"
"If any countryman of mine has said this of our women," exclaimed
Middleton, indignantly, "he is a slanderous villain, unworthy to have
been borne by an American mother; if an Englishman has said it--as I know
many of them have and do--let it pass as one of the many prejudices only
half believed, with which they strive to console themselves for the
inevitable sense that the American race is destined to higher purposes
than their own. But pardon me; I forgot that I was speaking to an
Englishwoman, for indeed you do not remind me of them. But, I assure
you, the world has not seen such women as make up, I had almost said the
mass of womanhood in my own country; slight in aspect, slender in frame,
as you suggest, but yet capable of bringing forth stalwart men; they
themselves being of inexhaustible courage, patience, energy; soft and
tender, deep of heart, but high of purpose. Gentle, refined, but bold in
every good cause."
"Oh, you have said quite enough," replied Alice, who had seemed ready to
laugh outright, during this encomium. "I think I see one of those
paragons now, in a Bloomer, I think you call it, swaggering along with a
Bowie knife at her girdle, smoking a cigar, no doubt, and tippling
sherry-cobblers and mint-juleps.
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