Of This She Takes Much Heed, Not Managing It So That It May Be Conveyed Up The Carriage With Some Decency, But Striking It About Against Men's Legs, And Heaving It With Violence Over People's Knees.

The touch of a real woman's dress is in itself delicate; but these blows from a harpy's fins are as loathsome as a snake's slime.

If there be two of them they talk loudly together, having a theory that modesty has been put out of court by women's rights. But, though not modest, the woman I describe is ferocious in her propriety. She ignores the whole world around her as she sits; with a raised chin and face flattened by affectation, she pretends to declare aloud that she is positively not aware that any man is even near her. She speaks as though to her, in her womanhood, the neighborhood of men was the same as that of dogs or cats. They are there, but she does not hear them, see them, or even acknowledge them by any courtesy of motion. But her own face always gives her the lie. In her assumption of indifference she displays her nasty consciousness, and in each attempt at a would-be propriety is guilty of an immodesty. Who does not know the timid retiring face of the young girl who when alone among men unknown to her feels that it becomes her to keep herself secluded? As many men as there are around her, so many knights has such a one, ready bucklered for her service, should occasion require such services. Should it not, she passes on unmolested - but not, as she herself will wrongly think, unheeded.

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