With us, we have so many resources to fly to for relief, so many
attractions to invite and seduce, so many resorts of luxury and life,
that the affections become broken up in small, the heart is divided
among the thousand; and, if one fragment suffers defeat or denial, why,
the pang scarcely touches, and is perhaps unfelt by all the rest. You
have but few aims, few hopes. With these your very existence is bound
up, and if you lose these you are yourselves lost. Thus I find that your
sex, to a certain age, are creatures of love--disappointment invariably
begets devotion--and either of these passions, for so they should be
called, once brought into exercise, forbids and excludes every other."
"Really, Mr. Colleton, you seem to have looked somewhat into the
philosophy of this subject, and you may be right in the inferences to
which you have come. On this point I may say nothing; but, do you
conceive it altogether fair in you thus to compliment us at our own
expense? You give us the credit of truth, a high eulogium, I grant, in
matters which relate to the the affections and the heart; but this is
done by robbing us entirely of mental independence.
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