Has she ability to build up a theory
of her own, or does she, like half the women in the world, only think
of a thing as it occurs? Does she live in instances or in
generalities, I'll draw her out and see. Every order, where there are
orders, and every class (and no place is without them where women
are), have a way of judging in common with their order or class. What
is her station I wonder in her own opinion? What are her expectations?
What are her notions of wedlock? All girls regard marriage as an
enviable lot, or a necessary evil. If they tell us they don't, it's
because the right man hante come. And therefore I never mind what they
say on this subject. I have no doubt they mean it; but they don't know
what they are a talking about.
You, Squire, may go into a ball-room, where there are two hundred
women. One hundred and ninety-nine of them you will pass with as much
indifference as one hundred and ninety-nine pullets; but the two
hundredth irresistibly draws you to her. There are one hundred
handsomer, and ninety-nine cleverer ones present; but she alone has
the magnet that attracts you. Now, what is that magnet? Is it her
manner that charms? is it her voice that strikes on one of those
thousand and one chords of your nervous system, and makes it vibrate,
as sound does hollow glass? Or do her eyes affect your gizzard, so
that you have no time to chew the cud of reflection, and no
opportunity for your head to judge how you can digest the notions they
have put into it? Or is it animal magnetism, or what the plague is it?
You are strangely affected; nobody else in the room is, and everybody
wonders at you.
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