Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[122] such contests as this. Generally the ordeal came from the father; often the mother would have chosen milder ways. Sometimes it came, however, from the mother, in which case the process was more formidable still, a stern woman being generally a sterner being than a man who shares that same attribute. What was the result? Often, no doubt, to create a strong and conscientious character, the will not being really broken, but only subordinated. Often it tended only to create the faults of a slave --evasion, insincerity, cowardice — in place of manly self-assertion. Very often it left a barrier of ice between parent and child. A woman of forty, the daughter of an educated lawyer in a country town, once told me that she never knew, until she was nearly twenty years old, how to tell time by the clock; the reason being that her father had undertaken to explain to her the method when she was but a child, and she had failed to comprehend it. She had been afraid to tell him that she did not understand, and equally afraid to ask light from any one else, lest he should hear of it, and blame her; so she said nothing about it for years. Yet that man, so crushing in his domestic authority, had never laid his hand on one of his children in punishment; his word and look were a sufficient rod. It is no wonder that when he died-respected and trusted by the whole community — his daughter