She could have written if she had chosen,
but she enjoyed seeing others write and encouraging them better than
taking a more active part herself. Perhaps literary people liked her
all the better because she did not write.
I, as she very well knew, had always been devoted to her, and she
might have had a score of other admirers if she had liked, but she had
discouraged them all, and railed at matrimony as women seldom do
unless they have a comfortable income of their own. She by no means,
however, railed at man as she railed at matrimony, and though living
after a fashion which even the most censorious could find nothing to
complain of, as far as she properly could she defended those of her
own sex whom the world condemned most severely.
In religion she was, I should think, as nearly a freethinker as
anyone could be whose mind seldom turned upon the subject. She went to
church, but disliked equally those who aired either religion or
irreligion. I remember once hearing her press a late well-known
philosopher to write a novel instead of pursuing his attacks upon
religion. The philosopher did not much like this, and dilated upon the
importance of showing people the folly of much that they pretended
to believe.
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