If he writes the same word twice in succession, by accident, he always erases the one that stands second; has not the first-comer the prior right?
This act of abstract justice, which I trust many of my readers, like myself, have often performed, is a curious anti-illustration, by the way, of the absolute wickedness of human dispositions.

Why doesn't a man always strike out the first of the two words, to gratify his diabolical love of injustice?
So, I say, we owe a genuine, substantial tribute of respect to these filtered intellects which have left their womanhood on the strainer.

They are so clear that it is a pleasure at times to look at the world of thought through them.

But the rose and purple tints of richer natures they cannot give us, and it is not just to them to ask it.
Fashionable society gets at these rich natures very often in a way one would hardly at first think of.

It loves vitality above all things, sometimes disguised by affected languor, always well kept under by the laws of good-breeding,--but still it loves abundant life, opulent and showy organizations,--the spherical rather than the plane trigonometry of female architecture,--plenty of red blood, flashing eyes, tropical voices, and forms that bear the splendors of dress without growing pale beneath their lustre.