" Very unchivalrous the world counts these woodsmen; — very little the world knows about their ways and romances, for nowhere does romance bear a more fragrant blossom or bloom so long. The sprig of cedar, many years preserved, because with it a woman crowned an act of daring; the wild flower, pressed in the crumpled corner of a greasy pocketbook, because a woman called it beautiful; the chance track in the roadway where a week before an unknown woman stepped, kept from obliteration just because she was a woman, — no line of life that men follow to-day comes so close to the high mark of mediaeval chivalry with its superb faith in womankind, regardless of the faults of individual women.
But the life is rough? So surely was chivalry! Rougher than we know for. Its faith saved it; and what grew into mariolatry in the past is still, in the unromantic present, the better part of many other
rough men's religion. "

― , The Penobscot Man