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'I am going to take a very nice young woman,' said Mr Glascock.
'I hate that word woman, sir, uttered with the halfhidden sneer which
always accompanies its expression from the mouth of a man.'
'Sneer, Miss Petrie!'
'I quite allow that it is involuntary, and not analysed or understood
by yourselves. If you speak of a dog, you intend to do so with
affection, but there is always contempt mixed with it. The so-called
chivalry of man to woman is all begotten in the same spirit. I want no
favour, but I claim to be your equal.'
'I thought that American ladies were generally somewhat exacting as to
those privileges which chivalry gives them.'
'It is true, sir, that the only rank we know in our country is in that
precedence which man gives to woman. Whether we maintain that, or
whether we abandon it, we do not intend to purchase it at the price of
an acknowledgment of intellectual inferiority. For myself, I hate
chivalry--what you call chivalry. I can carry my own chair, and I claim
the right to carry it whithersoever I may please.


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