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a whole half hour to study logic in bed; will the time ever come?
 

He can undress so much faster than I, that he has a whole half hour to study logic in bed, before I am ready to have the gas put out and go to sleep, and it is a perfect aggravation to see him so luxuriously situated, while I am puttering around a half cold room. Men always seem to have the advantage, — in dress, in law, in politics — everything. Will the time ever come when it will be equally easy for woman to exist?

                                          — [back] in Washington, D. C., after returning with Gen. Ames from Mississippi (December 19, 1870) —
ex Chronicles from the nineteenth century; family letters of Blanche Butler and Adelbert Ames, compiled by Blanche Butler Ames, 1935; vol. 1 (1957) : 220
via archive.org : link
multiple copies/scans (via hathtrust) : link

—

Blanche Butler Ames (1847-1939), wife (of Adelbert), mother (of Blanche Ames Ames, artist, writer, inventor, suffragist), and a very smart observer
wikipedia : link
 

delineated on the following page, someone rather familar —

“Seventy-one years old, clear and vigorous of intellect, a life-long student, quite a traveller — one would expect to find in him the most delightful of companions. There is some element wanting in his composition, and I think it is sympathy... This to a certain extent will explain why, in this country where with brain and perseverance almost any [222] man may hope to succeed, he has been outstripped in the race... He should never have been born...”
 

20 August 2024