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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"The Professor at the Breakfast-Table"

A real woman does a great many things without knowing why she does
them; but these pattern machines mix up their intellects with everything
they do, just like men. They can't help it, no doubt; but we can't help
getting sick of them, either. Intellect is to a woman's nature what her
watch-spring skirt is to her dress; it ought to underlie her silks and
embroideries, but not to show itself too staringly on the outside.---You
don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you; the brain is the palest of all
the internal organs, and the heart the reddest. Whatever comes from the
brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from
the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.
The young man John did not hear my soliloquy, of course, but sent up one
more bubble from our sinking conversation, in the form of a statement,
that she was at liberty to go to a personage who receives no visits, as
is commonly supposed, from virtuous people.
Why, I ask again, (of my reader,) should a person who never did anybody
any wrong, but, on the contrary, is an estimable and intelligent, nay, a
particularly enlightened and exemplary member of society, fail to inspire
interest, love, and devotion? Because of the reversed current in the
flow of thought and emotion.


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