human
Ah! yes, I know few pleasures so great as that of finding one's own idea, or hope, or longing, finely expressed, half-born thoughts alive and of stately stature; and then the exquisite touches of art upon quick nerves, the enlarging of the realms of imagination, knowledge, the heightening of perceptions, intuitions; finally the blessed power of escaping from oneself, with the paradoxical reward of greater self-realization! But, ah, Professor, to me there is a 'but' even here. I am oppressed by a sense of the discrepancy between the world that books disclose to me, and the world that I myself inhabit. In books, the _impossibilities_ are all left out. They give you no sense of the sordid Inevitable that looms so large on the grey horizon. Another more personal quarrel that I have with books is on account of their attacking all my pet prejudices, and sneering at the type of woman that I have the misfortune to belong to. I am always exhorted to cure myself of being myself. Nothing less would suffice. Now this is wounding. All my particular feelings, my strongest beliefs, are condemned, directly or by inference. I could almost believe that there is a literary conspiracy to reform me. The true women