Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[57] of the Arab officers said, “If all American women are like you, I should not like to go to war against the men.” Once she said — in a voice which the daughter elsewhere describes as soft and low-“Girls, if an Arab lays hands upon you, I expect you to save yourselves by putting a bullet through your hearts. Don't leave it for me to do.” There is many a general who could composedly give an order that would cost ten thousand lives, and yet who would not have the nerve to say to his daughters those last seven words, and mean them.

We talk about women's not needing strength of will, because they will be “protected.” Who is protected, who can be protected, against more than the ills of the passing day? Men heap up wealth for their daughters, and that very wealth may buy them husbands who will break their hearts, and who would never have sought them had they been poor. Or the money itself disappears. One of the heirs of one of the largest estates bequeathed in Boston in the last generation — an estate equally and justly distributed-told me that there were already descendants of the testator who were in poverty and needed assistance. Yet how few of them probably were prepared for this! Madame de Genlis, the only intellectual woman in France who for a time rivalled Madame de Stael in fame, said that of all her attainments the one which she most prized was