"I should imagine not. The rule of a woman is tyranny; but the rule of a
man-woman grinds fine. Where are you going?"
"Anywhere."
"What to do?"
"See--see everything."
"You will be disappointed."
"And were you?"
"Yes; and you will be more so. I want things that men and the world give,
you do not. If you have a few yards of earth to stand on, and a bit of
blue over you, and something that you cannot see to dream about, you have
all that you need, all that you know how to use. But I like to see real
men. Let them be as disagreeable as they please, they are more interesting
to me than flowers, or trees, or stars, or any other thing under the sun.
Sometimes," she added, walking on, and shaking the dust daintily from her
skirts, "when I am not too busy trying to find a new way of doing my hair
that will show my little neck to better advantage, or over other work of
that kind, sometimes it amuses me intensely to trace out the resemblance
between one man and another: to see how Tant Sannie and I, you and
Bonaparte, St. Simon on his pillow, and the emperor dining off larks'
tongues, are one and the same compound, merely mixed in different
proportions.
"What is microscopic in one is largely developed in another; what is a
rudimentary in one man is an active organ in another; but all things are in
all men, and one soul is the model of all.
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