Speculations of pure philosophy this New England woman is inclined to fear as vicious. In dialectics she rests upon the glories of the innocuous transcendentalism of the nineteenth century forties. Exceptions to this rule are perhaps those veraciously called “occult;” for she will run to listen to the juggling logic and boasting rhetoric of Swamis Alphadananda and Betadananda and Gammadananda, and cluster about the audience-room of those dusky fakirs much as a swarm of bees flits in May. And like the bees, she deserts cells filled with honey for combs machine-made and wholly empty.
Illuminated by some factitious light, she will again go to unheard-of lengths in extenuating Shelley’s relations to his wives, and in explaining George Eliot’s marriage to her first husband. Here, and for at least once in her life, she combats convention and reasons upon natural grounds. “I don’t see the wickedness of Rudolph,” said one spinster, referring to the tragedy connecting a prince of Austria and a lady of the Vetchera family. “I don’t see why he shouldn’t have followed his heart. But I shouldn’t dare say that to any one else in Boston. Most of them think as I do, but they would all be shocked to have it said.”
“Consider the broad meaning of what you say. Let this instance become a universal law.”
“Still I believe every sensible man and woman applauds Rudolph’s independence.”
With whatsoever or whomsoever she is in sympathy this woman is apt to be a partisan. To husband, parents, and children there could be no more devoted adherent. Her conscience, developed by introspective and subjective pondering, has for her own actions abnormal size and activity. It is always alert, always busy, always prodding, and not infrequently sickened by its congested activity. Duty to those about her, and industry for the same beneficiaries, are watchwords of its strength; and to fail in a mote’s weight is to gain condemnation of two severest sorts—her own and the community’s. The opinion of the community in which she lives is her second almighty power.
In marriage she often exemplifies that saying of Euripides which Stobæus has preserved among the lavender-scented leaves of his Florilegium—“A sympathetic wife is a man’s best possession.” She has mental sympathy—a result of her tense nervous organization, her altruism in domestic life, her strong love, and her sense of duty, justice, and right.
In body she belongs to a people which has spent its physical force and depleted its vitality. She is slight. There is lack of adipose tissue, reserve force, throughout her frame. Her lungs are apt to be weak, waist normal, and hips undersized.
She is awkward in movement. Her climate has not allowed her relaxation, and the ease and curve of motion that more enervating air imparts. This is seen even in public. In walking she holds her elbows set in an angle, and sometimes she steps out in the tilt of the Cantabrigian man. In this is perhaps an unconscious imitation, a sympathetic copying, of an admirable norm; but it is graceless in petticoats. As she steps she knocks her skirt with her knees, and gives you the impression that her leg is crooked, that she does not lock her knee-joint. More often she toes in than out.
She has a marvellously delicate, brilliant, fine-grained skin. It is innocent of powder and purely natural. No beer in past generations has entered its making, and no port; also, little flesh. In New England it could not be said, as a London writer has coarsely put it, that a woman may be looked upon as an aggregate of so many beefsteaks.
Her eyes have a liquid purity and preternatural brightness; she is the child of γλαυχῶπις Athena, rather than of βοῶπις Hera, Pronuba, and ministress to women of more luxuriant flesh. The brown of her hair inclines to the ash shades.