t me; I am going to be eloquent. I want you to
understand why I don't consider you sociable. You call Mr. Johnson
conceited; but, really, I don't believe he's nearly as conceited as
yourself. You are too conceited to be sociable; he is not. I am an
obscure, weak-minded woman,--weak-minded, you know, compared with men. I
can be patronized,--yes, that's the word. Would you be equally amiable
with a person as strong, as clear-sighted as yourself, with a person
equally averse with yourself to being under an obligation? I think not.
Of course it's delightful to charm people. Who wouldn't? There is no
harm in it, as long as the charmer does not sit up for a public
benefactor. If I were a man, a clever man like yourself, who had seen
the world, who was not to be charmed and encouraged, but to be convinced
and refuted, would you be equally amiable? It will perhaps seem absurd
to you, and it will certainly seem egotistical, but I consider myself
sociable, for all that I have only a couple of friends,--my father and
the principal of the school. That is, I mingle with women without any
second thought. Not that I wish you to do so: on the contrary, if the
contrary is natural to you. But I don't believe you mingle in the same
way with men. You may ask me what I know about it. Of course I know
nothing: I simply guess. When I have done, indeed, I mean to beg your
pardon for all I have said; but until then, give me a chance. You are
incapable of listening deferentially to stupid, bigoted persons. I am
not. I do it every day. Ah, you have no idea of what nice manners I have
in the exercise of my profession! Every day I have occasion to pocket my
pride and to stifle my precious sense of the ridiculous,--of which, of
course, you think I haven't a bit. It is, for instance, a constant
vexation to me to be poor. It makes me frequently hate rich women; it
makes me despise poor ones. I don't know whether you suffer acutely from
the narrowness of your own means; but if you do, I dare say you shun
rich men. I don't. I like to go into rich people's houses, and to be
very polite to the ladies of the house, especially if they are very
well-dressed and ignorant and vulgar. All women are like me in this
respect; and all men more or less like you. That is, after all, the text
of my sermon. Compared with us, it has always seemed to me that you are
arrant cowards,--that we alone are brave. To be sociable, you must have
a great deal of pluck. You are too f