Such a woman can accept coarse men. They may come courting on all
fours, and she will not be shocked. But women in the natural state want
men to stand god-like erect, to tread majestically, and live delicately,
Women do not often make an ado about this. They talk it over among
themselves, and take men as they are. They quietly soften them down,
and smooth them out, and polish them up, and make the best of them, and
simply and sedulously shut their eyes and make believe there isn't any
worst, or reason it away,--a great deal more than I should think they
would. But if you want to see the qualities that a woman, spontaneously
loves, the expression, the tone, the bearing that thoroughly satisfies
her self-respect, that not only secures her acquiescence, but arouses
her enthusiasm and commands her abdication, crucify the flesh, and read
Coventry Patmore. Not that he is the world's great poet, nor Arthur
Vaughan the ideal man; but this I do mean: that the delicacy, the
spirituality of his love, the scrupulous respectfulness of his demeanor,
his unfeigned inward humility, as far removed from servility on the one
side as from assumption on the other, and less the opponent than the
offspring of self-respect, his thorough gentleness, guilelessness,
deference, his manly, unselfish homage, are such qualities, and such
alone, as lead womanhood captive.
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