If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or 'our' country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

I am not so gifted as at one time seemed likely.

Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.

And you wish to be a poet; and you wish to be a lover.