Professor H L Mencken

In Defense of Women Professor H L Mencken

Book Excerpt: even the trade in public offices and contracts, occupies therulers of the land so steadily, or makes heavier demands upon theiringenuity and their patriotic passion. Familiar with the risks flowing out of it--and having just had tochange the plates of my "Book of Prefaces," a book of purelyliterary criticism, wholly without political purpose or significance, inorder to get it through the mails, I determined to make this brochureupon the woman question extremely pianissimo in tone, and toavoid burdening it with any ideas of an unfamiliar, and hence illegalnature. So deciding, I presently added a bravura touch: theunquenchable vanity of the intellectual snob asserting itself over allprudence. That is to say, I laid down the rule that no idea should gointo the book that was not already so obvious that it had beenembodied in the proverbial philosophy, or folk-wisdom, of somecivilized nation, including the Chinese. To this rule I remainedfaithful throughout. In its original form, as publishRead More
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