Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/385

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AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS.
369

among the uncouth Cyclops and giants. The ancients made of their mythological representative of clumsy physical strength, Hercules, a stable-sweep, while they represented Apollo as their ideal of manliness, whose moderate physical dimensions corresponded to as much athletic strength and skill as he required.

In spite of this well-known type, however, the man with the strongest bones approaches most nearly to the vulgar, I am tempted to say the democratic ideal of manliness, and if a man should arise, who could pick his teeth with a church steeple, the priests themselves would proclaim him pope. In America he would be elected king in a frock coat for life, with an extra allowance for cloth for his immense coat, and extra grub-money for his unusual stomach. But in Germany, in the fatherland of Goethe and Schiller — ah! what an ideal successor to Barbarossa! Of course, he would then also have to have a corresponding beard, that would grow through the table, and down into Hades, so that the spirits of Father Arndt and Father Jahn could most submissively twitch it, by way of telegraphing their patriotic blessedness to him. What would a man be without a beard, and what especially would our Germans be without hair on their face? Hair is so essential and indispensable to them that they even transfer them from the face into the mouth, and have not only hair on their lips but "hair on their teeth." It surely cannot be very compli-