heart in the hollow of his hand. But, But,

Few things mystify poor law-abiding man than this, that the central, the profoundest, the most portentous puzzle of the universe—the weal of woe of two high-aspiring, much-enduring, youthful human souls, should be the sport of what seems to him the veriest and merest chance.

* * *

The unconscious search of sweet sixteen is for (in mathematical language which will not sophisticate her) the integral of love.—Yet

In the short years between sixteen and twenty a girl's love will undergo rapid and startling developments.

* * *

A girl with lots of brothers has more chances of matrimony than a girl with none: she knows more of men; especially of their weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. And

To know the weaknesses and idiosyncrasies of men is perhaps a wife's chief task; unless it be to put up with them.

* * *

Often enough the freckled and fringrant girl wins over the professional beauty.

* * *

Sometimes grown-up girls are just as shy as little ones—and for the same reasons because there is no one who knows how to play with them.

Girls often play with love as if it were one of the amusements of life; but a day comes when love proves itself the most sensuous thing on earth. And

A girl is quick to discover the kind of love that is required of her. As a rule

Many a girl who has been sore put to it to prove herself whole-hearted.
For of course,

Always every suitor expects whole heartedness. And this every girl instinctively knows. Indeed,

Is not a half-hearted love, or a half-hearted acceptress of love, a contradiction in terms?

* * *

A certain measure of the sophisticated or unsophistication of a youthful damsel may be found in her manner o f receiving the attentions of a stranger in a station different from her own.

Young women, themselves but rarely unsophisticated, view with a certain pitying sort of curiosity unsophisticatedness in men. And

A young man's unsophisticatedeness it is a great delight to a woman to eradicate. Yet

A girl regards with complex emotions the man who has blossomed under the genial warmth of her rays; the flattery to own powers is counterbalanced by the evidence of lack of power in him.

* * *

A girl thinks she detects flippancy in seriousness. A woman thinks she detects seriousness in flippancy.

* * *

What would be conduct decidedly risqué in a city miss, is often innocent playfulness in a country maid.

* * *

Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, girls play with love as if it were a doll; very soon after twenty they discover it is a dynamo. This is why

An early and clandestine engagement often works more havoc than happiness. For

Either, one of the parties to the concealed compact receives or pays attention which perturb the other; or, a subsequent and acknowledged lover looks askance at the previous entanglement. Since even if

A clandestine engagement (as is usually the case) is merely a flirtation with the emoluments which accompany a promise to marry, those emoluments are not nice things for a subsequent and avowed lover, whether masculine or feminine, to think upon. Lastly,

A laxity with regard to the claims of courtship is apt to breed a laxity with regard to the claims of wedlock. In short,

Flirtations, like clandestine engagements, are an affront to love.
Accordingly

To the engagement-ring should be as attached as much importance as to the wedding-ring. Indeed,

A difficult and a delicate path it is that a girl has to tread through life—and often enough a dangerous. Yet with extraordinary deftness she treads it. She must win her a mate, yet has to pretend that the mate wins her. She makes believe to be captured, yet has herself to be intent on the chase. To be wooed and wedded is the law of her being, yet not for one moment dares she to exhibit too great an alacrity to obey that law; for she knows instinctively that an easy victory prognosticates a fickle victor. Is she abundantly endowed with the very attributes that make for wife-and mother-hood, a strong and swaying passion and an affection unbounded, she must hold them in leash with exemplary patience; for, alas! Are they given the rein for a single passing moment, instead of being accounted unto her for righteousness, they work her ruin. She must win her one man, and she must win him for life; but she cannot pick or choose, for she must wait to be asked.

If she make test of many admirers, she is described as a flirt; if, conscientious and demure, she await her fate, a desirable fate is by no means assured.

In truth it seems that too often a girl must dissemble—hateful as dissemblance in men. T'is a hard road indeed that a girl has to travel. To win her a fellow-farer for life, she must go out of her way to accommodate so many travelers: and this one is lured by this, and that one by that, and another by something unnoticed by the throng. But, an she dissembles one iota too much, her fellow-farers look askance, and he who eventually joins her for good upbraids her for that by which she won.

Dissemblance is indeed at once the boon and the bane of a girl: without it, she thinks to be overlooked (often enough a preposterous assumption); with it, she is looked upon too much. And always,

Always a girl has to pretend that never did she descend to dissemblance.
—Which, nevertheless, is sometimes absolutely true, for

Just now and then there happens that miracle of miracles, where their flames up in the man, and their flames up in the maid, in both at once, unaided and unlooked-for, that divine and supra-mundane spark which smolders lambent in every youthful breast: when maid and man take mutual fire at touch of hands and look of eyes,—fire lit at that vestal altar which knows no source and burns for aye.

II. On Men

"Duskolon esti to thremma anthropus."
—Plato

For man, the over-grown boy, life has commonly two, and only two, sides: work, and play. Happy he who has for a helpmate one who possesses the faculty of increasing a zeal for the first and of adding a zest to the second. Wherein, O woman, thou mayest happily find the two-fold secret of thy life-work. For

Man is a greedy animal: he wants all or nothing. And fortunately for him,

Women tacitly extol man's greed: they will not be shared any more than they will share.

There is something canine in the masculine nature: like a dog over a bone, it snarls at the very approach of a rival.

* * *

It is curious, but it is true, that proud man becomes prouder (and—more curious still—at the same time humbler) when weak woman gives him something—a look a smile, a locket, her hair, a kiss, herself.

* * *

The greater a man's faith in himself, the greater his mistress hers in him. And perhaps, the greater his mistress her faith in a man, the greater his in himself. For

A woman's faith in a man works wonders.

* * *

A man to whom a woman cannot look up, she cannot love. Yet,

It is marvelous how a woman contrives to find something to