Cut them off, and you leave her at the mercy of every brutal
Philistine, who now dares not be rude to her because she is sacred. Do
you not see that, instead of gaining something, you will lose all?--sink
into fifth-rate mannikins, with fewer opportunities,--boys in
petticoats?

_Diogenes._ And we be obliged to set our amorous eclogues to the tune of
_Formosus Pastor Corydon_?

_Aristippus._ I might quote a suggestive remark from Pepys's Diary,
namely, that the only female animal which gives a name to both sexes is
the goose. But, seriously, your chances of success are not
brilliant,--at least for the present. There are two kinds of women, both
of them excellent; but almost as distinct as diamonds and black lead,
which are both pure carbon;--one is made to be admired, the other to be
useful. The girl who wakes the poet's sigh is a very different creature
from the girl who makes his soup. You have read of the loves of the
Angels with the daughters of the Antediluvians. I sometimes think that
the diamonds can claim descent from the high-bred race that sprang from
those aristocratic relations. The late Monsieur Balzac, who handled this
subject with ingenuity, was struck by this difference. He divided woman
into two classes: woman, and the female of the order Mammalia, genus
Bimanis, species Homo. In his essays he overlooks altogether the second
class. But in it you must seek your disciples. The heaven-descended
sisters will not go with you. You may try to make them useful and
self-supporting; but you will lose your pains. They have only to show
themselves, to receive the attention and applause that a man of genius
must work a lifetime to earn. Their world is at their feet. Wealth,
power, gratified vanity, are theirs without an effort. Madame de Stael
said she would willingly give all her fame for one season of the reign
of a youthful beauty. She, it is true, was a woman; but David Hume, a
keen observer, and moderate in his statements, noticed that even a
"little miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives
as complete enjoyment as the greatest orator who triumphs in the
splendor of his eloquence, while he governs the passions and resolutions
of a numerous assembly." You ask them to give up these pleasures and
these triumphs, and to abdicate their thrones,--to become implements
instead of ornaments, and to help to bring down the high price of labor
in the present scarcity of laborers; and you offer them