f suffering to another; I am not saintly enough for
such a daily martyrdom, nor callous enough to make it an easy occupation.
I fainted at the first operation I saw, and I have never wanted to see
another. I don't say that I wouldn't marry a physician, if the right one
asked me, but the young doctor is not forthcoming at present. Yes, I
think I might make a pretty good doctor's wife. I could teach him a good
deal about headaches and backaches and all sorts of nervous revolutions,
as the doctor says the French women call their tantrums. I don't know
but I should be willing to let him try his new medicines on me. If he
were a homeopath, I know I should; for if a billionth of a grain of sugar
won't begin to sweeten my tea or coffee, I don't feel afraid that a
billionth of a grain of anything would poison me,--no, not if it were
snake-venom; and if it were not disgusting, I would swallow a handful of
his lachesis globules, to please my husband. But if I ever become a
doctor's wife, my husband will not be one of that kind of practitioners,
you may be sure of that, nor an "eclectic," nor a "faith-cure man." On
the whole, I don't think I want to be married at all. I don't like the
male animal very well (except such noble specimens as your husband).
They are all tyrants,--almost all,--so far as our sex is concerned, and I
often think we could get on better without them.

However, the creatures are useful in the Society. They send us papers,
some of them well worth reading. You have told me so often that you
would like to know how the Society is getting on, and to read some of the
papers sent to it if they happened to be interesting, that I have laid
aside one or two manuscripts expressly for your perusal. You will get
them by and by.

I am delighted to know that you keep Paolo with you. Arrowhead Village
misses him dreadfully, I can tell you. That is the reason people become
so attached to these servants with Southern sunlight in their natures? I
suppose life is not long enough to cool their blood down to our Northern
standard. Then they are so child-like, whereas the native of these
latitudes is never young after he is ten or twelve years old. Mother
says,--you know mother's old-fashioned notions, and how shrewd and
sensible she is in spite of them,--mother says that when she was a girl
families used to import young men and young women from the country towns,
who called themselves "helps," not servants,--no, that was Scriptura