All women, no matter what their genus, are exceptions to the rule. But men—rich men, poor men, beggar-men, thieves: so only they are Good Scouts—are of marvelous sameness. It comes from the want of minute lifelong pinpricking care of petticoats and potted plants—a detailed intensely personal sort of pain which touches dull solid tones of individuality with vivid various spots of color.
Men are made in 'job lots' like their own cravats. Their cravats will differ in texture and color and quality and price. But each one is innately necktie. Use it as a garter or a tourniquet or a strangler's noose: it still is a man's deadly necktie. Its use may be ruined but its necktique is deathless. Except poets—and perhaps scientists—men are themselves like that. They cannot get away from the Adam. Nor can women get away from the Eve. But Eve was not a type but a somewhat pleasant human ensemble. While Adam was a type and a sufficiently nasty one: a rotter and a welcher: doubtless the Good Scout type of his day.
A Good Scout is the sort of man who if a woman trusts him with one one-hundredth of her heart will take the whole heart and twist and batter it: and read the paper and smoke his pipe and pay the bills: serenely unaware.
Which is beside the point in this. For in this image all my marriedness is a thing of outer Shape and
