LACKING FACTORS
GENDER is the sex of words. But either this matter of sex is imperfectly understood, or Nature has made faulty provision for the duality of things; for history and speech show many melancholy examples of natural celibacy, and Shelley’s dictum that “nothing in the world is single” must be accepted with the large limitation of a comprehensive denial. Who ever heard of an alligatrix? The spinster—has she anywhere a femaler mate, the spinstress? I am told there is an article, a garment, if I have rightly understood—called a garter, and that it has commonly a mate, yet I know not if any one has seen a gartress. Nor, for that matter, a garter. Has the cypress a lord and master known as the cypor? We hear of personal encounters, but a personal encounter between two ladies is not an encountress. Every one knows that an epistle is a female apostle, but why the male mate of the unlisted himmit should, except for consistency in perversion, be called a hermit, who can say? Oddly enough, the shero is unknown to fame. Is there a place beyondthe grave of the sinner, called Heol, and was its existence hinted at in the old name for Sheol? In Irish folklore is no mention of the banhee. An ornithologist of even the widest attainments will assure you that the queenfisher is an undiscovered fowl. Ancient history, sacred or profane, is vainly questioned concerning the King of Heba—whom nevertheless, I love to figure to myself as making a long journey to lay countless camel loads of gifts at the feet of the very wisest sovereign in all the world—the queen of the Shebrews.