'Why, what fault can she find with such a graceful and natural ornament?'
'Just this, my dear fellow, that it is natural. As it is, she considers me only 'intellectual-looking.' If the beard were away, my face, she says, would be 'so refined!' And, I suppose, if I was just a little more effeminate and pale, with a nice retreating under-jaw and a drooping lip, and a meek peaking simper, like your starved Romish saints, I should be 'so spiritual!' And if again, to complete the climax, I did but shave my head like a Chinese, I should be a model for St. Francis himself!'
'But really, after all, why make yourself so singular by this said beard?'
'I wear it for a testimony and a sign that a man has no right to be ashamed of the mark of manhood. Oh, that one or two of your Protestant clergymen, who ought to be perfect ideal men, would have the courage to get up into the pulpit in a long beard, and testify that the very essential idea of Protestantism is the dignity and divinity of man as God made him! Our forefathers were not ashamed of their beards; but now even the soldier is only allowed to keep his moustache, while our quill-driving masses shave themselves as close as they can; and in proportion to a man's piety he wears less hair, from the young curate who shaves off his whiskers, to the Popish priest who shaves his crown.'
'What do you say, then, to cutting off nuns' hair?'
'I say, that extremes meet, and prudish Manichæ
