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 qualities 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 much 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 do not