Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[242] made fast by strings and buttons and safety-pins, so that the child thus dressed is a model of compressed stowage, and could, like a well-packed barrel of china, be sent round the world without injury. Calm must be the spirit, high the purpose, of the father who reaches the end of this complex task without a word of impatience; while the wife whom he calls nervous has long since taken off his hands the other child assigned to him, and having with deft hands dressed her, has given one patient, final, all-comprehending twitch, and the thing is done. If you doubt whether men are on the whole, and in their own way, as nervous as woman, test them with getting the children ready for school; and remember that their mother does it every morning of her life.