She had now battled for months against her own heart: first for her mother; then, in a far more terrible conflict for Raynal, for honor and purity; and of late she had been battling, still against her own heart, for delicacy, for etiquette, things very dear to her, but not so great, holy, and sustaining as honor and charity that were her very household gods: and so, just when the motives of resistance were lowered, the length of the resistance began to wear her out.
For nothing is so hard to her sex as a long steady struggle.

In matters physical, this is the thing the muscles of the fair cannot stand; in matters intellectual and moral, the long strain it is that beats them dead.
Do not look for a Bacona, a Newtona, a Handella, a Victoria Huga.
Some American ladies tell us education has stopped the growth of these.
No! mesdames.

These are not in nature.
They can bubble letters in ten minutes that you could no more deliver to order in ten days than a river can play like a fountain.

They can sparkle gems of stories: they can flash little diamonds of poems.

The entire sex has never produced one opera nor one epic that mankind could tolerate: and why?
these come by long, high-strung labor.