id out and well beaten into paths by
man; second, to be so polite when arrived there as to accept him, his
life, power, work, as standards to which it were wisest that we conform
ourselves with all expedient haste, and thus blot out as speedily as may
be the woman world--let its existence be remembered only as an evil
escaped, a humiliation left behind forever. Has not its narrowness
shamed us, its poverty of action cramped and starved the capacities we
begin to feel unfolding in us--has not its peace made us seem cowards
while we lingered in it, and will not its imperishable purity bear
transplantation, and bloom in perennial beauty on the wider fields to
which we are hastening?

We touch the borders of the promised land. Weary and spirit-sore, less
from the travel than the bitter experiences which prompted it, we yearn
for the hospitable welcome due to a stranger, a helper arrived in due
season. We are come, O potentate. Open wide the glad gates that shall
receive us. Is not this the Canaan which we but ask to divide with
thee?--a goodly land, and a prosperous, which it were joyful to go in
and possess. But the heathen inhabitant thereof turns his back upon us,
shuts his gates, closes his doors, ascends his throne, takes up his
sceptre, and waving it before our astonished eyes, says: 'This is my own
kingdom. I have created it from a wilderness to suit my own life, not
another. It cannot be shared; nobody, not you, my mother, my wife,
sister, daughter--not even you, most beloved, cherished, worshipped
woman, shall divide it with me. No admittance except on business.'

What to do in such an unexpected emergency!--such behavior, with all
sorts of personal and external power to back it, to say nothing of those
proverbial fractions of law, nine out of ten of which instantly convert
themselves into an adamantine cement, binding his to him, so that indeed
it were a critical piece of practice to essay their sundering, for
_Nature is in the union_, and she is high to be overreached, deep to be
undermined, strong to be defeated, compact and wary to be foiled.

Sit down, then, a beggar at the border of man's realm, craving
permission to enter and share it with him? Essay to conquer an entrance?
And when once within, whether by courtesy or conquest, what then?
Competition with that stronger physique, that ruggeder life, that loves
the wrestle with external hindrances which I love not, and am inferior
for, did I love them? An eq