"Yes, but it takes courage to get out alone, at some desolate way station, and set up your tent, and make your way, and have everybody in the cars screaming remonstrances or laughing at you. Ida has the courage to do it, but I haven't. I don't believe in myself enough to do it, so I stay in the car, and wish I didn't, and wish we were all going a better way than we do." "No," said Ida; "women are brought up in a way to smother all the life out of them. All literature from the earliest ages teaches them that it is graceful to be pretty and helpless; they aspire to be superficial and showy. They are directed to look on themselves as flowers-- Gay without toil, and lovely without art, They spring to cheer the sense, and warm the heart; Nor blush, my fair, to be compared to these-- Your best, your noblest mission, is _to please_." "Well," said Eva, flushing, "wasn't it a _man_ that wrote that? and don't they always misunderstand us? We _are_ soft--we _are_ weak--we _do_ love beauty, and ease, and comfort; but there is a something in us more than they give us credit for. Where is that place in Carlyle?" she said, rising with a hasty impulse, and taking down a volume, and running rapidly over the leaves--"Oh, here it is!" and she read with energy from Carlyle's _Hero Worship_: 'It is a calumny to say that men are nerved to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense--sugar-plums of any kind--in this world or the next. In the meanest mortal there is something nobler. The poor, swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his honor of a soldier different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to _do_ noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, and the dullest drudge kindles into a hero. 'They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are _allurements_ that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, and you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.' "Now," she said, her face glowing, and bringing down her little fist with emphasis, "_that_ is true of _women_ as well as men. They wrong woman greatly who say she is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are _allurements_ that act on the heart of woman. Now, Mr. Henderson, every woman that _is_ a woman, feels this in the depths of her heart, and it is this feeling suppressed that is at the bottom of a great deal of unhappiness in woman's life. You men have your chance to express it--that is your great good fortune. You are called to be heroes--your hour comes--but we are buried under eternal common-places and trifles."