ing
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. O, 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 shrinks 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 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 munch
acquiescence in wrong doing and wrong thinking, so much letting things
jolt along in the same rut wherein we and they were born, without
inquiring whether, lifted into another groove, they might not run more
easily, that, if one who does see the difficulty holds his peace, the
very stones will cry out. However gladly one would lie on a bed of
roses and glide silken-sailed down the stream of life, how exquisitely
painful soever it may be to say what you fear and feel may give pain,
it is only a Sybarite who sets ease above righteousness, only a coward
who misses victory through dread of defeat.

There are many false ideas afloat regarding womanly duties. I