ow like a
comedy it seems!

It impresses us in the same way as a drop of water, crowded with
_infusoria_, seen through a microscope, or a little heap of cheese-mites
that would otherwise be invisible. Their activity and struggling with
each other in such little space amuse us greatly. And it is the same in
the little span of life--great and earnest activity produces a comic
effect.

No man has ever felt perfectly happy in the present; if he had it would
have intoxicated him.

ON WOMEN.

These few words of Jouy, _Sans les femmes le commencement de notre vie
seroit prive de secours, le milieu de plaisirs et la fin de
consolation_, more exactly express, in my opinion, the true praise of
woman than Schiller's poem, _Wuerde der Frauen_, which is the fruit of
much careful thought and impressive because of its antithesis and use of
contrast. The same thing is more pathetically expressed by Byron in
_Sardanapalus_, Act i, Sc. 2:--

"The very first
Of human life must spring from woman's breast,
Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hour of him who led them."

Both passages show the right point of view for the appreciation of
women.

One need only look at a woman's shape to discover that she is not
intended for either too much mental or too much physical work. She pays
the debt of life not by what she does but by what she suffers--by the
pains of child-bearing, care for the child, and by subjection to man, to
whom she should be a patient and cheerful companion. The greatest
sorrows and joys or great exhibition of strength are not assigned to
her; her life should flow more quietly, more gently, and less
obtrusively than man's, without her being essentially happier or
unhappier.

* * * * *

Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our
early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are
childish, foolish, and short-sighted--in a word, are big children all
their lives, something intermediate between the child and the man, who
is a man in the strict sense of the word. Consider how a young girl will
toy day after day with a child, dance with it and sing to it; and then
consider what a man, with the very best intentions in the wor