level. Thus to the whole class is given a reputation for
malevolent railing which does not by any means belong to it. In fact,
married women are generally more venomous than old maids. The words of
married women have greater weight, and they do more harm; for they can
make suggestions and accusations which an old maid could not make
with any propriety. An old maid's gossip is generally without
intentional malice; she has nothing to do, and she wants to make
herself agreeable; while married women, having plenty else to do,
must, as a general thing, talk scandal from pure ill-nature.

There is a large majority of old maids who are to be sincerely
respected, and from whose numbers men with sense and intelligence may
choose noble wives. They are the pretty, pure, sensible women who have
been too modest, and too womanly, to push and scramble in the social
ranks. They have dwelt in their own homes, and among their own people,
and no one has sought them out. They have seen their youth pass away,
and all their innocent desires fade, and they have suffered what few
can understand before they reached that calm which no thought of a
lover troubles. Sweet faded flowers! How tenderly we ought to regard
these gentle victims of those modest household virtues which all men
profess to admire, but which few seem desirous to transplant into
their own homes.

Another class, somewhat kindred to this, is composed of women who have
never found their ideal, and have never allowed themselves to invent
for any other man those qualities which would elevate him to their
standard. And these women, again, are closely allied to those who
remain unmarried because they do not, and will not, conform to
conventionalities and social rules. They are clever and odd, and
likely to remain odd, especially if they refuse to men--as they are
most likely to do--that step or two in advance which is the only way
to reconcile them to witty or intellectual women.

These varieties of unmarried women are mainly the victims of natural
peculiarities, or of circumstances they are not responsible for. But
within the last generation the condition of feminine celibacy has
greatly altered. It is a fact that women in this day, considerately,
and in the first glory of their youth, elect themselves to that
condition. Some have imbibed from high culture a high conception of
the value of life, and of what they ought to do with their lives; and
they will not waste the days of th