She is all soul, and heart, and
intellect, with never a bit of human nature to catch hold of her by.
Her beauty, it appals one, it is so painfully indescribable. Whence
comes she, whither goes she, why do we never meet her like? Of
women I know a goodish few, and I look among them for her prototype;
but I find it not. They are charming, they are beautiful, all these
women that I know. It would not be right for me to tell you,
Ladies, the esteem and veneration with which I regard you all. You
yourselves, blushing, would be the first to cheek my ardour. But
yet, dear Ladies, seen even through my eyes, you come not near the
ladies that I read about. You are not--if I may be permitted an
expressive vulgarism--in the same street with them. Your beauty I
can look upon, and retain my reason--for whatever value that may be
to me. Your conversation, I admit, is clever and brilliant in the
extreme; your knowledge vast and various; your culture quite
Bostonian; yet you do not--I hardly know how to express it--you do
not shine with the sixteen full-moon-power of the heroine of
fiction. You do not--and I thank you for it--impress me with the
idea that you are the only women on earth. You, even you, possess
tempers of your own.
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