There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough
out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and
all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here be
specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us
information as to the manners of the present day in England, and
obligingly corrected us when we attempted to answer. But as we
were dealing with a woman, perhaps our information was not so much
thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up knowledge and
yet preserve its superiority. It is good policy, and almost
necessary in the circumstances. If a man finds a woman admire him,
were it only for his acquaintance with geography, he will begin at
once to build upon the admiration. It is only by unintermittent
snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, as
Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, 'are such ENCROACHERS.'
For my part, I am body and soul with the women; and after a well-
married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the
myth of the divine huntress. It is no use for a man to take to the
woods; we know him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and
had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is this about
some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that
they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone
without the countenance of any trousered being. I declare,
although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to
women for this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, or
indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous kiss. There is nothing so
encouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when I think
of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all night to the
note of Diana's horn; moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free as
they; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched by the
commotion of man's hot and turbid life--although there are plenty