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 in 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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