'Just this, my dear fellow, that it is natural. As it is, she
considers me only "intelligent-looking." If the beard were away, my
face, she says, would be "so refined!" And, I suppose, if I was
just a little more effeminate and pale, with a nice retreating
under-jaw and a drooping lip, and a meek, peaking simper, like your
starved Romish saints, I should be "so spiritual!" And if, again,
to complete the climax, I did but shave my head like a Chinese, I
should be a model for St. Francis himself!'

'But really, after all, why make yourself so singular by this said
beard?'

'I wear it for a testimony and a sign that a man has no right to be
ashamed of the mark of manhood. Oh, that one or two of your
Protestant clergymen, who ought to be perfect ideal men, would have
the courage to get up into the pulpit in a long beard, and testify
that the very essential idea of Protestantism is the dignity and
divinity of man as God made him! Our forefathers were not ashamed
of their beards; but now even the soldier is only allowed to keep
his moustache, while our quill-driving masses shave themselves as
close as they can; and in proportion to a man's piety he wears less
hair, from the young curate who shaves off his whiskers, to the
Popish priest who shaves his crown!'

'What do you say, then, to cutting off nuns' hair?'

'I say, that extremes meet, and prudish Manichaeism always ends in
sheer indecency. Those Papists have forgotten what woman was made
for, and therefore, they have forgotten that a woman's hair is her
glory, for it was given to her for a covering: as says your friend,