“Are we to accept the unjust and humiliating dogma that the more highly we cultivate feminine intellect, the more un-feminine, unlovely, unamiable the individual certainly becomes?  Is a woman sweeter, more gentle, more useful to her family and friends, because she is unlearned?  Does knowledge exert an acidulating influence upon female temper, or produce an ossifying effect on female hearts?  Is ignorance an inevitable concomitant of refinement and delicacy?  Does the knowledge of Greek and Latin cast a blight over the flower-garden, or a mildew in the pantry and linen closet; or do the classics possess the power of curdling all the milk of human-kindness, all the streams of tender sympathy in a woman’s nature, as rennet coagulates a bowl of sweet milk?  Can an acquaintance with literature, art, and science so paralyze a lady’s energies, that she is rendered utterly averse to and incapable of performing those domestic offices, those household duties, so pre-eminently suited to her slender, dexterous busy little fingers?  Why, my own wise precious little mother is a living refutation of so grossly absurd and monstrous a dogma!  Have not you boxed my ears, because, when stumbling through the ‘Anabasis,’ my Greek pronunciation tortured your fastidious and correct taste?  Did not you tell me that you read nearly the whole of Sallust by spreading the book open on the dairy shelf while you churned, thus saving time?  And did not that same sweet golden butter, made under the shadow of a Latin dictionary, win you the State Fair Premium, of that very silver cup, from which I drank my milk, as long as I wore knee-pants and round jackets?  Was it not my father’s fond boast that his wife’s proficiency in music was equalled only by her wonderful skill in making muffins, pastry, and omelette soujflee?”

With genuine chivalric tenderness in look and tone he inclined his head; but though a tear certainly glistened in Mrs. Lindsay’s bright eyes, she answered gayly: 

“Am I Cerberus, to be coaxed and cheated by a well-buttered sop of flattery?  Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am incorruptible, and disdain to betray my cause for your thirty pieces of potent praise.”

“I think,” said Mr. Hargrove, taking a bunch of cherries from the fruit-stand on the library table,—­“I think the whole matter may be resolved into this; the ambitious clamours and Amazonian excesses of this epoch, are the inevitable consequence of the rigid tyranny of former ages; which sternly banished women to the numbing darkness of an intellectual night, denying them the legitimate and natural right of developing their faculties by untrammelled exercise.  This belief in feminine inferiority is still expressed in Mohammedan lands, by the custom of placing a slate or tablet of marble on a woman’s grave, while on that of men a pen or penholder is laid, to indicate that female hearts are mere tablets, on which man writes whatever pleases