XII + 

A Digression Concerning Blue Stockings + 

“A blue stocking! an extreme case of blue stocking! I can’t endure a blue stocking. A blue stocking is dull and tedious!” cries the sapient reader, losing his temper, and not without reason. + 

After all, what warm friends the sapient reader and I have become! He insulted me once; twice I took him by the throat and put him out, and yet we cannot help exchanging our inmost thoughts; it comes from a secret drawing of heart to heart. What can you do about it? + 

“O sapient reader!” I say to him, “you are right; the blue stocking is really dull and tedious, and it is beyond endurance to put up with him. You have fathomed it! But you have not guessed who the blue stocking is! Now you shall soon see as plain as in a mirror. The blue stocking, with an unreasonable affectation, talks with great self-satisfaction about literary and scientific matters of which he does not know beans, and speaks not because he is interested, but because he wants to show off wits (which nature never endowed him with), lofty aspirations (of which he has as much as the chair on which he is sitting), and education (of which he has as much as a parrot). Do you see whose rough physiognomy or chastened figure is in the mirror? ’Tis your own, my friend! Yes, no matter how long a beard you may grow, or how closely shaven you may be, still you are, undoubtedly, indisputably, the original blue stocking, and that was the reason I twice took you by the throat and put you out⁠—simply for the reason that I cannot bear blue stockings, who among our brethren, the men, are ten times as numerous as among women. + 

“And those with a live purpose who occupy themselves with anything, no matter what, no matter how they may be dressed, whether they wear a woman’s dress or a man’s, these are simply people who attend to their own affairs, and that’s all there is of it.” + 