I
was dismissed with a caution.
My vacation is still before me, and I still propose to
spend it naked. But I shall do so at Atlantic City.
VII. The Cave-Man as He is
I think it likely that few people besides myself have
ever actually seen and spoken with a "cave-man."
Yet everybody nowadays knows all about the cave-man. The
fifteen-cent magazines and the new fiction have made him
a familiar figure. A few years ago, it is true, nobody
had ever heard of him. But lately, for some reason or
other, there has been a run on the cave-man. No up-to-date
story is complete without one or two references to him.
The hero, when the heroine slights him, is said to "feel
for a moment the wild, primordial desire of the cave-man,
the longing to seize her, to drag her with him, to carry
her away, to make her his." When he takes her in his arms
it is recorded that "all the elemental passion of the
cave-man surges through him." When he fights, on her
behalf against a dray-man or a gun-man or an ice-man or
any other compound that makes up a modern villain, he is
said to "feel all the fierce fighting joy of the cave-man."
If they kick him in the ribs, he likes it. If they beat
him over the head, he never feels it; because he is, for
the moment, a cave-man.
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