Gay or serious, the question never failed to stir feeling. The
cleverer the woman, the less she denied the failure. She was
bitter at heart about it. She had failed even to hold the family
together, and her children ran away like chickens with their
first feathers; the family was extinct like chivalry. She had
failed not only to create a new society that satisfied her, but
even to hold her own in the old society of Church or State; and
was left, for the most part, with no place but the theatre or
streets to decorate. She might glitter with historical diamonds
and sparkle with wit as brilliant as the gems, in rooms as
splendid as any in Rome at its best; but she saw no one except
her own sex who knew enough to be worth dazzling, or was
competent to pay her intelligent homage. She might have her own
way, without restraint or limit, but she knew not what to do with
herself when free. Never had the world known a more capable or
devoted mother, but at forty her task was over, and she was left
with no stage except that of her old duties, or of Washington
society where she had enjoyed for a hundred years every
advantage, but had created only a medley where nine men out of
ten refused her request to be civilized, and the tenth bored her.
On most subjects, one's opinions must defer to science, but on
this, the opinion of a Senator or a Professor, a chairman of a
State Central Committee or a Railway President, is worth less
than that of any woman on Fifth Avenue.
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