"Now, it is no recommendation to _my_ favor to realize that I am only
one of a dozen, and that Frizzolinda in the parlor, or Jemima in the
kitchen, would each prove equally as acceptable in their turn; that the
arm that embraces _me_, has stolen with just as delicious uncertainty
around the cook's buxom waist, and that the eyes that seek mine with
such glances of affection have sought with an equal fondness in their
melting depths those of every lady of my acquaintance. I'll confess, if
it _is_ a weakness, for a woman who gives everything to the man she
loves, that I am exacting enough to demand a more exclusive attachment
than this. 'Verily, these things ought not to be.' Women should look to
it; for I think there are some few social reforms, that are of more
vital importance to the sex than even the right of 'suffrage' and the
dictatorship amid the councils of the nation. Few women care for this
last honor. The majority in America marry early in life, and their
highest ambition is to achieve distinction in the social circle."

"That brings me to think," said Clemence, "of the flirtations between
married couples, that we see going on continually around us. I always
had an idea that I should not enjoy quite such a risky love affair as
they promise. Not but that, like every one else, I suppose, I think it's
very agreeable to be admired; but then it's not tranquilizing to the
nerves to remember that a jealous wife may be cultivating her finger
nails with a view to exercising them upon one's countenance. I prefer
the 'human face divine' in its natural state, being of the opinion with
another that 'beauty unadorned is adorned most.' Do you know, Ulrica,
that I lost my taste for guitar music listening to a little
pink-cheeked, simpering married woman, eternally strumming to a Benedict
of her acquaintance, in lovelorn tones--'I'll be true to
thee,'--accompanied by the most languishing glances? I was the more
disgusted, too, when I recollected that this woman was the lady
Superintendent of an up-town Sabbath School, and considered a pattern by
every one. Besides, she called herself a Christian, and a tender, loving
mother, while she absolutely stinted her children's food, in the absence
of her husband, who toiled early and late in the counting-room, to buy
finery to air before her married beau, and make the jealous, passionate
wife whom he left waiting at home (and whom, she knew, hated her as
only a wronged woman _can_ hate,)