What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage.

It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.

At heart, he could not abide sense in women: he liked to see them as silly, as light-headed, as vain, as open to ridicule as possible; because they were then in reality what he held them to be, and wished them to be,--inferior: toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour and to be thrown away.

К его (пансиона для девочек) начальницам... я отношусь хотя и сдержанно (съездив ненадолго за границу для завершения образования, они порядком набрались там разных вычуров, кривлянья и жеманства), но с должным уважением, какого, думаю, заслуживают все женщины, бесстрашно глядящие в лицо жизни и добывающие пропитание своим трудом.

Jane, will you marry me?""Yes sir.""A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?""Yes, sir.""A crippled man, twenty years older older than you, whom you will have to wait on?""Yes, sir.""Truly, Jane?""Most truly, sir.

Two hot, close rooms thus became my world; and a crippled old woman, my mistress, my friend, my all. Her service was my duty - her pain, my suffering - her relief, my hope - her anger, my punishment - her regard, my reward.

It was her pleasure, her joy, to make me still the master in all things.