““Six years earlier, as she commenced her Conversation classes, Margaret had written in her journal about the discomfort that her verbal superiority sometimes brought her, when “a woman of tact & brilliancy like me, has an undue advantage in conversation with men.” Men “are astonished at our instincts. They do not see where we get our knowledge, &, while they tramp on in their clumsy way, we wheel, & fly, & dart hither & thither, & seize with ready eye all the weak points, like Saladin”—the legendary swordsman—“in the desert.” Back then in Boston, Margaret had failed to rouse her women students to spar with men in mixed conversation, and the men, tramping on in their pedantry, had held the group to an impasse.””
