human
What mischief have you been attempting, Mr. Morgan? asked Margaret, as she took a chair near him.
gpt
Were you trying to make Mr. Lyon comfortable by dragging in Bunker Hill?
human
No; that was Mr. Fairchild, in his capacity as host.
gpt
Oh, I'm sure you needn't mind me, said Mr. Lyon, good-humoredly.
human
I landed in Boston, and the first thing I went to see was the Monument. It struck me as so odd, you know, that the Americans should begin life by celebrating their first defeat.
gpt
That is our way, replied Margaret, quickly.
human
We have started on a new basis over here; we win by losing. He who loses his life shall find it. If the red slayer thinks he slays he is mistaken. You know the Southerners say that they surrendered at last simply because they got tired of beating the North.
gpt
How odd!
human
Miss Debree simply means, I exclaimed,
gpt
But we were not fighting the battle of Bunker Hill, or fighting about it, which is more serious, Miss Debree. What I wanted to ask you was whether you think the domestication of religion will affect its power in the regulation of conduct.
human
Domestication? You are too deep for me, Mr. Morgan. I don't any more understand you than I comprehend the writers who write about the feminization of literature.
gpt
Well, taking the mystery out of it, the predominant element of worship, making the churches sort of good-will charitable associations for the spread of sociability and good-feeling.
human
You mean making Christianity practical?
gpt
Partially that. It is a part of the general problem of what women are going to make of the world, now they have got hold of it, or are getting hold of it, and are discontented with being women, or with being treated as women, and are bringing their emotions into all the avocations of life.
human
They cannot make it any worse than it has been.
gpt
I'm not sure of that. Robustness is needed in churches as much as in government. I don't know how much the cause of religion is advanced by these church clubs of Christian Endeavor if that is the name, associations of young boys and girls who go about visiting other like clubs in a sufficiently hilarious manner. I suppose it's the spirit of the age. I'm just wondering whether the world is getting to think more of having a good time than it is of salvation.
human
And you think woman's influence--for you cannot mean anything else--is somehow taking the vigor out of affairs, making even the church a soft, purring affair, reducing us all to what I suppose you would call a mush of domesticity.
gpt
Or femininity.
human
Well, the world has been brutal enough; it had better try a little femininity now.
gpt
I hope it will not be more cruel to women.
human
That is not an argument; that is a stab. I fancy you are altogether skeptical about woman. Do you believe in her education?
gpt
Up to a certain point, or rather, I should say, after a certain point.
human
That's it, spoke up my wife, shading her eyes from the fire with a fan.
gpt
I begin to have my doubts about education as a panacea. I've noticed that girls with only a smattering--and most of them in the nature of things can go, no further--are more liable to temptations.
human
That is because 'education' is mistaken for the giving of information without training, as we are finding out in England,
gpt
Or that it is dangerous to awaken the imagination without a heavy ballast of principle,
human
That is a beautiful sentiment, Margaret exclaimed, throwing back her head, with a flash from her eyes.
gpt
That ought to shut out women entirely. Only I cannot see how teaching women what men know is going to give them any less principle than men have. It has seemed to me a long while that the time has come for treating women like human beings, and giving them the responsibility of their position.
human
And what do you want, Margaret?
gpt
I don't know exactly what I do want, she answered, sinking back in her chair, sincerity coming to modify her enthusiasm.
human
I don't want to go to Congress, or be a sheriff, or a lawyer, or a locomotive engineer. I want the freedom of my own being, to be interested in everything in the world, to feel its life as men do. You don't know what it is to have an inferior person condescend to you simply because he is a man.
gpt
Yet you wish to be treated as a woman?
human
Of course. Do you think I want to banish romance out of the world?
gpt
You are right, my dear, said my wife.
human
The only thing that makes society any better than an industrial ant-hill is the love between women and men, blind and destructive as it often is.
gpt
Well, said Mrs. Morgan, rising to go,
human
You think it is best to take your husband home before he denies even them,