Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/182

Rh ; but even this is only reconciled by their friends on the ground that they would lose much in originality and strength of character, by studying to be more like the generality of women.

One of the most wholesome and effectual checks upon this juvenile and ill-judged desire to be singular, might be derived from the fact, that singularity in woman invariably excites remarks, that such remarks almost as invariably degenerate into scandal, and that scandal always destroys good influence. However innocent a woman may be, how much soever she may desire to be useful to others, the fact of her being the subject of scandal effectually destroys her power; for no one likes to be dictated to by a person of whom strange things are spoken; and the agent of Christian benevolence is airways less efficient, for being generally considered odd. Still, if the world would pause here, all might be well. But our oddities, while they provoke the laughter of the gay, seem unaccountably to have the effect of awakening the anger of the grave; so that we not unfrequently find persons more severely reflected upon for comparatively innocent peculiarities, than for acts of real culpability.

A repetition of such reflections and injurious remarks passing through society, upon the principle of a snow-ball over a drifted plain, obtains in time a sort of bad name, or questionable character, for the individual against whom they are directed, which no explanation can do anything to clear away; because founded on facts of so singular a nature, that few people understand how, in the common course of things, they could have happened, and consequently few have charity enough to believe they could originate in anything but evil. It is thus that the character of woman so often suffers unjustly from her oddities. Strangers cannot understand why we acted as we did, enemies