Religion, politics,
statistics, travel had thus far led to nothing. Even the Chicago
Fair had only confused the roads. Accidental education could go
no further, for one's mind was already littered and stuffed
beyond hope with the millions of chance images stored away
without order in the memory. One might as well try to educate a
gravel-pit. The task was futile, which disturbed a student less
than the discovery that, in pursuing it, he was becoming himself
ridiculous. Nothing is more tiresome than a superannuated
pedagogue.
For the moment he was rescued, as often before, by a woman.
Towards midsummer, 1895, Mrs. Cabot Lodge bade him follow her to
Europe with the Senator and her two sons. The study of history is
useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women;
and the mass of this ignorance crushes one who is familiar enough
with what are called historical sources to realize how few women
have ever been known. The woman who is known only through a man
is known wrong, and excepting one or two like Mme. de Sevigne, no
woman has pictured herself. The American woman of the nineteenth
century will live only as the man saw her; probably she will be
less known than the woman of the eighteenth; none of the female
descendants of Abigail Adams can ever be nearly so familiar as
her letters have made her; and all this is pure loss to history,
for the American woman of the nineteenth century was much better
company than the American man; she was probably much better
company than her grandmothers.
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