As well as man can do. What would you have?"

"Now you speak reason. Let me see you act it!
Abandon this wild frenzy of the hour,
That would leave woman free to go all ways
A man may go! Why, look you, even in art,
Most epicene of all pursuits in life,
How man leaves woman always far behind!
Give up your foolish striving; and let Nature
And the world's order have their way with you."

"Small as the pittance is, yet I could earn
More, ten times, by my brush than by my needle."

"Ah! woman's sphere is that of the affections.
Ambition spoils her--spoils her as a woman."

"Spoils her for whom?"

"For man."

"Then woman's errand
Is not, like man's, self-culture, self-advancement,
But she must simply qualify herself
To be a mate for man: no obligation
Resting on man to qualify himself
To be a mate for woman?"

"Ay, the man
Lives in the intellect; the woman's life
Is that of the affections, the emotions;
And her anatomy is proof of it."

"So have I often heard, but do not see.
Some women have I known, who could endure
Surgical scenes which many a strong man
Would faint at. We have had this dubious talk
Of woman's sphere far back as history goes:
'Tis time now it were proved: let actions prove it;
Let free experience, education prove it!
Why is it that the vilest drudgeries
Are put on woman, if her sphere be that
Of the affections only, the emotions?
_He_ represents the intellect, and _she_
The affections only! Is it always so?
Let Malibran, or Mary Somerville,
De Stael, Browning, Stanton, Stowe, Bonheur,
Stand forth as proof of that cool platitude.
Use other arguments, if me you'd move.
Besides, I see not that your system makes
Any provision for that numerous class
To whom the affections are an Eden closed,--
The women who are single and compelled
To drudge for a precarious livelihood!
What of _their_ sphere? What of the sphere of those
Who do not, by the sewing of a shirt,
Earn a meal's cost? Go tell them, when they venture
On an employment social custom makes
Peculiarly a man's,--that they become
Unwomanly! Go make them smile at that,--
Smile if they've not forgotten how to smile."

"I see that you're befogged, my little woman,
Chasing this ignis fatuus of the day!
Leave it, and settle down as woman should.
Wh