It is unnatural for a woman to live without the daily companionship of man. The superior single woman must make tenfold the effort of the inferior wife, to maintain her balance into maturity, because of her enforced solitude. As the wife-mother grows older she is kept in touch with youth, and with the world, while the opportunities for close companionship with the young lessen as a single woman passes forty, unless she makes herself especially adaptable, agreeable, and sympathetic.
And this is what I want you to do. At twenty-four it is none too soon to begin planning for a charming maturity.
If you are determined upon a life of celibacy, determine also to be the most wholesome, and normal, and all around liberal, womanly spinster the world has ever seen.
Peace and happiness to you in your chosen lot.
To Mrs. Charles Gordon
Concerning Her Sister and Her Children
No, my dear Edna, I do not think it strange that you should seek advice on this subject from a woman who has no living children.
It seems to me no one is fitted to give such unbiased counsel regarding the training of children as the woman of observation, sympathy, and feeling, who has none of her own.