"Oh, nothing, only Dacia Dangyeeyes has been here," said Jim, "and poor Hal is ready to faint away and sink through the floor. He isn't up to snuff yet, for all he writes such magnificent articles about the nineteenth century." "Well," said I, "it was woman _as_ woman that I was speaking of, and not this kind of creature. If I believed that granting larger liberty and wider opportunities was going to change the women we reverence to things like these, you would never find me advocating it." "Well, my dear Hal," said Bolton, "be comforted; you're not the first reformer that has had to cry out, 'Deliver me from my friends.' Always when the waters of any noble, generous enthusiasm rise and overflow their banks, there must come down the drift-wood--the wood, hay, and stubble. Luther had more trouble with the fanatics of his day, who ran his principles into the ground, as they say, than he had with the Pope and the Emperor, both together. As to this Miss Audacia, she is one of the phenomenal creations of our times; this time, when every kind of practical experiment in life has got to be tried, and stand or fall on its own merits. So don't be ashamed of having spoken the truth, because crazy people and fools caricature it. It is true, as you have said, that women ought to be allowed a freer, stronger, and more generous education and scope for their faculties. It is true that they ought, everywhere, to have equal privileges with men; and because some crack-brained women draw false inferences from this, it is none the less true. For my part, I always said that one must have a strong conviction for a cause, if he could stand the things its friends say for it, or read a weekly paper devoted to it. If I could have been made a pro-slavery man, it would have been by reading anti-slavery papers, and _vice versa_. I had to keep myself on a good diet of pro-slavery papers, to keep my zeal up." "But," said I, anxiously, to Jim, "do you suppose that we're going to be exposed to the visits of this young woman?" "Well," said Jim, "as you've subscribed for her paper, perhaps she'll let us alone till she has some other point to carry." "Subscribe!" said I; "I did it from compulsion, to get her out of the office; I didn't think the situation respectable; and yet I don't want her paper, and I don't want my name on her subscription list. What if the Van Arsdels should find it out? People are apt enough to think that our doctrines lead to all sorts of _outré_ consequences; and if Mrs. Wouverman, their Aunt Maria, should once get hold of this, and it should get all through the circle in which they move, how disagreeable it would be." "Oh, never fear," said Jim; "I guess we can manage to keep our own secrets; and as to any of them ever knowing, or seeing, anything about that paper, it's out of the question. Bless you! they wouldn't touch it with a pair of tongs!" CHAPTER XXIV. AUNT MARIA.