their sex any the weaker for it? Not a bit. It is simply a difference of
temperament: that is all. It involves no inferiority. If you think that
this habit necessarily means weakness, wait and see! Who has not seen women
break down in tears during some domestic calamity, while the "stronger sex"
were calm; and who has not seen those same women, that temporary excitement
being over, rise up and dry their eyes, and be thenceforth the support and
stay of their households, and perhaps bear up the "stronger sex" as a
stream bears up a ship? I said once to an experienced physician, watching
such a woman, "That woman is really great."--"Of course she is," he
answered; "did you ever see a woman who was not great, when the emergency
required?"

Now, will women carry this same quality of temperament into their public
career? Doubtless: otherwise they would cease to be women. Will it be
betraying confidence if I own that I have seen two of the very bravest
women of my acquaintance--women who have swayed great audiences--burst into
tears, during a committee meeting, at a moment of unexpected adversity for
"the cause"? How pitiable! our critical observers would have thought. In
five minutes that April shower had passed, and those women were as resolute
and unconquerable as Queen Elizabeth: they were again the natural leaders
of those around them; and the cool and tearless men who sat beside them
were nothing--men were "a lost art," as some one says--compared with the
inexhaustible moral vitality of those two women.

No: the dangers of "Celery and Cherubs" are exaggerated. For temper, women
are as good as men, and no better. As for tears, long may they flow! They
are symbols of that mighty distinction of sex which is as ineffaceable and
as essential as the difference between land and sea.