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X's across the page indeed proper & good companions of the other sex, but by all means have them, as indispensable to a perfect character and a fair share of the better feelings of human nature, and let him become acquainted with then, intimate with them; Let him strive to benefit them, and he can, for they have human minds, immortal ? minds, as well as his own, and perhaps less cultivated, but as capable of cultivation; and he may be sure that his own mind & his own heart will receive at least reciprocal benefit.

  I think our whole systems of education & life are erroneous in the arbitrary distance which they strive to maintain between the sexes; its effect is certainly bad upon one of the sexes, probably both.
 The absurd & ridiculous idea or ideas of the so called passion of love, ideas first perhaps brought it into being by the Old romance of Chivalry, and perpetuated in a measure by our modern words etc.; and upheld apparently with strange tenacity by all our systems of life, and the form & ceremonies which regulate all the intercourse of the sexes, are to be reprobated perhaps. 
            I guess it is lucky that P happened to think of going to bed the other night, or I do not know what would have become of this letter, or what would have been the end of the rigmarole. I can just remember that I began to write a sentence led on to another, not thinking that it was to be succeeded by still another, till the Essay or the yarn was spun out to such a lenght & shape. Looking at it again, I scribbled it & would have thrown away, but on reflection, I have concluded to send it, for I really believe it contains some truths of a genus which might benefit Joseph; if they were of the right species, and he could only bring his