describe in two words a pompous, prosing, dull-witted man, you call him
an old woman. This is not just. Old women always have some imagination;
and their gossip does not pretend to be the highest wisdom, which makes
a great difference.

_Diogenes._ True! The elderly male fossil of the Silurian age,--the age
of mollusks,--whose _habitat_ is some still-water club, or public
reading-room, where he babbles of the morning's news, is a thousand
times more tiresome than any loquacious elderly lady. We excel in this
as in everything. We beat you at your own weapons. Sewing seems to be
instinctive with women; yet tailors tell me that they are obliged to
give out their best work to men.

_Hipparchia._ Dress and want of method are two radical weaknesses women
must extirpate if they ever hope to rise from their present secondary
position. Their dress is the outward and visible sign of it,--the livery
of their lower condition. Everything about it is absurd, from the
spurious waterfall pinned to the back of their heads down to the train
that sweeps the muddy pavement. Their hair is infested with beads, bits
of lace and of ribbons, or mock jewelry. A bonnet is an epitome of
fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag,
or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly
upon their frocks, are not a whit more absurd.

_Diogenes._ Women go to and fro like that funny little crab we saw
lately in Aquaria, who adorns his head and shoulders with bits of
sea-weed, or any other stuff within his reach, and paddles about his
tank self-satisfied and ridiculous. Women must and will trim, as spiders
spin webs, and bees make honeycombs. They even trim bathing-dresses: one
would think that nothing could redeem them from their hideousness. But
they obey a law of their being. The special aptitudes of the lower
animals are brought into play when no other reason can be given than the
necessity for discharging an accumulation of the inward energy,--a
saying of the physico-psychologists that is verified in this instance.

_Hipparchia._ A man's raiment is of plain color and of good, strong
material,--ugly if you please, but durable and serviceable; but a woman
puts on textures that cost hundreds of dollars and that a drop of water
may ruin. Then fashions change daily. The bonnet idolized yesterday is
offered up without a sigh if it refuses to adopt the new shape,--cast
into the flames, or thrown to wild Biddi