temper over trifles. Whoever else may suffer the grievances of life,
she cannot understand that she also must be at times one of the
sufferers with the rest; and if by chance the bad moment comes, the
person accompanying it has a hard time of it. There are spoilt women
also who have their peculiar exercises in thought and opinion, and who
cannot suffer that any one should think differently from themselves, or
find those things sacred which to them are accursed. They will hear
nothing but what is in harmony with themselves, and they take it as a
personal insult when men or women attempt to reason with them, or even
hold their own without flinching.

This kind is to be found specially among the more intellectual of a
family or a circle; women who are pronounced "clever" by their friends,
and who have been so long accustomed to think themselves clever that
they have become spoilt mentally as others are personally, and fancy
that minds and thoughts must follow in their direction, just as eyes and
hands must follow and attend their sisters. The spoilt woman of the
mental kind is a horrid nuisance generally. She is greatly given to
large discourse; but discourse of a kind that leans all to one side, and
that denies the right of any one to criticise, doubt, or contradict, is
an intellectual Tower of Pisa under the shadow of which it is not
pleasant to live.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Words in italics in the original are surrounded by _underscores_.

The following words appear with and without hyphens. They have been left
as in the original.

ball-room ballroom
business-like businesslike
hearth-rug hearthrug
house-keeper housekeeper
house-keeping housekeeping
man-like manlike
now-a-days nowadays
over-head overhead

Variations in spelling have been left as in the original. Examples
include the following:

center/centre
learned/learnt
spoiled/spoilt

The following corrections have been made to the text:

Page xi: INTRODUCTION, 13[original has 5]

Page 48: slink away from a bantam[original has bantum] hen

Page 67: you[original has vou] go in for this sort

Page 129: sheer force of genius[original has genuis]

Page 161: some out-of-the-way[original has out-of-the way]
corner

Page 220: exhausts itself in a declaration[original has
delaration] of revolt