I Have Known,
Do Know, And Mean To Continue To Know As Far As In Me May Lie,
American Ladies As Bright, As Beautiful, As Graceful, As Sweet, As
Mortal Limits For Brightness, Beauty, Grace, And Sweetness Will
Permit.
They belong to the aristocracy of the land, by whatever
means they may have become aristocrats.
In America one does not
inquire as to their birth, their training, or their old names. The
fact of their aristocratic power comes out in every word and look.
It is not only so with those who have traveled or with those who
are rich. I have found female aristocrats with families and
slender means, who have as yet made no grand tour across the ocean.
These women are charming beyond expression. It is not only their
beauty. Had he been speaking of such, Wendell Phillips would have
been right in saying that they have brains all over them. So much
for those who are bright and beautiful, who are graceful and sweet!
And now a word as to those who to me are neither bright nor
beautiful, and who can be to none either graceful or sweet.
It is a hard task, that of speaking ill of any woman; but it seems
to me that he who takes upon himself to praise incurs the duty of
dispraising also where dispraise is, or to him seems to be,
deserved. The trade of a novelist is very much that of describing
the softness, sweetness, and loving dispositions of women; and this
he does, copying as best he can from nature.
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