'
Fools!" she said, curling her pretty lip. "A Hottentot sits at the
roadside and feeds on a rotten bone he has found there, and takes out his
bottle of Cape-smoke and swills at it, and grunts with satisfaction; and
the cultured child of the nineteenth century sits in his armchair, and sips
choice wines with the lip of a connoisseur, and tastes delicate dishes with
a delicate palate, and with a satisfaction of which the Hottentot knows
nothing. Heavy jaw and sloping forehead--all have gone with increasing
intellect; but the animal appetites are there still--refined,
discriminative, but immeasurably intensified. Fools! Before men forgave
or worshipped, while they were weak on their hind legs, did they not eat
and drink, and fight for wives? When all the latter additions to humanity
have vanished, will not the foundation on which they are built remain?"
She was silent then for a while, and said somewhat dreamily, more as though
speaking to herself than to him,
"They ask, What will you gain, even if man does not become extinct?--you
will have brought justice and equality on to the earth, and sent love from
it. When men and women are equals they will love no more. Your highly-
cultured women will not be lovable, will not love.
"Do they see nothing, understand nothing? It is Tant Sannie who buries
husbands one after another, and folds her hands resignedly,--'The Lord
gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord,'--
and she looks for another.
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