[Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link book
Sketches New and Old

CHAPTER V
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Take any type of woman, and you shall find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love.
And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand.

Who was more patriotic than Joan of Arc?
Who was braver?
Who has given us a grander instance of self-sacrificing devotion?
Ah! you remember, you remember well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo.

[Much laughter.] Who does not sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel?
[Laughter.] Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening influences, the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia?
[Laughter.] Who can join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed in her modification of the Highland costume.

[Roars of laughter.] Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been poets.

As long as language lives the name of Cleopatra will live.
And, not because she conquered George III--[laughter]--but because she wrote those divine lines:-- "Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For God hath made them so." [More laughter.] The story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones of our own sex--some of them sons of St.


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