"Maybe, Maida; I do not know from personal knowledge. I do not attend many lectures, and I never heard a female lecture in my life; but if you think the average man don't like what you call a doll--which, I suppose, means a nice, soft, pretty little thing, who believes she is not clever, and lets other women trample on her, as regards science and things--you never were more mistaken in your life. Lots of smart men find them the best company in the world; and--well--I know for a fact that a woman may be no end of smart, and the very best of company, though she don't read poetry, and knows nothing about the 'ologies.'" "Natural intelligence, you mean, without any advantages of education. To be sure, you find that in many a farmhouse--the kind of woman who scrapes and saves to send all her sons to college, and sees one of them elected President of the United States, and has her likeness in all the illustrated papers. But if she had had culture, think what such a woman would have become!" "She would have become a female lecturer. The men would have been afraid of her. She would never have been married, never had a son, and never got her likeness into the magazines as mother of a President. When men marry, they hope, at least, to be boss at home: and few have the conceit to tackle a female steam-engine, expecting to be able to break her in to quiet paces." "But in cities you want culture to keep up your place in the community. A poorly educated woman must be a drag on her husband's social advancement." "Not a bit of it. Our first families in Chicago and elsewhere, in this country, and in every other, are noways remarkable for culture. Sometimes it's money raises them, sometimes it's because their fathers were of first families before them, or their friends. Culture may help now and then--it's a distinction in its way, just like beauty or talent; but there must be money, you bet! You country folks talk a heap of nonsense about the help culture is, to rising in the world; so do the newspapers, though they should know better. They think they have it themselves, you see, so they crack it up for their own sakes." "Oh, Gilbert! I am sorry to hear you speak like that. You used to think very differently."