The Wit of Women

Mr. A. (_with an air of offended dignity_). Oh, bother! You are not expected to support the family.

[_Mrs. A., thinking of that dentist’s bill, that shoe bill, and the summer outfit for a family of six, says nothing. Exit Mr. A., who re-enters a moment later._]

Mr. A. You—a—haven’t fixed my coat, I see.

Mrs. A. (_with a guilty start_). I—I forgot it!

Gibbering Fiend Conscience. Ha, ha! Ho, ho!

Curtain falls amid chorus of exulting demons.

I have reserved for the close numerous instances of woman’s facility at badinage and repartee. It is there, after all, that she shines perennial and pre-eminent. You will excuse me if I give them to you one after another without comment, like a closing display of fireworks.

And first let me quote from Mrs. Rollins, as an instance of the way in which women often react upon each other in repartee, a little conversation which it was once her privilege to overhear:

“Margaret. I wonder you never have been married, Kate. Of course you’ve had lots of chances. Won’t you tell us how many?

“Kate. No, indeed! I could not so cruelly betray my rejected lovers.

“Helen. Of course you wouldn’t tell us exactly; but would you mind giving it to us in round numbers?

“Kate. Certainly not; the roundest number of all exactly expresses the chances I have had.

“Charlotte (_with a sigh_). Now I know what people mean by Kate’s circle of admirers!”

A lady was discussing the relative merits and demerits of the two sexes with a gentleman of her acquaintance. After much badinage on one side and the other, he said: “Well, you never yet heard of casting seven devils out of a man.” “No,” was the quick retort, “they’ve got ‘em yet!”

“What would you do in time of war if you had the suffrage?” said Horace Greeley to Mrs. Stanton.

“Just what you have done, Mr. Greeley,” replied the ready lady; “stay at home and urge others to go and fight!”

It was Margaret Fuller who worsted Mrs. Greeley in a verbal encounter. The latter had a decided aversion to kid gloves, and on meeting Margaret shrank from her extended hand with a shudder, saying: “Ugh! Skin of a beast! skin of a beast!”

“Why,” said Miss Fuller, in surprise, “what do you wear?”

“Silk,” said Mrs. Greeley, stretching out her palm with satisfaction.

Miss Fuller just touched it, saying, with a disgusted expression, “Ugh! entrails of a worm! entrails of a worm!”

Mademoiselle de Mars, the former favorite of the Theatre de Francais, had in some way offended the Gardes du Corps. So one night they came in full force to the theatre and tried to hiss her down.

The actress, unabashed, came to the front of the stage, and alluding to the fact that the Gardes du Corps never went to war, said: “What has Mars to do with the Gardes du Corps?”

Madame Louis de Segur is daughter of the late Casimir Perier, who was Minister of the Interior during Thiers’s administration. When once out of office, but still an influential member of the House, he once tried to form a new Moderate Republican party, meeting with but little success.

Once his daughter, who was sitting in the gallery, saw him entering the House all alone.

“Here comes my father with his party,” she said.

I was greatly amused at the quiet reprimand given by a literary lady of New York to a stranger at her receptions, who, with hands crossed complacently under his coat-tails, was critically examining the various treasures in her room, humming obtrusively as he passed along.

The hostess paused near him, surveyed him critically, and then inquired, in a gentle tone: “Do you play also?”

A young girl being asked why she had not been more frequently to Lenten services, excused herself in this fashion, severe, but truthful: “Oh, Dr. –- is on such intimate terms with the Almighty that I felt de trop.”

At a reception in Washington this spring an admirable answer was given by a level-headed woman—we are all proud of Miss Cleveland—to a fine-looking army officer, who has been doing guard duty in that magnificent city for the past seventeen years. “Pray,” said he, “what do ladies find to think about besides dress and parties?”

“They can think of the heroic deeds of our modern army officers,” was her smiling reply.

Do you remember Lydia Maria Child’s reply to her husband when he wished he was as rich as Croesus: “At any rate, you are King of Lydia;” and Lucretia Mott’s humorous comment when she entered a room where her husband and his brother Richard were sitting, both of them remarkable for their taciturnity and reticence: “I thought you must both be here—it was so still!”

In my own home I recall a sensible old maid of Scotch descent with her cosey cottage and the dear old-fashioned garden where she loved to work. Our physician, a man of infinite humor, who honestly admired her sterling worth, and was attracted by her individuality, leaned over her fence one bright spring morning, with the direct question: “Miss Sharp, why did you never get married?”

She looked up from her weeding, rested on her hoe-handle, and looking steadily at his hair, which was of a sandy hue, answered: “I’ll tell you all about it, Doctor. I made up my mind, when I was a girl, that, come what would, I would never marry a red-headed man, and none but men with red hair have ever offered themselves.”

We all know women whose capacity for monologue exhausts all around them. So that the remark will be appreciated of a lady to whom I said, alluding to such a talker: “Have you seen Mrs. –- lately?”

“No, I really had to give up her acquaintance in despair, for I had been trying two years to tell her something in particular.”