It was impossible to race through her own prose, with its constant going over the same ground in order to force the reluctant mind to come to grips with her basic propositions. “Because science reverses the positions of personal sense,” she wrote, “human reason acts slowly in accepting it, contesting every inch of ground it occupies, while error, self-complacent and applauded, sneers at the slow marches of Truth.” Despite the intellectual demands of Science, the person with a certain inner simplicity might first respond to it: “The honest fishermen who had little to leave, were those who left all for Christ, Truth, until progress compelled the change, and the learned Paul stepped forth for Truth.”¹⁴⁰

There was a certain sardonic quality in some of the writing, as when she commented that “hybrids are rapes upon nature,” or observed, “Surely the ‘tree of knowledge’ produced a pigmy race of ‘gods.’” Much of it had a sort of common-sense vigor: “Truth is practical, not theoretical, and we shall never have more until we practice what we already have.” “Malice pursues the reformer through every avenue of society, and the evil that persecutes, and the pride that refuses aid, binds the hands and feet of philanthropy, and then calls for stronger proofs of active limbs.”¹⁴¹ At its best the writing had a simple directness:

In contrast with a passage such as this, some of the writing seems to be a rush and tumble of words, as though the writer’s thoughts were  ● ● ●