When the Hymalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted, rends the peasant tooth and nail, For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man''s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say, For the Woman that God gave him isn''t his to give away; But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other''s tale - The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low, To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe. Mirth obscene diverts his anger, Doubt and Pity oft perplex Him in dealing with an issue to the scandal of The Sex!
She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate; And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him Must command but may not govern, shall enthral but not enslave him. And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail, That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man, He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can; But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail, For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same; And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract Justice which no woman understands.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws, They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws. ''Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale, For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Unprovoked and awful charges even so the she-bear fights; Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons, even so the cobra bites; Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw And the victim writhes in anguish like the Jesuit with the squaw!
The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.
She is wedded to convictions, in default of grosser ties; Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! - He will meet no cool discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild, Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast May not deal in doubt or pity, must not swerve for fact or jest. These be purely male diversions, not in these her honor dwells. She, the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest be become unwitting victims of the darkness.
Where is the man who has the power and skill To stem the torrent of a woman''s will? For if she will, she will, you may depend on''t; And if she won''t, she won''t; so there''s an end on''t.
Man, a bear in most relations, worm and savage otherwise, - Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise. Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.