“It is that a book about women should not be too long,” Mrs. Dodge replied. “Especially if it should be by a man, he would be wise to use brevity as a means of concealing what he doesn’t know. And besides,” she added, more leniently, “by brevity, he might hope to placate us a little. It might be his best form of apology.” W O M E N I MRS. DODGE AND MRS. CROMWELL WE LEARNED in childhood that appearances are deceitful, and our subsequent scrambling about upon this whirling globe has convinced many of us that the most deceptive of all appearances are those of peace. The gentlest looking liquor upon the laboratory shelves was what removed the east wing of the Chemical Corporation’s building on Christmas morning; it was the stillest Sunday noon of a drowsy August when, without even the courtesy of a little introductory sputtering, the gas works blew up; and both of these disturbances were thought to be peculiarly outrageous because of the previous sweet aspects that prevented any one from expecting trouble. Yet those aspects, like the flat calm of the summer of 1914, should have warned people of experience that outbreaks were impending. What could offer to mortal eye a picture of more secure placidity than three smiling ladies walking homeward together after a club meeting? The particular three in mind, moreover, were in a visibly prosperous condition of life; for, although the afternoon was brightly cold, their furs afforded proof of expenditures with which any moderate woman would be satisfied, and their walk led them into the most luxurious stretch of the long thoroughfare that was called the handsome suburb’s finest street. The three addressed one another in the caressively amiable tones that so strikingly characterize the élite of their sex in converse; and their topic, which had been that of the club paper, was impersonal. In fact, it was more than impersonal, it was celestial. “Sweetness and Light: Essay. Mrs. Roderick Brooks Battle”—these were the words printed in the club’s year book beneath the date of that meeting, and Mrs. Roderick Brooks Battle was the youngest of the three placid ladies. “You’re all so sweet to say such lovely things about it,” she said, as they walked slowly along. “I only wish I deserved them, but of course, as everyone must have guessed, it was all Mr. Battle. I don’t suppose I could write a single connected paragraph without his telling me how, and if he hadn’t kept helping me I just wouldn’t have been ready with any paper at all. Never in the world!” “Oh, yes, you would, Amelia,” the elder of the two other ladies assured her. “For instance, dear, that beautiful thought about the ‘bravery of silence’—about how much nobler it is never to answer an attack—I thought it was the finest thought in the whole paper, and I’m sure that was your own and not your husband’s, Amelia.”