“There is one rock on which you will unfailingly come to grief, manage you never so wisely,” said Major Dagberry, cheerfully; “the women will quarrel. Mind you,” continued this prophet of disaster, “I don’t say that some of the men won’t quarrel too, probably they will; but the women are bound to. You can’t prevent it; it’s in the nature of the sex. The hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world, in a volcanic sense. A woman will endure discomforts, and make sacrifices, and go without things to an heroic extent, but the one luxury she will not go without is her quarrels. No matter where she may be, or how transient her appearance on a scene, she will instal her feminine feuds as assuredly as a Frenchman would concoct soup in the waste of the Arctic regions. At the commencement of a sea voyage, before the male traveller knows half a dozen of his fellow passengers by sight, the average woman will have started a couple of enmities, and laid in material for one or two more⁠—provided, of course, that there are sufficient women aboard to permit quarrelling in the plural. If there’s no one else she will quarrel with the stewardess. This experiment of yours is to run for six months; in less than five weeks there will be war to the knife declaring itself in half a dozen different directions.”