Not that I feared the word service, considering what
Divine lips had said on that subject--"I am among you as one who
serveth--" but I knew how the world shrank from such terms.
I have always maintained that half the so-called difficulties of life
consist mainly in our dread of other people's opinions; women are
especially trammelled by this bondage. They breathe the atmosphere of
their own special world, and the chill wind of popular opinion blows
coldly over them; like the sensitive plant, they shiver and wither up at
a touch. I believe the master minds that achieve great things have
created their own atmosphere, else how can they appear so impervious to
criticism? How can they carry themselves so calmly, when their
contemporaries are sneering round them? We must live above ourselves and
each other; there is no other way of getting rid of the shams and
disguises of life; and yet how is one who has been born in slavery to be
absolutely true? How is an English gentlewoman to shake off the
prejudices of caste and declare herself free?
Ah, well! this was the enigma I had set myself to solve.
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