d to
deny the fact. I admire the honesty and truth with which Alexander
Smith bravely confessed, 'I love a little eccentricity; I respect
honest prejudices. It is high time, it seems to me, that a moral
game-law were passed for the preservation of the wild and vagrant
feelings of human nature.'"

"That is a dangerous doctrine, my dear child, especially for a woman
to entertain; because custom rules us with an iron rod, and flays us
alive if we contravene her decrees."

"I should be exceedingly glad to learn by what authority or process
Truth is provided with sex? Are some orthodox doctrines female and
others male? Why have not we women as clear a right to any given set
of principles as men? Truth is as much my property as that of the Czar
of Russia, and, if I choose to lay hold of any special province of it,
why must I perforce be dragged to the whipping-post of custom, simply
because by an accident I am called Susan or Hepzibah instead of Peter
or Lazarus? So long as my convictions of truth (which custom brands as
vagaries) are innocuous, I have a perfect and inalienable right to
indulge them; but the instant I become pestiferous to society, let me
be consigned to the tender mercies of strait-jacket and insane-asylum
regimen. If I creep quietly along my own intellectual and ethical
trail, taking heed not to touch the sensitive toes of custom, why
should it ungenerously insist upon bruising mine? My seer was right
when he boldly declared, 'The world has stood long enough under the
drill of Adjutant Fashion.' It is hard work, the posture is wearisome,
and Fashion is an awful martinet, and has a quick eye, and comes down
mercilessly on the unfortunate wight who can not square his toes to
the approved pattern. It is killing work. Suppose we try 'standing at
ease' for a little while? Wherefore, custom to the contrary
notwithstanding, I contend that Mrs. Gerome has as indisputable a
right to refuse admittance to Rev. Mrs. Spiewell as any anchorite of
the Nitrian Sands to decline receiving a bevy of inquisitive European
belles. If society rules like Russia or Turkey, then am I a candidate
for knout and bastinado. I do not wish to be unwomanly, and honesty
and candor are not necessarily unfeminine, because some coarse,
rough-handed, bold-eyed woman has possibly rendered them unpopular."

Miss Jane laid down her knitting, folded her hands, and, as she
watched the girl, her emotions were probably similar to those that
agitat