Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/376

360 observe in the turkey, the peacock, and other tailbearing dignitaries. What is to become of our views of the feminine ideal, if we see even the model spectimens of the fair sex wander about the streets, the. delicate head adorned with a Babylonian tower, consisting of a collection of international hair and infusoria, and the curved model back ending in a mysterious elevation of drygoods and architectural designs, moving with strange contortions, and threatening changes of form, before which, if they really were a part of the person, the entire male sex would flee into the forest? At such a sight the question: "Must a woman have brains?" involuntarily changes into the question: "Can a woman have brains?' And yet nobody will maintain that "there is nothing to it." Fairy lore has told us of mermaids who are women above and fish below; but without straying into the realm of fancy we could say of most of our landmaids, they are grenadier above and dromedary below. And to complete the model woman as a monstrosity in the extreme, she also drags a silk or velvet train, of several yards, along her earthly pilgrimage, in order to bring home with her into her boudoir, redolent with patchuli, all the odors and delicacies of the public thoroughfare. George Sand, Ninon de l'Enclos, Heloise, Aspasia and all ye other women of intellect and taste, of aesthetic sense and feeling, save me from despairing of your living sisters, who, by such monstrous deformities and concessions, voluntarily and assiduously, without