“To resume,” continued Emily when the mirth had subsided, “you won’t wear low-necked dresses at parties. You don’t waltz. You don’t flirt. You don’t care to be admired. You don’t run after the lions. You pay court to all the taboo people, visit those who are voted out of good society, ask them to visit you”—
“And cry ‘à bas la Madame Grundy,’” put in Muriel, with a free and frolic toss of her arm.
“Yes, and cry, ‘down with Mrs. Grundy,’” continued Emily. “Then you cultivate the most miscellaneous and outlandish set of characters—authors and actors, and actresses, and reformers, and clergymen, and musicians and comeouters and people respectable and disrespectable all meet here, higgledy-piggledy, in the most heterogeneous mixture—the most chaotic”—
“O no, Emily dear, not chaotic,” interposed Muriel, “not chaotic but cosmic. I accept them all as Nature accepts them all. Down with the walls! That’s my principle. No castes—no factitious distinctions. Let fine people of all sorts come together and learn to know each other. Democracy forever!”
“Yes, indeed—but doesn’t good society get horrified at your doings!” laughingly exclaimed Emily “Doesn’t the whole neighborhood hold up its hands at you? Why, your aristocratic acquaintance look at you with perfect horror.”
“Well,” rejoined Muriel, with nonchalant gaiety, “you know what Mercutio says: ‘Their eyes were made to see and let them look.’”
“And then your studies,” ran on Emily. “Perfectly omnivorous. French, German, Italian, Latin, music, drawing, painting, moulding, science, poetry, history, oratory, philosophy, Shakspeare, Bacon, Dante, Plato, Goethe, Swedenborg.”
“And Fourier,” interpolated Muriel. “I’ve added him to my list, you know, and Uncle Lemuel says I ought to blush to own that I read him. The poor man thinks Fourier had hoofs and horns and a harpoon tail.”
“Yes, I know,” rejoined Emily with a laugh. “He says such works loosen the foundations of society and are fatal to the interests of morality,” she added, mimicking Uncle Lemuel’s stock phrases, which he used in common with a great many people of the highest respectability. “But to resume, Muriel: there are your muscularities. You skate, you swim, you climb mountains, you ride horseback, you walk ten miles on a stretch, you saddle or harness your horse like a stableman, you catch up your horse’s feet, and look at the shoes like a blacksmith, you dance, you row, you lift weights, you swing by your hands, you walk on the parallel poles”—
“And fence,” suggested the amused listener. “Don’t forget the fencing!”