ss.

But the heroine of fiction! oh, a terrible dragon of virtue is she. May
heaven preserve us poor men, undeserving though we be, from a life with
the heroine of fiction. She is all soul, and heart, and intellect, with
never a bit of human nature to catch hold of her by. Her beauty, it
appals one, it is so painfully indescribable. Whence comes she, whither
goes she, why do we never meet her like? Of women I know a goodish few,
and I look among them for her prototype; but I find it not. They are
charming, they are beautiful, all these women that I know. It would
not be right for me to tell you, Ladies, the esteem and veneration with
which I regard you all. You yourselves, blushing, would be the first to
cheek my ardour. But yet, dear Ladies, seen even through my eyes, you
come not near the ladies that I read about. You are not--if I may be
permitted an expressive vulgarism--in the same street with them. Your
beauty I can look upon, and retain my reason--for whatever value that
may be to me. Your conversation, I admit, is clever and brilliant in the
extreme; your knowledge vast and various; your culture quite Bostonian;
yet you do not--I hardly know how to express it--you do not shine with
the sixteen full-moon-power of the heroine of fiction. You do not--and
I thank you for it--impress me with the idea that you are the only women
on earth. You, even you, possess tempers of your own. I am inclined to
think you take an interest in your clothes. I would not be sure, even,
that you do not mingle a little of "your own hair" (you know what I
mean) with the hair of your head. There is in your temperament a vein of
vanity, a suggestion of selfishness, a spice of laziness. I have known
you a trifle unreasonable, a little inconsiderate, slightly exacting.
Unlike the heroine of fiction, you have a certain number of human
appetites and instincts; a few human follies, perhaps, a human fault, or
shall we say two? In short, dear Ladies, you also, even as we men, are
the children of Adam and Eve. Tell me, if you know, where I may meet
with this supernatural sister of yours, this woman that one reads about.
She never keeps any one waiting while she does her back hair, she is
never indignant with everybody else in the house because she cannot find
her own boots, she never scolds the servants, she is never cross with
the children, she never slams the door, she is never jealous of her
younger sister, she never lingers at the gate with any