Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/169

 sugar instead of brown to put up my sweet-pickles, because every time I see my next-door neighbor she advises me to do so, and has advised me to for the last five years? In house-keeping, as in every other matter in life, you can only learn by burning your fingers. I think women were never meant to associate with each other. They are too narrow; and they go on making each other smaller and smaller, instead of getting broader and stronger by contact with great coarse-grained men. Go to! I do not consider them advantageous or proper associates. I might have amounted to something myself if I had n't been blighted early in life by five sisters and four aunts."

"But Sara," objected her friend, "see how differently men treat you! They all fall in love with you, and you can twist them around your little finger,—even papa. You can make him do whatever you like. I don't know how to manage them at all, though I have lived among them all my life. It 's a penalty you would not like to pay to have men treat you as if you were one of themselves."

"O thou littlest humbug! How about certain young Creoles with big eyes, not to mention my own ewe-lamb Philip, which thou hast calmly taken from me without even a 'by your leave'? Lies, all lies!"