"Oh yes! I should like to have seen Emma's to you. I am sure they would have been very interesting—does she not write very clever letters?"
"I used to think them interesting and clever—but, perhaps, that was because I am only a surgeon, and could not be expected to have either taste or judgment," replied he, with mock humility.
"Oh, but I think you might have both on that subject—your admiring Emma's letters is decidedly a proof of it."
"Even though I am a surgeon?"
"Yes, even though you are a surgeon."
"And though you have never seen any of those letters, the liking which secures your approbation?"
"Ah! you are too clever for me—you want to make me contradict myself, or something of that sort—but I will not argue with you, and then you cannot prove me wrong."
"You need not say you will not—you cannot argue; no woman can, they can only feel, and express those feelings."
"And taking the converse of your proposition, Mr. Samuel Watson, I presume that men surpass us so much in argument, because they have no feelings. Am I to infer that?"
"We have them, but we guide them, not they us. It is exactly the reverse with you, and you never see more than one side of a question," replied he, in the most straightforward manner possible.