“Got back already? You _are_ a smart lad. Thought you said it would take twenty minutes, and you’re back in ten.” The smart lad grinned. “It ’ud take me twenty minutes to get _my_ character, but I got yours in ten, and I ain’t coming. G’Mornin’.” These veritable histories, I see, on looking back, are almost wholly concerned with boys and infants: where are the girls? It was constantly impressed upon me by ladies interested in schools, that I, as a mere man, was wholly unfit to be entrusted with the inspection of girls’ and infants’ schools. It was even thrown in my teeth that I, being a miserable old bachelor, could know nothing about children of any kind. This was the argument of Constance (_King John_, Act III. sc. iv.) to the Cardinal: “He talks to me that never had a son.”[25] And this was the view of Mrs. Gamp, when she contemplated “the unconscious Chuffey”: “Drat the old creetur,” said that skilled practitioner, “he’s a layin’ down the law tolerable confident too. A deal he knows of sons or darters either.” The taunt of inexperience is applied to others besides school inspectors. A clerical (bachelor) friend of mine found a woman in his parish feeding her three-months’ old baby on kippered herring and tea. He remonstrated, and she turned indignantly upon him: “I should think I’d ought to know more about babies than you, seein’ as I’ve buried seven of ’em.” _Peritis credendum est in arte sua._ Now I should be loath to assert that I know anything about children. Some one in Sophocles (I think it was a Chorus in the _Antigone_) remarked that “of all weird things in nature Man is the weirdest.” And by reason of his unexpectedness Child is weirder than Man. But comparing my ignorance with female ignorance of Child, I do not see that I have any natural disqualification by reason of sex. And when my critic has been a maiden lady, it has been difficult to repress the obvious repartee. I might add that so strong are the chains of custom that these critics, if they wished to crush me by an appeal to authority, would bring forward none but the names of men. In French, it has been unkindly remarked, _ange_ is always masculine, _bête_ always feminine: there is no _belle-ange_, no _bête-noir_: and so “Writer-on-school-method” is always masculine. This should be seen to. Lancaster, Bell, Pestalozzi, Fröbel, Herbert Spencer--are there no she-prophets? If “Man marks the earth with ruin, his control” should stop short of girls’ schools. Far be it from me to dispute the point here. It may be on account of this inability to understand girl, that I have only one anecdote in stock for my 50,000 daughters: