DORCAS. I must confess, my expectations on the whole have been agreeably disappointed. From the criticisms I had read, both favorable and adverse, I was fully prepared to quarrel with it from beginning to end. I find in it much power and sustained interest. The descriptions of nature are admirable--fresh, unhackneyed, and vivid. Western New York, with its blue lakes, sloping hills, shining brooks, quiet woodlands, spring buds, autumn flowers, winding country roads, and laden grain fields, stands before one, clearly pictured. The characters, with their _isms_, seem like old acquaintances, and the seething, fermenting condition of American society is most accurately represented. There is pathos, too, in the story, and many will read it with moistened eyes. PAUL. So far so good, but--? DORCAS. But there runs through the entire work a vein of sentiment or philosophy, which wears a very suspicious resemblance to that of a certain school just now popular in France. I need not tell you, Uncle Paul, how distasteful to me is that school, nor how false I think the premises upon which it is founded. I am convinced there is a difference in the mental and moral constitution of men and women. I will not bore you by any disquisition upon relative superiority or inferiority, but will simply give you a portion of my idea as I find it laid down by St. John Chrysostom: 'Do not confound _submission_ with _slavery_,' says the golden-mouthed Greek. 'The woman obeys, but _remains free_; she is _equal_ in honor. It is true that she is subject to her husband; and this is her punishment for having rendered herself guilty in the beginning. Mark it well; woman was not condemned to subjection at the time of her creation; when God made and presented her to her husband, He said nothing of domination; we hear nothing from the lips of Adam which supposes it. It was only after having violated her duty by leading him astray to whom she had been given as a support, that she heard these words: 'Thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee.''