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Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers by Robert Louis Stevenson
page 24 of 166 (14%)
yours.

But it is the object of a liberal education not only to
obscure the knowledge of one sex by another, but to magnify
the natural differences between the two. Man is a creature
who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords;
and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened
by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and
another to the boys. To the first, there is shown but a very
small field of experience, and taught a very trenchant
principle for judgment and action; to the other, the world of
life is more largely displayed, and their rule of conduct is
proportionally widened. They are taught to follow different
virtues, to hate different vices, to place their ideal, even
for each other, in different achievements. What should be the
result of such a course? When a horse has run away, and the
two flustered people in the gig have each possessed themselves
of a rein, we know the end of that conveyance will be in the
ditch. So, when I see a raw youth and a green girl, fluted
and fiddled in a dancing measure into that most serious
contract, and setting out upon life's journey with ideas so
monstrously divergent, I am not surprised that some make
shipwreck, but that any come to port. What the boy does
almost proudly, as a manly peccadillo, the girl will shudder
at as a debasing vice; what is to her the mere common sense of
tactics, he will spit out of his mouth as shameful. Through
such a sea of contrarieties must this green couple steer their
way; and contrive to love each other; and to respect,
forsooth; and be ready, when the time arrives, to educate the
little men and women who shall succeed to their places and
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