Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/173

 for everybody. I have sometimes wondered in my own mind whether women do not rather enjoy being coerced and kept down. I have seen them so false to a kind heart, and so fond of a cruel one. Are they slaves by nature, do you conceive, or only hypocrites by education? I suppose no wise man puzzles his head much on that subject. They are all incomprehensible and all alike!

"How unjust!" exclaims Bones, interrupting me with more vivacity than usual. "How unsupported an assertion, how sweeping an accusation, how unfair, how unreasonable, and how like a man! Yes, that is the way with every one of you; disappointed in a single instance, you take refuge from your own want of judgment, your own mismanagement, your own headlong stupidity, in the condemnation of half the world! You open a dozen oysters, and turn away disgusted