of paper with laughter, with an occasional
bracketing of the word "derisively," such as we find in the daily
newspapers interspersed throughout the after-dinner speeches of a
candidate of another party. Finally, to my relief, the oft-repeated
"Ha-ha-ha!" ceased, and the line, "I never should have guessed it,"
closed her immediate contribution to our interchange of ideas.

"May I ask why you laugh?" I observed, when she had at length
finished.

"Certainly," she replied. "Far be it from me to dispute the
right of a man to ask any question he sees fit to ask. Is he not the
lord of creation? Is not woman his abject slave? I not the whole
difference between them purely economic? Is it not the law of supply
and demand that rules them both, he by nature demanding and she
supplying?"

Dear reader, did you ever encounter a machine, man-made, merely
a mechanism of ivory, iron, and ink, that could sniff contemptuously?
I never did before this encounter, but the infernal power of either
this type-writer or this woman who manipulated its keys imparted to
the atmosphere I was breathing a sniffing contemptuousness which I
have never experienced anywhere outside of a London hotel, and then
only when I ventured, as few Americans have dared, to complain of the
ducal personage who presided over the dining-room, but who, I must
confess, was conquered subsequently by a tip of ten shillings.

At any rate, there was a sniff of contempt imparted, as I have
said, to the atmosphere I was breathing as Xanthippe answered my
question, and the sniff saved me, just as it did in the London hotel,
when I complained of the lordly lack of manners on the part of the
head waiter. I asserted my independence.

"Don't trouble yourself," I put in. "Of course I shall be
interested in anything you may choose to say, but as a gentleman I do
not care to put a woman to any inconvenience and I do not press the
question."

And then I tried to crush her by adding, "What a lovely day we
have had," as if any subject other than the most commonplace was not
demanded by the situation.

"If you contemplate discussing the weather," was the retort, "I
wish you would kindly seek out some one else with whom to do it. I am
not one of your latter-day
sit-out-on-the-stairs-while-the-others-dance girls. I am, as I have
always been, an ardent admirer of principles, of great problems. For
small talk I have no use."

"Very well, madame--" I began.

"You asked me a moment ago why I laughed," clicked the
machine.

"I know it," said I. "But I withdraw the question. There is no
great principle involved in a woman's laughter. I have known women
who have laughed at a broken heart, as well as at jokes, which shows
that there is no principle involved there; and as a problem, I have
never cared enough about why women laugh to inquire deeply into it.
If she'll just consent to laugh, I'm satisfied without inquiring into
the causes thereof. Let us get down to an agreeable basis for
yourself. What problem do you wish to discuss? Servants, baby-food,
floor-polish, or the number of godets proper to the skirt of a
well-dressed woman?"

I was regaining confidence in myself, and as I talked I ceased
to fear her. Thought I to myself, "This attitude of supreme patronage
is man's safest weapon against a woman. Keep cool, assume that there
is no doubt of your superiority, and that she knows it. Appear to
patronize her, and her own indignation will defeat her ends." It is a
good principle generally. Among mortal women I have never known it to
fail, and when I find myself worsted in an argument with one of man's
greatest blessings, I always fall back upon it and am saved the
ignominy of defeat. But this time I counted without my antagonist.

"Will you repeat that list of problems?" she asked, coldly.

"Servants, baby-food, floor-polish, and godets," I repeated,
somewhat sheepishly, she took it so coolly.

"Very well," said Xanthippe, with a note of amusement in her
manipulation of the keys. "If those are your subjects, let us discuss
them. I am surprised to find an able-bodied man like yourself
bothering with such problems, but I'll help you out of your
difficulties if I can. No needy man shall ever say that I ignored his
cry for help. What do you want to know about baby-food?"

This turning of the tables nonplussed me, and I didn't really
know what to say, and so wisely said nothing, and the machine grew
sharp in its clicking.

"You men!" it cried. "You don't know how fearfully shallow you
are. I can see through you in a minute."

"Well," I said, modestly, "I suppose you can." Then calling my
feeble wit to my rescue, I added, "It's only natural, since I've made
a spectacle of myself."

"Not you!" cried Xanthippe. "You haven't even made a monocle of
yourself."

And here we both laughed, and the ice was broken.

"What has become of Boswell?" I asked.

"He's been sent to the ovens for ten days for libelling
Shakespeare and Adam and Noah and old Jonah," replied Xanthippe. "He
printed an article alleged to have been written by Baron Munchausen,
in which those four gentlemen were held up to ridicule and libelled
grossly."

"And Munchausen?" I cried.

"Oh, the Baron got out of it by confessing that he wrote the
article," replied the lady. "And as he swore to his confession the
jury were convinced he was telling another one of his lies and
acquitted him, so Boswell was sent up alone. That's why I am here.
There isn't a man in all Hades that dared take charge of Boswell's
paper--they're all so deadly afraid of the government, so I stepped
in, and while Boswell is baking I'm attending to his editorial
duties."

"But you spoke contemptuously of the Sunday newspapers awhile
ago, Mrs. Socrates," said I.

"I know that," said Xanthippe, "but I've fixed that. I get out
the Sunday edition on Saturdays."

"Oh--I see. And you like it?" I queried.

"First rate," she replied. "I'm in love with the work. I almost
wish poor old Bos had been sentenced for ten years. I have enough of
the woman in me to love minding other people's business, and, as far
as I can find out, that's about all journalism amounts to. Sewing
societies aren't to be mentioned in the same day with a newspaper for
scandal and gossip, and, besides, I'm an ardent advocate of men's
rights-- have been for centuries--and I've got my first chance now to
promulgate a few of my ideas. I'm really a man in all my views of
life--that's the inevitable end of an advanced woman who persists in
following her 'newness' to its logical conclusion. Her habits of
thought gradually come to be those of a man. Even I have a great deal
more sympathy with Socrates than I used to have. I used to think I
was the one that should be emancipated, but I'm really reaching that
stage in my manhood where I begin to believe that he needs
emancipation."

"Then you admit, do you," I cried, with great glee, "that this
new-woman business is all Tommy-rot?"

"Not by a great deal," snapped the machine. "Far from it. It's
the salvation of the happy life. It is perfectly logical to say that
the more manny a woman becomes, the more she is likely to sympathize
with the troubles and trials which beset men."

I scratched my head and pulled the lobe of my ear in the hope of
loosening an argument to confront her with, not that I disagreed with
her entirely, but because I instinctively desired to oppose her as
pleasantly disagreeably as I could. But the result was nil.

"I'm afraid you are right," I said.

"You're a truthful man," clicked the machine, laughingly. "You
are afraid I'm right. And why are you afraid? Because you are one of
those men who take a cynical view of woman. You want woman to be a
mere lump of sugar, content to be left in a bowl until it pleases you
in your high-and-mightiness to take her in the tongs and drop her
into the coffee of your existence, to sweeten what would otherwise
not please your taste--and like most men you prefer two or three
lumps to one."

I could only cough. The lady was more or less right. I am very
fond of sugar, though one lump is my allowance, and I never exceed
it, whatever the temptation. Xanthippe continued.

"You criticise her because she doesn't understand you and your
needs, forgetting that out of twenty-four hours of your daily
existence your wife enjoys personally about twelve hours of your
society, during eight of which you are lying flat on your back,
snoring as though your life depended on it; but when she asks to be
allowed to share your responsibilities as well as what, in her poor
little soul, she thinks are your joys, you flare up and call her
'new' and 'advanced,' as if advancement were a crime. You ride off on
your wheel for forty miles on your days of rest, and she is glad to
have you do it, but when she wants a bicycle to ride, you think it's
all wrong, immoral, and conducive to a weak heart. Bah!"

"I--ah--" I began.

"Yes you do," she interrupted. "You ah and you hem and you haw,
but in the end you're a poor miserable social mugwump, conscious of
your own magnificence and virtue, but nobody else ever can attain to
your lofty plane. Now what I want to see among women is more good
fellows. Suppose you regarded your wife as good a fellow as you think
your friend Jones. Do you think you'd be running off to the club
every night to play billiards with Jones, leaving your wife to enjoy
her own society?"

"Perhaps not," I replied, "but that's just the point. My wife
isn't a good fellow."

"Exactly, and for that reason you seek out Jones. You have a
right to the companionship of the good fellow--that's what I'm going
to advocate. I've advanced far enough to see that on the average in
the present state of woman she is not a suitable companion for
man--she has none of the qualities of a chum to which he is entitled.
I'm not so blind but that I can see the faults of my own sex,
particularly now that I have become so very masculine myself. Both
sexes should have their rights, and that is the great policy I'm
going to hammer at as long as I have Boswell's paper in charge. I
wish you might see my editorial page for to-morrow; it is simply
fine. I urge upon woman the necessity of joining in with her husband
in all his pleasures whether she enjoys them or not. When he lights a
cigar, let her do the same; when he calls for a cocktail, let her
call for another. In time she will begin to understand him. He
understands her pleasures, and often he joins in with them--opera,
dances, lectures; she ought to do the same, and join in with him in
his pleasures, and after a while they'll get upon a common basis,
have their clubs together, and when that happy time comes, when
either one goes out the other will also go, and their companionship
will be perfect."

"But you objected to my calling you old chap when we first met,"
said I. "Is that quite consistent?"

"Of course," retorted the lady. "We had never met before, and,
besides, doctors do not always take their own medicine."

"But that women ought to become good fellows is what you're
going to advocate, eh?" said I.

"Yes," replied Xanthippe. "It's excellent, don't you think?"

"Superb," I answered, "for Hades. It's just my idea of how
things ought to be in Hades. I think, however, that we mortals will
stick to the old plan for a little while yet; most of us prefer to
marry wives rather than old chaps."

The remark seemed so to affect my visitor that I suddenly became
conscious of a sense of loneliness.

"I don't wish to offend you," I said, "but I rather like to keep
the two separate. Aren't you man enough yet to see the value of
variety?"

But there was no answer. The lady had gone. It was evident that
she considered me unworthy of further attention.