News from Nowhere, or, an Epoch of Rest : being some chapters from a utopian romance by William Morris
page 77 of 269 (28%)
page 77 of 269 (28%)
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to her? And then, you know, everybody likes to be ordered about by a
pretty woman: why, it is one of the pleasantest forms of flirtation. You are not so old that you cannot remember that. Why, I remember it well." And the old fellow chuckled again, and at last fairly burst out laughing. "Excuse me," said he, after a while; "I am not laughing at anything you could be thinking of; but at that silly nineteenth-century fashion, current amongst rich so-called cultivated people, of ignoring all the steps by which their daily dinner was reached, as matters too low for their lofty intelligence. Useless idiots! Come, now, I am a 'literary man,' as we queer animals used to be called, yet I am a pretty good cook myself." "So am I," said I. "Well, then," said he, "I really think you can understand me better than you would seem to do, judging by your words and your silence." Said I: "Perhaps that is so; but people putting in practice commonly this sense of interest in the ordinary occupations of life rather startles me. I will ask you a question or two presently about that. But I want to return to the position of women amongst you. You have studied the 'emancipation of women' business of the nineteenth century: don't you remember that some of the 'superior' women wanted to emancipate the more intelligent part of their sex from the bearing of children?" |
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