Ay, but nature, if we are
to tame these men, must be swathed and concealed, partly stifled,
absolutely stifled upon occasion. The natural woman does not move a foot
without striking earth to conjure up the horrid apparition of the natural
man, who is not as she, but a cannibal savage. To be the light which
leads, it is her business to don the misty vesture of an idea, that she
may dwell as an idea in men's minds, very dim, very powerful, but
abstruse, unseizable. Much wisdom was imparted to her on the subject, and
she understood a little, and echoed hollow to the remainder, willing to
show entire docility as far as her intelligence consented to be awake.
She was in that stage of the dainty, faintly tinged innocence of the
amorousness of themselves when beautiful young women who have not been
caught for schooling in infancy deem it a defilement to be made to appear
other than the blessed nature has made them, which has made them
beautiful, and surely therefore deserves to be worshipped. The lectures
of the great ladies and Chloe's counsels failed to persuade her to use
the powder puff-ball.
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