If men were never henpecked except by learned wives, Spain would be the
place of all others for timid men to marry in. The girls are bright,
vivacious, and naturally very clever, but they have scarcely any
education whatever. They never know the difference between _b_ and _v._
They throw themselves in orthography entirely upon your benevolence.
They know a little music and a little French, but they have never
crossed, even in a school-day excursion, the border line of the ologies.
They do not even read novels. They are regarded as injurious, and
cannot be trusted to the daughters until mamma has read them. Mamma
never has time to read them, and so they are condemned by default.
Fernan Caballero, in one of her sleepy little romances, refers to this
illiterate character of the Spanish ladies, and says it is their chief
charm,--that a Christian woman, in good society, ought not to know
anything beyond her cookery-book and her missal. There is-an old proverb
which coarsely conveys this idea: A mule that whinnies and a woman that
talks Latin never come to any good.
There is a contented acquiescence in this moral servitude among the fair
Spaniards which would madden our agitatresses. (See what will become of
the language when male words are crowded out of the dictionary!)
It must be the innocence which springs from ignorance that induces an
occasional coarseness of expression which surprises you in the
conversation of those lovely young girls.
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