]
In a moment of stronger feeling,
"Daughter of God and man, IMMORTAL Eve."
What majesty in the cadence of the line; what dignity, what reverence
in the attitude both of giver and receiver!
The woman who permits, in her life, the alloy of vanity; the woman who
lives upon flattery, coarse or fine, shall never be thus addressed,
She is _not_ immortal so far as her will is concerned, and every
woman who does so creates miasma, whose spread is indefinite. The hand
which casts into the waters of life a stone of offence knows not how
far the circles thus caused may spread their agitations.
A little while since I was at one of the most fashionable places of
public resort. I saw there many women, dressed without regard to the
season or the demands of the place, in apery, or, as it looked, in
mockery, of European fashions. I saw their eyes restlessly courting
attention. I saw the way in which it was paid; the style of devotion,
almost an open sneer, which it pleased those ladies to receive from
men whose expression marked their own low position in the moral and
intellectual world. Those women went to their pillows with their heads
full of folly, their hearts of jealousy, or gratified vanity; those
men, with the low opinion they already entertained of Woman confirmed.
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