Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/126

 and insipid small talk of ordinary society, resorted to by way of recreation, but in the last degree unrefreshing in its nature, with the spontaneous overflowings of a cultivated mind.

'She spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them— She had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch, Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them, In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange. In her utmost lightness there is truth—and often she speaks lightly, Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve; For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly, As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.'

It is in fact as a means of bringing men and women together, and bridging over