to do with himself in a world where
matters were sorted and folded and laid away ready for you when you
wanted them. He likes to see human affairs mixing themselves up in
irretrievable confusion. If he detects a symptom of straightening, it
shall go hard but he will thrust in his own fingers and snarl a thread
or two. He is delighted to find dogged duty and eager desire butting
each other. All the irresistible forces crashing against all the
immovable bodies give him no shock, only a pleasant titillation. He is
never so happy as when men are taking hold of things by the blade, and
cutting their hands, and losing blood. He tells them of it, but not in
order to relieve so much as to "aggravate" them; and he does aggravate
them, and is satisfied. Oh, but he is an aggravating person!

It is you, you who combine the heart of a seraph with the head of a
cherub, who know what trouble is. You see where the shoe pinches, but
your whole soul relucts from pointing out the tender place. You see why
things go wrong, and how they might be set right; but you have a mortal
dread of being thought meddlesome and impertinent, or cold and cruel,
or restless and arrogant, if you attempt to demolish the wrong or rebel
against the custom. When you draw your bow at an abuse, people think you
are trying to bring down religion and propriety and humanity. But your
conscience will not let you see the abuse raving to and fro over the
earth without taking aim; so, either way, you are cut to the heart.

I love men. I adore women. I value their good opinion. There is much in
them to applaud and imitate. There is much in them to elicit faith and
reverence. If, only, one could see their good qualities alone, or,
seeing their vapid and vicious ones, could contemplate them with no
touch of tenderness for the owner, life might indeed be lovely. As it
is, while I am at one moment rapt in enthusiastic admiration of the
strength and grace, the power and pathos, the hidden resources, the
profound capabilities of my race, at another, I could wish, Nero-like,
that all mankind were concentrated in one person and all womankind
in another, that I might take them, after the fashion of rural
schoolmasters, and shake their heads together. Condemnation and reproach
are not in my line; but there is so much in the world that merits
condemnation and reproach and receives indifference and even reward,
there is so much acquiescence in wrong doing and wrong thinking, so much