But there is one department of women’s literature wherein the element of doubt altogether vanishes. I mean the journals they publish, or get published, for themselves. They cannot write here with their eye on some man. Indeed, men, nice men (“nice” in the strict sense, approved in a certain talk between Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney), are rather chary of even approaching such journals. They exhibit advertisements of “undies,” corsets, and other things that used to be called feminine mysteries, but are now entitled perhaps to the rank of notorieties which make one instinctively stammer, “Oh, I beg your pardon,” and beat a hasty retreat. So, it will at once be said, do all newspapers nowadays, and that is true. Yet, somehow, one feels more indiscreet in lighting upon them in the women’s journals than in the others. For one thing, they seem to be more dainty and alluring by reason of more artistic execution and glazed paper, so that they may satisfy the critical eye of their proper wearers. And, for another, there is a difference between the high-road of the newspaper, whereon a man willy-nilly must travel, and the by-path of the women’s journal, where he is at best a privileged intruder. If you ask, “Goosey, goosey, gander, whither shall I wander?” there is a distinct difference between answering, “Upstairs and downstairs,” and “in my lady’s chamber.” All this, of course, as the judicious will have perceived, really means that I am as interested as, I suppose, are most of my fellow-men in all these curiously dainty and elegant ingenuities of women’s apparel, and that I am only pretending to be shocked. (After all, in his pursuit of veracity, even a man may occasionally powder his nose.) The advertisers, bless them, know all about that. They know that the natural man shares the naïve admiration which Pepys once expressed on seeing Lady Castlemaine’s wonderful _lingerie_ and laces hanging out to dry on a clothes-line in Whitehall. But the natural man generally finds it convenient to be more reticent about it than Pepys.