*
* 'I once knew a young person who learned to write before she
learned to read, and began to write with her needle before she could
use a pen. At first, indeed, she took it into her head to make no
other letter than the O: this letter she was constantly making of
all sizes, and always the wrong way. Unluckily, one day, as she was
intent on this employment, she happened to see herself in the
looking-glass; when, taking a dislike to the constrained attitude in
which she sat while writing, she threw away her pen, like another
Pallas, and determined against making the O any more. Her brother
was also equally adverse to writing: it was the confinement,
however, and not the constrained attitude, that most disgusted
him.'- Rousseau's Emilius.
I have, probably, had an opportunity of observing more girls in
their infancy than J. J. Rousseau- I can recollect my own feelings,
and I have looked steadily around me; yet, so far from coinciding with
him in opinion respecting the first dawn of the female character, I
will venture to affirm, that a girl, whose spirits have not been
damped by inactivity, or innocence tainted by false shame, will always
be a romp, and the doll will never excite attention unless confinement
allows her no alternative. Girls and boys, in short, would play
harmlessly together, if the distinction of sex was not inculcated long
before nature makes any difference.- I will go further, and affirm, as
an indisputable fact, that most of the women, in the circle of my
observation, who have acted like rational creatures, or shewn any
vigour of intellect, have accidentally been allowed to run wild- as
some of the elegant formers of the fair sex would insinuate.
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