Somebody rather ambiguously remarks:— "Let cynics prattle as they may, our existence here, without the presence of the other sex, would be only a dark and cheerless void."

Fanny inquires, in reply:—"Which 'other sex?' Don't be so obscure. Dr. Beecher says, 'that a writer's ideas should stand out like rabbit's ears, so that the reader can get hold of them.' If you alluded to the female sex, I don't subscribe to it. I wish they were all 'translated.' If there is anything gives me the sensations of a landsman on his first sea voyage, it is the sight of a bonnet. Think of female friendship! Two women joining the Mutual Admiration Society; emptying their budget of love affairs; comparing bait to entrap victims, sighing over the same rose leaf; sonnetizing the same moonbeam; patronizing the same milliner, and exchanging female kisses! (Betty, hand me my fan!)

"Well, let either have one bonnet or one lover more than the other—or, if they are blue stockings, let either be one round the higher on Fame's ladder—bodkins and darning-needles! what a tempest! Caps and characters in such a case are of no account at all. Oh, there never should be but one woman alive at a time. Then the fighting would be all where it belongs—in the masculine camp. What a time there'd be, though! Wouldn't she be a belle? Bless her little soul; how she would queen it. It makes me clap my hands to think of it. The only woman in the world! If it was me, shouldn't they all leave off smoking, and wearing those odious plaid continuations? Should they ever wear an outside coat, with the flaps cut off, or a Kossuth hat, or a yellow Marseilles vest? or a mammoth bow on their neck-ties; or a turnover dickey; or a watch-chain; or a ring on the little finger; or any other abomination or off-shoot of dandyism whatsoever? Shouldn't I politely request them all to touch their hats, instead of jerking their heads, when they bowed? Wouldn't I coax them to read me poetry till they had the bronchitis? Wouldn't they play on the flute, and sing the soul out of me? And then if they were sick, wouldn't I pet them, and tell them all sorts of comicalities, and make time fly like the mischief? Shouldn't wonder!"