To
them the longed-for motherhood was not only a personal joy,
but a nation's hope. Their twenty-five daughters in turn, with a
stronger hope, a richer, wider outlook, with the devoted love and
care of all the surviving population, grew up as a holy sisterhood,
their whole ardent youth looking forward to their great office.
And at last they were left alone; the white-haired First Mother
was gone, and this one family, five sisters, twenty-five first cousins,
and a hundred and twenty-five second cousins, began a new race.
Here you have human beings, unquestionably, but what we
were slow in understanding was how these ultra-women, inheriting
only from women, had eliminated not only certain masculine
characteristics, which of course we did not look for, but so
much of what we had always thought essentially feminine.
The tradition of men as guardians and protectors had quite
died out. These stalwart virgins had no men to fear and therefore
no need of protection.
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