When you really knew her, when she spoke to you freely, as to a
friend--then, the attraction of her voice, her smile her manner,
impressed you indescribably. Her slightest words and her commonest
actions interested and delighted you, you knew not why. There was a
beauty about her unassuming simplicity, her natural--exquisitely
natural--kindness of heart, and word, and manner, which preserved its
own unobtrusive influence over you, in spite of all other rival
influences, be they what they might. You missed and thought of her,
when you were fresh from the society of the most beautiful and the
most brilliant women. You remembered a few kind, pleasant words of
hers when you forgot the wit of the wittiest ladies, the learning of
the most learned. The influence thus possessed, and unconsciously
possessed, by my sister over every one with whom she came in
contact--over men especially--may, I think be very simply accounted
for, in very few sentences.

We live in an age when too many women appear to be ambitious of
morally unsexing themselves before society, by aping the language and
the manners of men--especially in reference to that miserable modern
dandyism of demeanour, which aims at repressing all betrayal of warmth
of feeling; which abstains from displaying any enthusiasm on any
subject whatever; which, in short, labours to make the fashionable
imperturbability of the face the faithful reflection of the
fashionable imperturbability of the mind. Women of this exclusively
modern order, like to use slang expressions in their conversation;
assume a bastard-masculine abruptness in their manners, a
bastard-masculine licence in their opinions; affect to ridicule those
outward developments of feeling which pass under the general
appellation of "sentiment." Nothing impresses, agitates, amuses, or