twaddle. A Rabbinical story relates that twelve baskets of chit-chat
fell from heaven, and that Eve secured nine while Adam was picking up
the other three. Since then, Eve seems to have obtained possession of
all.

What do you "earnest women" want? You have your own way in everything. I
cannot take up a paper without reading something about lovely, delicate,
refined females; or an item announcing that some ungallant fellow has
been turned out of an omnibus because he would not offer his seat to an
Irish lady, who had probably twice his muscular power and endurance.

_Hipparchia._ Hotel elegance, railway manners, and penny-a-liner
sentiment are alike contemptible. Do you suppose that any sensible
female cares for those second-hand phrases and vulgar civilities? This
deference you boast of is a mere habit, worn threadbare: the feeling has
died out. What does it really amount to, when, in this city, a woman,
even of my age, cannot go alone to an evening lecture or to the theatre
without the risk of an insult? English and French women have more
liberty of action than we have, although the men do not offer them their
seats on every occasion. I had rather take my chance with the crowd at a
hotel ordinary, and have more independence in daily life. The time will
come, I trust, when women will no longer be contented with the few empty
and exaggerated compliments in which men pay them off,--"Angelic
creatures!" "Poet's theme!" and so on,--stuff that springs from what
Diogenes calls the spooney view of women, and only applicable to the
young and handsome,--a very small minority. It is sad to see the
graceless, the "gone-off," and the downright elderly smirk complacently
at a few phrases which are only aimed at them in derision. The others,
too, one would think, ought to care little for adulation that fades away
with their good looks.

The supremacy of woman in this country is like that of the Mikado in
Japan,--a sovereign sacred and irresponsible, but on condition of
sitting still, and leaving the management of affairs, the real business
of life, to others. It is the same theory of government with which the
constitutionalists tormented the late Louis Philippe,--_Le roi regne et
ne gouverne pas_. He was unwilling to accept such a position, and so am
I. I cannot take a pride in insignificance and uselessness, although I
confess with shame that most women do,--the result of which is, that we
have not the kind of influence we ought