UNGALLANT LOWER RACES OF MEN

If we now turn to human beings, we have to ascend many strata of
civilization before we come across anything resembling the unselfish
gallantry of the rooster. The Australian savage, when he has speared a
kangaroo, makes his wife cook it, then selects the juiciest cuts for
himself and the other men, leaving the bones to the women and dogs.

Ascending to the much higher Polynesians and American Indians we still
find that the women have to content themselves with what the men
leave. A Hawaiian even considers it a disgrace to eat at the same
place as his wife, or with the same utensils.

What Kowney says (173) of the Nagas of India--"she does everything the
husband will not, and he considers it effeminate to do anything but
fight, hunt, and fish"--is true of the lower races in general. An
African Kaffir, says Wood (73), would consider it beneath his dignity
to as much as lift a basket of rice on the head of even his favorite
wife; he sits calmly on the ground and allows some woman to help his
busy wife. "One of my friends," he continues,

"when rather new to Kaffirland, happened to look into a
hut and there saw a stalwart Kaffir sitting and smoking
his pipe, while the women were hard at work in the sun,
building huts, carrying timber, and performing all
kinds of severe labor. Struck with a natural
indignation at such behavior, he told the smoker to get
up and work like a man. This idea was too much even for
the native politeness of the Kaffir, who burst into a
laugh at so absurd a notion. 'Women work,' said he,
'men sit in the house and smoke.'"

MacDonald relates (in _Africana_, I., 35) that "a woman always kneels
when she has occasion to talk to a man." Even queens must in some
cases go on their knees before their husbands. (Ratzel, I., 254.)
Caillé gives similar testimony regarding the Waissulo, and Mungo Park
(347) describes the return of one of his companions to the capital of
Dentila, after an absence of three years:

"As soon as he had seated himself upon a mat, by the
threshold of his door, a young woman (his intended
bride) brought a little water in a calabash, and
kneeling down before him, desired him to wash his
hands; when he had done this, the girl, with a tear of
joy sparkling in her eyes, drank the water; this being
considered as the greatest proof she could possibly
give him of her fidelity and attachment."

An Eskimo, when building a house, looks on lazily while his women
carry stones "almost heavy enough to break their backs." The ungallant
men not only compel the women to be their drudges, but slyly create a
sentiment that it is disgraceful for a man to assist them. Of the
Patagonian Indians Falkner asserts that the women are so rigidly
"obliged to perform their duty, that their husbands cannot help them
on any occasion, or in the greatest distress, without incurring the
highest ignominy," and this is the general feeling, of which other
illustrations will be given in later chapters. Foolish sentimentalists
have tried to excuse the Indians on the ground that they have no time
to attend to anything but fighting and hunting. But they always make
the squaws do the hard work, whether there be any war and hunting or
not. A white American girl, accustomed to the gallant attentions of
her lover, would not smile on the red Dacota suitor of whom Riggs
writes (205):

"When the family are abed and asleep, he often visits
her in her mother's tent, or he finds her out in the
grove in the day time gathering fuel. She has the load
of sticks made up, and when she kneels down to take it
on her back, possibly he takes her hand and helps her
up and then walks home by her side. Such was the custom
In the olden time."

Still, there is a germ of gallantry here. The Dacota at least helps to
load his human donkey, while the Kaffir refuses to do even that.

Colonel James Smith, who had been adopted by the Indians, relates (45)
how one day he helped the squaws to hoe corn. They approved of it, but
the old men afterward chid him for degrading himself by hoeing corn
like a squaw. He slyly adds that, as he was never very fond of work,
they had no occasion to scold him again. We read in Schoolcraft (V.,
268) that among the Creeks, during courtship, the young man used to
help the girl hoe the corn in her field, plant her beans and set poles
for them to run upon. But this was not intended as an act of gallant
assistance; it had a symbolic meaning. The running up of the beans on
the poles and the entwining of their vines was "thought emblematical
of their approaching union and bondage." Morgan states expressly in
his classical work on the Iroquois (332) that "no attempts by the
unmarried to please or gratify each other by acts of personal
attention were ever made." In other words the Indians knew not
gallantry in the sense of disinterested courtesy to the weaker
sex--the gallantry which is an essential ingredient of romantic love.

Germs of gallantry may perhaps be found in Borneo where, as St. John
relates (I., 161), a young Dyak may help the girl he wants to marry in
her farm work, carrying home her load of vegetables or wood, or make
her presents of rings, a petticoat, etc. But such a statement must be
interpreted with caution.

The very fact that they make the women do the field work and carry the
wood habitually, shows that the Dyaks are not gallant. Momentary
favors for the sake of securing favors in return, or of arranging an
ephemeral Bornean "marriage," are not acts of disinterested courtesy
to the weaker sex. The Dyaks themselves clearly understand that such
attentions are mere bids for favors. As a missionary cited by Ling
Roth (1., 13.1) remarks:

"If a woman handed to a man betel-nut and sirah to eat,
or if a man paid her the smallest attention, such as we
should term only common politeness, it would be
sufficient to excuse a jealous husband for striking a
man."

It is the same in India.

"The politeness, attention, and gallantry which the
Europeans practise toward the ladies, although often
proceeding from esteem and respect, are invariably ascribed
by the Hindoos to a different motive."

(Dubois, I., 271.) Here, as everywhere in former times, woman existed
not for her own sake but for man's convenience, comfort, and pleasure;
why, therefore, should he bother to do anything to please her? In the
_Kaniasoutram_ there is a chapter on the duties of a model wife, in
which she is instructed to do all the work not only at home but in
garden, field, and stable. She must go to bed after her husband and
get up before him. She must try to excel all other wives in faithfully
serving her lord and master. She must not even allow the maid-servant
to wash his feet, but must do it with her own hands. The _Laws of
Manu_ are full of such precepts, most of them amazingly ungallant. The
horrible maltreatment of women in India, which it would be an
unpardonable euphuism to call simply ungallant, will be dwelt on in a
later chapter.

It has been said a thousand times that the best measure of a nation's
civilization is its treatment of women. It would be more accurate to
say that kind, courteous treatment of women is the last and highest
product of civilization. The Greeks and Hindoos had reached a high
level of culture in many respects, yet, judged by their treatment of
women, the Greeks were barbarians and the Hindoos incarnate fiends.
Scholars are sometimes surprisingly reckless in their assumptions.
Thus Hommel (1., 417) declares that woman must have held an honored
position in Babylonia,[32] because in the ancient texts that have come
down to us the words mother and wife always precede the words father
and husband. Yet, as Dubois mentions incidentally, the Brahmin texts
also place the feminine word before the masculine, and the Brahmins
treat women more cruelly than the lowest savages treat them.


EGYPTIAN LOVE

I have not been able to find evidence of a gallant, chivalrous,
magnanimous attitude toward women in the records of any ancient
nation, and as romantic love is inconceivable without such an
attitude, and a constant interchange of kindnesses, we may infer from
this alone that these nations were strangers to such love. Professor
Ebers makes a special plea for the Egyptians. Noting the statements of
Herodotus and Diodorus regarding the greater degree of liberty enjoyed
by their women as compared with the Greek, he bases thereon the
inference that in their treatment of women the Egyptians were superior
to all other nations of antiquity. Perhaps they were; it is not
claiming much. But Professor Kendrick notes (I., 46) that although it
may be true that the Egyptian women went to market and carried on
trades while the men remained at home working at the loom, this is
capable of receiving quite a different interpretation from that given
by Ebers. The Egyptians regarded work at the loom more as a matter of
skill than the Greeks did; and if they allowed the women to do the
marketing, that may have been because they preferred to have them
carry the heavy burdens and do the harder work, after the fashion of
savages and barbarians.

If the Egyptians ever did show any respect for women they have
carefully wiped out all traces of it in modern life. To-day,

"among the lower classes and in rural districts the wife is
her husband's servant. She works while he smokes and
gossips. But among the higher classes, too, the woman
actually stands far below the man. He never chats with her,
never communicates to her his affairs and cares. Even after
death she does not rest by his side, but is separated from
him by a wall." (Ploss, II., 450.)

Polygamy prevails, as in ancient times, and polygamy everywhere
indicates a low position of woman. Ebers comments on the
circumspection shown by the ancient Egyptians in drawing up their
marriage contracts, adding that "in many cases there were even trial
marriages"--a most amazing "even" in view of what he is trying to
prove. A modern lover, as I have said before, would reject the very
idea of such a trial marriage with the utmost scorn and indignation,
because he feels certain that his love is eternal and unalterable.
Time may show that he was mistaken, but that does not affect his
present feeling. That sublime confidence in the eternity of his
passion is one of the hall-marks of romantic love. The Egyptian had it
not. He not only sanctioned degrading trial marriages, but enacted a
barbarous law which enabled a man to divorce any wife at pleasure by
simply pronouncing the words "thou art expelled." In modern Egypt,
says Lane (I., 247-51), there are many men who have had twenty,
thirty, or more wives, and women who have had a dozen or more
husbands. Some take a new wife every month. Thus the Egyptians are
matrimonially on a level with the savage and barbarian North American
Indians, Tasmanians, Samoans, Dyaks, Malayans, Tartars, many negro
tribes, Arabs, etc.


ARABIAN LOVE

Arabia is commonly supposed to be the country in which chivalry
originated. This belief seems to rest on the fact that the Arabs
spared women in war. But the Australians did the same, and where women
are saved only to be used as slaves or concubines we cannot speak of
chivalry. The Arabs treated their own women well only when they were
able to capture or buy slaves to do the hard work for them; in other
cases their wives were their slaves. To this day, when the family
moves, the husband rides on the camel while the wife trudges along on
foot, loaded down with kitchen utensils, bedding, and her child on
top. If a woman happens to ride on a camel she must get off and walk
if she meets a man, by way of showing her respect for the superior
sex. (Niebuhr, 50.) The birth of a daughter is regarded as a calamity,
mitigated only by the fact that she will bring in some money as a
bride. Marriage is often little more than a farce. Burckhardt knew
Bedouins who, before they were fifty years old, had been married to
more than fifty different women. Chavanne, in his book on the Sahara
(397-401), gives a pathetic picture of the fate of the Arab girls:

"Usually wedded very young (the marriage of a youth of
fourteen to a girl of eleven is nothing unusual), the
girl finds in most cases, after five or six years, that
her conjugal career is at an end. The husband tires of
her and sends her back, without cogent reasons, to her
parents. If there are no parents to return to, she
abandons herself, in many cases, to the vice of
prostitution."

If not discarded, her fate is none the less deplorable. "While young
she receives much attention, but when her charms begin to fade she
becomes the servant of her husband and of his new wife."

Chavanne gives a glowing description of the ravishing but short-lived
beauty of the Arab girl; also a specimen of the amorous songs
addressed to her while she is young and pretty. She is compared to a
gazelle; to a palm whose fruits grow high up out of reach; she is
equal in value to all Tunis and Algiers, to all the ships on the
ocean, to five hundred steeds and as many camels. Her throat is like a
peach, her eyes wound like arrows. Exaggerations like these abound in
the literature of the Arabs, and are often referred to as proof that
they love as we do. In truth, they indicate nothing beyond selfish,
amorous desires. The proof of unselfish affection lies not in words,
however glowing and flattering, but in kind _actions_; and the actions
of the Arabs toward their women are disgustingly selfish, except
during the few years that they are young and pretty enough to serve as
toys. The Arabs, with all their fine talk, are practically on a level
with the Samoyedes who, as we saw, ignore or maltreat their wives,
"except on an occasional amorous evening"; on a level with the Sioux
Indian, of whom Mrs. Eastman remarks that a girl is to him an object
of contempt and neglect from her birth to her grave, except during the
brief period when he wants her for his wife and may have a doubt of
his success.


THE UNCHIVALROUS GREEKS

A few pages back I cited the testimony of Morgan, who lived many years
among the Indians and studied them with the intelligence of an expert
ethnologist, that "no attempts by the unmarried to please or gratify
each other by acts of personal attention were ever made." From this we
can, once more, make a natural transition from the aboriginal American
to the ancient Greek. The Greek men, says the erudite Becker (III.,
335), "were quite strangers to that considerate, self-sacrificing
courtesy and those minute attentions to women which we commonly call
gallantry," Greek literature and all that we know of Greek life, bear
out this assertion fully. It is true the Alexandrian poets and their
Roman imitators frequently use the language of sentimental gallantry;
they declare themselves the slaves of their mistresses, are eager to
wear chains, to go through fire, to die for them, promising to take
their love to the next world. But all these things are mere "words,
words, words"--adulation the insincerity of which is exposed as soon
as we examine the actions and the motives of these poets, of whom more
will be said in a later chapter. Their flatteries are addressed
invariably to hetairai; they are conceived and written with the
selfish desire to tickle the vanity of these wantons in the hope and
expectation of receiving favors for which the poets, who were usually
poor, were not able to pay in any other way. Thus these poets are
below the Arabs, for these sons of the desert at least address their
flatteries to the girls whom they are eager to marry, whereas the
Greek and Roman poets sought merely to beguile a class of women whose
charms were for sale to anyone. One of these profligate men might
cringe and wail and cajole, to gain the good will of a capricious
courtesan, but he never dreamed of bending his knees to win the honest
love of the maid he took to be his wife (that he might have male
offspring.) Roman love was not romantic, nor was Greek. It was frankly
sensual, and the gallantry of the men was of a kind that made them
erect golden images in public places to honor Phryne and other
prostitutes. In a word, their gallantry was sham gallantry; it was
gallantry not in the sense of polite attentions to women, springing
from unselfish courtesy and esteem, but in the sinister sense of
profligacy and amorous intrigue. There were plenty of gallants, but no
real gallantry.


OVID'S SHAM GALLANTRY

While it is undoubtedly true that Ovid exercised a greater influence
on mediaeval bards, and through them on modern erotic writers, than
any other ancient poet, and while I still maintain that he anticipated
and depicted some of the imaginative phases of modern love (see my
_R.L.P.B_., 90-92), a more careful study of the nature of gallantry
has
convinced me that I erred in finding the "morning dawn of romantic
love" in the counsels regarding gallant behavior toward women given in
the pages of Ovid.[33] He does, indeed, advise a lover never to notice
the faults of a woman whose favor he wishes to win, but to compliment
her, on the contrary, on her face, her hair, her tapering fingers, her
pretty foot; to applaud at the circus whatever she applauds; to adjust
her cushion and put the footstool in its place; to keep her cool by
fanning her; and at dinner, when she has put her lips to the wine-cup
to seize the cup and put his lips to the same place. But when Ovid
wrote this, nothing was farther from his mind than what we understand
by gallantry--an eagerness to perform acts of disinterested courtesy
and deference for the purpose of pleasing a respected or adored woman.
His precepts are, on the contrary, grossly utilitarian, being intended
not for a man who wishes to win the heart and hand of an honest girl,
but for a libertine who has no money to buy the favors of a wanton,
and therefore must rely on flatteries and obsequious fawning.

The poet declares expressly that a rich man will not need his _Ars
Amandi_, but that it is written for the poor, who may be able to
overcome the greed of the hetairai by tickling their vanity. He
therefore teaches his readers how to deceive such a girl with false
flattery and sham gallantry. The Roman poet uses the word _domina_,
but this _domina_, nevertheless, is his mistress, not in the sense of
one who dominates his heart and commands his respect and affection,
but of a despised being lower than a concubine, on whom he smiles only
till he has beguiled her. It is the story of the cat and the mouse.


MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN GALLANTRY

How different this from the modern chivalry which in face of womanhood
makes a gentleman even out of a rough California miner. Joaquin Miller
relates how the presence of even an Indian girl--"a bud that in
another summer would unfold itself wide to the sun," affected the men
in one of the camps. Though she seldom spoke with the miners, yet the
men who lived near her hut dressed more neatly than others, kept their
beards in shape, and shirt-bosoms buttoned up when she passed by:

"On her face, through the tint of brown, lay the blush
and flush of maidenhood, the indescribable sacred
something that makes a maiden holy to every man of a
manly and chivalrous nature; that makes a man utterly
unselfish and perfectly content to love and be silent,
to worship at a distance, as turning to the holy
shrines of Mecca, to be still and bide his time; caring
not to possess in the low, coarse way that
characterizes your common love of to-day, but choosing
rather to go to battle for her--bearing her in his
heart through many lands, through storms and death,
with only a word of hope, a smile, a wave of the hand
from a wall, a kiss, blown far, as he mounts his steed
below and plunges into the night. That is love to live
for. I say the knights of Spain, bloody as they were,
were a noble and a splendid type of men in their
day."[34]

While the knights of Spain and other parts of mediaeval Europe
doubtless professed sentiments of chivalry like those uttered by
Joaquin Miller, there was as a rule nearly as much sham in their
pretensions as in Ovid's rules for gallant conduct. In the days of
militant chivalry, in the midst of deeds of extravagant homage to
individual ladies, women in general were as much despised and
maltreated as at any other time. "The chivalrous spirit is above all
things a class spirit," as Freeman wrote (V., 482):

"The good knight is bound to endless fantastic courtesies
toward men, and still more toward women, of a certain rank;
he may treat all below that rank with any degree of scorn
and cruelty."

This is still very far removed from the modern ideal; the knight may
be considered to stand half-way between the boor and the gentleman: he
is polite, at least, to some women, while the gentleman is polite to
all, kind, gentle, sympathetic, without being any the less manly.
Nevertheless there was an advantage in having some conception of
gallantry, a determination and vow to protect widows and orphans, to
respect and honor ladies. Though it was at first only a fashion, with
all the extravagances and follies usual to fashions, it did much good
by creating an ideal for later generations to live up to. From this
point of view even the quixotic pranks of the knights who fought duels
in support of their challenge that no other lady equalled theirs in
beauty, were not without a use. They helped to enforce the fashion of
paying deference to women, and made it a point of honor, thus forcing
many a boor to assume at least the outward semblance and conduct of a
gentleman. The seed sown in this rough and stony soil has slowly
grown, until it has developed into true civilization--a word of which
the last and highest import is civility or disinterested devotion to
the weak and unprotected, especially to women.

In our days chivalry includes compassion for animals too. I have never
read of a more gallant soldier than that colonel who, as related in
_Our Animal Friends_ (May, 1899), while riding in a Western desert at
the head of five hundred horsemen, suddenly made a slight
detour--which all the men had to follow--because in the direct path a
meadow lark was sitting on her nest, her soft brown eyes turned
upward, watching, wondering, fearing. It was a nobler deed than many
of the most gallant actions in battle, for these are often done from
selfish motives--ambition, the hope of promotion--while this deed was
the outcome of pure unselfish sympathy.

"Five hundred horses had been turned aside, and five hundred
men, as they bent over the defenceless mother and her brood,
received a lesson in that broad humanity which is the
essence of higher life."

To this day there are plenty of ruffians--many of them in fine
clothes--who are strangers to chivalrous feelings toward defenceless
women or animals--men who behave as gentlemen only under compulsion of
public opinion. The encouraging thing is that public opinion has taken
so strong a stand in favor of women; that it has written _Place aux
Dames_ on its shield in such large letters. While the red American
squaw shared with the dogs the bones left by her contemptuous
ungallant husband, the white American woman is served first at table
and gets the choicest morsels; she receives the window-seat in the
cars, the lower berth in the sleeper; she has precedence in society
and wherever she is in her proper place; and when a ship is about to
sink, the captain, if necessary (which is seldom the case), stands
with drawn revolver prepared to shoot any man who would ungallantly
get into a boat before all the women are saved.


"AN INSULT TO WOMAN"

This change from the primitive selfishness described in the preceding
pages, this voluntary yielding by man of the place of honor and of the
right of the strongest, is little less than a miracle; it is the
grandest triumph of civilization. Yet there are viragoes who have had
the indecency to call gallantry an "insult to woman." There is indeed
a kind of gallantry--the Ovidian--which is an insult to women; but
true masculine gallantry is woman's chief glory and conquest,
indicating the transformation of the savage's scorn for woman's
physical weakness into courteous deference to her as the nobler, more
virtuous and refined sex. There are some selfish, sour, disappointed
old maids, who, because of their lack of feminine traits, repel men
and receive less than their share of gallant courtesy. But that is
their own fault. Ninety-nine per cent. of all women have a happier lot
to-day than at any previous time in history, and this change is due to
the growth of the disinterested courtesy and sympathy known as
gallantry. At the same time the change is strikingly illustrated in
the status of old maids themselves. No one now despises an unselfish
woman simply because she prefers to remain single; but formerly old
maids were looked on nearly everywhere with a contempt that reached
its climax among the Southern Slavs, who, according to Krauss (Ploss,
II., 491), treated them no better than mangy dogs. No one associated
with them; they were not tolerated in the spinning-room or at the
dances; they were ridiculed and derided; were, in short, regarded as a
disgrace to the family.


SUMMARY

To sum up: among the lower races man habitually despises and maltreats
woman, looking on her as a being made, not for her own sake, but for
his comfort and pleasure. Gallantry is unknown. The Australian who
fights for his family shows courage, not gallantry, for he is simply
protecting his private property, and does not otherwise show the
slightest regard for his women. Nor does the early custom of serving
for a wife imply gallantry; for here the suitor serves the parents,
not the maid; he simply adopts a primitive way of paying for a bride.
Sparing women in battle for the purpose of making concubines or slaves
of them is not gallantry. One might as well call a farmer gallant
because, when he kills the young roosters for broilers, he saves the
young hens. He lets these live because he needs eggs. The motive in
both cases is utilitarian and selfish. Ovidian gallantry does not
deserve such a name, because it is nothing but false flattery for the
selfish purpose of beguiling foolish women. Arabic flatteries are of a
superior order because sincere at the time being and addressed to
girls whom the flatterer desires to marry. But this gallantry, too, is
only skin deep. Its motives are sensual and selfish, for as soon as
the girl's physical charm begins to fade she is contemptuously
discarded.

Our modern gallantry toward women differs radically from all those
attitudes in being unselfish. It is synonymous with true
chivalry--disinterested devotion to those who, while physically
weaker, are considered superior morally and esthetically. It treats
all women with polite deference, and does so not because of a vow or a
code, but because of the natural promptings of a kind, sympathetic
disposition. It treats a woman not as a toper does a whiskey bottle,
applying it to his lips as long as it can intoxicate him with pleasure
and then throwing it away, but cherishes her for supersensual
attributes that survive the ravages of time. To a lover, in
particular, such gallantry is not a duty, but a natural impulse. He
lies awake nights devising plans for pleasing the object of his
devotion. His gallantry is an impulse to sacrifice himself for the
beloved--an instinct so inbred by generations of practice that now
even a child may manifest it. I remember how, when I was six or seven
years old, I once ran out the school-house during recess to pick up
some Missouri hailstones, while others, large as marbles, were falling
about me, threatening to smash my skull. I gave the trophies to a
dark-eyed girl of my age--not with a view to any possible reward, but
simply because I loved her more than all the other girls combined and
wanted to please her.


A SURE TEST OF LOVE

Black relates in his _Things Chinese_, that after the wedding ceremony

"the bride tries hard ... to get a piece of her husband's
dress under her when she sits down, for if she does, it will
insure her having the upper hand of him, while he tries to
prevent her and to do the same thing himself."

Similar customs prevail in other parts of the world, as among the
Esthonians. (Schroeder, 234.) After the priest has united the couple
they walk toward the wagon or sleigh, and in doing so each of the two
tries to be first to step on the other's foot, because that will
decide who is to rule at home. Imagine such petty selfishness, such a
disgraceful lack of gallantry, on the very wedding-day! In our own
country, when we hear of a bride objecting to the word "obey" in the
wedding ceremony, we may feel absolutely sure that the marriage is not
a love-match, at least as far as she is concerned. A girl truly in
love with a man laughs at the word, because she feels as if she would
rather be his slave than any other man's queen; and as for the lover,
the bride's promise to "obey" him seems mere folly, for he is
determined she shall always remain the autocratic queen of his heart
and actions. Conjugal disappointments may modify that feeling, to be
sure, but that does not alter the fact that while romantic love
exists, one of its essential ingredients is an impulse of gallant
devotion and deference on both sides--an impulse which on occasion
rises to self-sacrifice, which is simply an extreme phase of
gallantry.


XI. ALTRUISTIC SELF-SACRIFICE

In the very olden time, if we may confide in the ingenious Frank
Stockton, there lived a semi-barbaric king who devised a highly
original way of administering justice, leaving the accused man's fate
practically in his own hands. There was an arena with the king's
throne on one side and galleries for the people all around. On a
signal by the king a door beneath him opened and the accused subject
stepped out into the amphitheatre. Directly opposite the throne were
two doors, exactly alike, and side by side. The person on trial had to
walk to those doors and open either of them. If he opened one, there
sprang out a fierce tiger who immediately tore him to pieces; if the
other, there came forth a beautiful lady, to whom he was forthwith
married. No one ever knew behind which of the doors was the tiger, so
that the audience no more than the prisoner knew whether he was to be
devoured or married.

This semi-barbaric king had a daughter who fell in love with a
handsome young courtier. When the king discovered this love-affair he
cast the youth into prison and had his realm searched for the fiercest
of tigers. The day came when the prisoner had to decide his own fate
in the arena by opening one of the doors. The princess, who was one of
the spectators, had succeeded, with the aid of gold, in discovering
the secret of the doors; she knew from which the tiger, from which the
lady, would issue. She knew, too, who the lady was behind the other
door--one of the loveliest of the damsels of the court--one who had
dared to raise her eyes to her loved one and had thereby aroused her
fiercest jealousy. She had thought the matter over, and was prepared
for action. The king gave the signal, and the courtier appeared. He
had expected the princess to know on which side lay safety for him,
nor was he wrong. To his quick and anxious glance at her, she replied
by a slight, quick movement of her arm to the right. The youth turned,
and without the slightest hesitation opened the door on the right.
Now, "which came out of the opened door--the lady or the tiger?"


THE LADY AND THE TIGER

With that question Stockton ends his story, and it is generally
supposed that he does not answer it. But he does, on the preceding
page, in these words:

"Think of it, fair reader, not as if the decision of the
question depended upon yourself, but upon that hot-blooded,
semi-barbaric princess, her soul at white heat beneath the
combined fires of despair and jealousy. She had lost him,
but who should have him?"

In these words the novelist hints plainly enough that the question was
decided by a sort of dog-in-the-manger jealousy. If the princess could
not have him, certainly her hated rival should never enjoy his love.
The tiger, we may be sure, was behind the door on the right.

In allowing the tiger to devour the courtier, the princess showed that
her love was of the primitive, barbarous type, being in reality
self-love, not other-love. She "loved" the man not for his own sake,
but only as a means of gratifying her desires. If he was lost to
_her_, the tiger might as well dine on him. How differently an
American girl would have acted, under the impulse of romantic love!
Not for a moment could she have tolerated the thought of his dying,
through her fault--the thought of his agony, his shrieks, his blood.
She would have _sacrificed her own happiness instead of her beloved's
life_. The lady would have come out of the door opened by him. Suppose
that, overcome by selfish jealousy, she acted otherwise; and suppose
that an amphitheatre full of cultured men and women witnessed her
deed: would there not be a cry of horror, condemning her as worse than
the tiger, as absolutely incapable of the feeling of true love? And
would not this cry of horror reveal on the part of the spectators an
instinctive perception of the truth which this chapter, this whole
book, is written to enforce, that voluntary self-sacrifice, where
called for, is the supreme, the infallible, test of love?


A GREEK LOVE-STORY

If we imagine the situation reversed--a man delivering his "beloved"
into the clutches of a tiger rather than to the legitimate caresses of
a rival--our horror at his loveless selfishness would be doubled. Yet
this is the policy habitually followed by savages and barbarians. In
later chapters instances will be given of such wooers killing coveted
girls with their own spears as soon as they find that the rival is the
winner. After what has been said about the absence of unselfish
gallantry among the lower races it would, of course, be useless to
look for instances of altruistic self-sacrifice for a woman's sake,
since such sacrifice implies so much more than gallantry. As for the
Greeks, in all my extensive reading I have come across only one author
who seemingly appreciates the significance of self-sacrifice for a
woman loved. Pausanias, in his _Description of Greece_ (Bk. VII.,
chap. 21), relates this love-story:

"When Calydon still existed there was among the
priests of Dionysus one named Coresus, whom love made,
without any fault of his own, the most wretched of
mortals. He loved a girl Callirrhoe, but as great as
his love for her was her hatred of him. When all his
pleadings and offerings of presents failed to change
the girl's attitude, he at last prostrated himself
before the image of Dionysus, imploring his help. The
god granted the prayers of his priest, for suddenly the
Calydonians began to lose their senses, like drunkards,
and to die in fits of madness. They appealed to the
oracle of Dodona ... which declared that the calamity
was due to the wrath of the god Dionysus, and that it
would not cease until Coresus had sacrificed to
Dionysus either Callirrhoe or anyone else willing to
die for her. Now when the girl saw no way of escaping,
she sought refuge with her former educators, but when
they too refused to receive her, nothing remained for
her but death. When all the preparations for the
sacrifice had been made in accordance with the precepts
of the oracle of Dodona, she was brought to the altar,
adorned like an animal that is to be sacrificed;
Coresus, however, whose duty it was to offer the
sacrifice, let love prevail in place of hate, and slew
himself instead of Callirrhoe, thus proving by his deed
that he had been animated by the purest love. But when
Callirrhoe saw Coresus as a corpse, overcome by pity
and repentance for her treatment of him, she went and
drowned herself in the fountain not far from the
Calydonian harbor, which since that time is known as
the fountain of Callirrhoe."

If a modern lover, desiring to possess a girl, got her into a
predicament which culminated in the necessity of his either slaying
her with his own hands or killing himself, and did not choose the
latter alternative, we should regard him as more contemptible than the
vilest assassin. To us self-sacrifice in such a case would seem not a
test of love, nor even of honor so much as of common decency, and we
should expect a man to submit to it even if his love of the poor girl
had been a mere infatuation of the senses. However, in view of the
contempt for women, and for love for women, prevalent among the Greeks
in general, we may perhaps discover at least a gleam of better things
in this legend of masculine self-sacrifice.


PERSIAN LOVE

A closer approximation to our ideal may be found in a story related by
the Persian poet Saadi (358):

"There was a handsome and well-disposed young man, who
was embarked in a vessel with a lovely damsel: I have
read that, sailing on the mighty deep, they fell
together into a whirlpool: When the pilot came to offer
him assistance; God forbid that he should perish in
that distress; he was answering, from the midst of that
overwhelming vortex, Leave me and take the hand of my
beloved! The whole world admired him for this speech,
which, as he was expiring, he was heard to make; learn
not the tale of love from that faithless wretch who can
neglect his mistress when exposed to danger. In this
manner ended the lives of those lovers; listen to what
has happened, that you may understand; for Saadi knows
the ways and forms of courtship, as well as the Tazi,
or modern Arabic, is understood at Baghdad."

How did this Persian poet get such a correct and modern notion about
love into his head? Obviously not from his experiences and
observations at home, for the Persians, as the scholarly Dr. Polak
observes in his classical work on them (I., 206), do not know love in
our sense of the word. The love of which their poets sing has either a
symbolical or an entirely carnal meaning. Girls are married off
without any choice of their own at the early age of twelve or
thirteen; they are regarded as capital and sold for cash, and children
are often engaged in the cradle. When a Persian travels, he leaves his
wife at home and enters into a temporary marriage with other women in
the towns he visits. In rural districts if the traveller is a person
of rank, the mercenary peasants eagerly offer their daughters for such
"marriages." (Hellwald, 439.) Like the Greek poets the Persians show
their contempt for women by always speaking of boy-favorites when
their language rises above the coarsest sensuality. Public opinion
regarding Persian stories and poems has been led astray by the changes
of sex and the expurgations made freely by translators. Burton, whose
version of the _Thousand and One Nights_ was suppressed in England,
wrote _(F.F._, 36), that "about one-fifth is utterly unfit for
translation, and the most sanguine Orientalist would not dare to
render literally more than three-quarters of the remainder."

Where, then, I repeat, did Saadi get that modern European idea of
altruistic self-sacrifice as a test of love? Evidently from Europe by
way of Arabia. His own language indicates this--his suspicious boast
of his knowledge of real love as of one who has just made a strange
discovery, and his coupling it with the knowledge of Arabic. Now it is
well known that ever since the ninth century the Persian mind had been
brought into a contact with the Arabic which became more and more
intimate. The Arabs had a habit of sacrificing their lives in
chivalrous efforts to save the life or honor of maidens whom the enemy
endeavored to kidnap. The Arabs, on their part, were in close contact
with the European minds, and as they helped to originate the