it out. Sometimes he has to be told. He has approached a stage of acute and immediate peril when he recognises what he calls "a platonic friendship."

Young men believe platonic friendship possible; old men know better—but when one man learns to profit by the experience of another, we may look for mosquitoes at Christmas and holly in June.

There is an exquisite danger attached to friendships of this kind, and is it not danger, rather than variety, which is "the spice of life?" Relieved of the presence of that social pace-maker, the chaperone, the disciples of Plato are wont to take long walks, and further on, they spend whole days in the country with book and wheel.

A book is a mysterious bond of union, and by their taste in books do a man and woman unerringly know each other. Two people who unite in admiration of Browning are apt to admire each other, and those who habitually seek Emerson for new courage may easily find the world more kindly if they face it hand in hand.

A latter-day philosopher has remarked upon the subtle sympathy produced by marked passages. "The method is so easy and so unsuspect. You have only to put faint pencil marks against the tenderest passages in your favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has only to leave here and there the dropped violet of a timid, confirmatory initial, for you to know your fate."

A man never has a platonic friendship with a woman it is impossible for him to love. Cupid is the high-priest at these rites of reading aloud and discussing everything under the sun. The two become so closely bound that one arrow strikes both, and often the happiest marriages are those whose love has so begun, for when the Great Passion dies, as it sometimes does, sympathy and mutual understanding may yield a generous measure of content.

The present happy era of fiction closes a story abruptly at the altar or else begins it immediately after the ceremony. Thence the enthralled reader is conducted through rapture, doubt, misunderstanding, indifference, complications, recrimination, and estrangement to the logical end in cynicism and the divorce court.

In the books which women write, the hero of the story shoulders the blame, and often has to bear his creator's vituperation in addition to his other troubles. When a man essays this theme in fiction, he shows clearly that it is the woman's fault. When the situation is presented outside of books, the happily married critics distribute condemnation in the same way, it being customary for each partner in a happy marriage to claim the entire credit for the mutual content.

Over the afternoon tea cups it has been decided with unusual and refreshing accord, that "it is pursuit and not possession with a man." True—but is it less true with women?

When Her Ladyship finally acquires the sealskin coat on which she has long set her heart, does she continue to scan the advertisements? Does she still coddle him who hath all power as to sealskin coats, with tempting dishes and unusual smiles? Not unless she wants something else.

Still, it is woman's tendency to make the best of what she has, and man's to reach out for what he has not. Man spends his life in the effort to realise the ideals which, like will-o'-the-wisps, hover just beyond him. Woman, on the contrary, brings into her life what grace she may, by idealising her reals.

In her secret heart, woman holds her unchanging ideal of her own possible perfection. Sometimes a man suspects this, and loves her all the more for the sweet guardian angel which is thus enthroned. Other men, less fine, consider an ideal a sort of disease—and they are usually a certain specific.

But, after all, men are as women make them. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy swayed empires and rocked thrones. There is no woman who does not hold within her little hands some man's achievement, some man's future, and his belief in woman and God.

She may fire him with high ambition, exalt him with noble striving, or make him a coward and a thief. She may show him the way to the gold of the world, or blind him with tinsel which he may not keep. It is she who leads him to the door of glory and so thrills him with majestic purpose, that nothing this side Heaven seems beyond his eager reach.

Upon his heart she may write ecstasy or black despair. Through the long night she may ever beckon, whispering courage, and by her magic making victory of defeat. It is for her to say whether his face shall be world-scarred and weary, hiding tragedy behind its piteous lines; whether there shall be light or darkness in his soul. He cannot escape those soft, compelling fingers; she is the arbiter of his destiny—for like clay in the potter's hands, she moulds him as she will.

Concerning Women

Concerning Women

In order to be happy, a woman needs only a good digestion, a satisfactory complexion, and a lover. The first requirement being met, the second is not difficult to obtain, and the third follows as a matter of course.

He was a wise philosopher who first considered crime as disease, for women are naturally sweet-tempered and charming. The shrew and the scold are to be reformed only by a physician, and as for nagging, is it not allopathic scolding in homeopathic doses?

A well woman is usually a happy one, and incidentally, those around her share her content. The irritation produced by fifteen minutes of nagging speaks volumes for the personal influence which might be directed the other way, and the desired result more easily obtained.

The sun around which woman revolves is Love. Her whole life is spent in search of it, consciously or unconsciously. Incidental diversions in the way of "career" and "independence" are usually caused by domestic unhappiness, or, in the case of spinsters, the fear of it.

If all men were lovers, there would be no "new woman" movement, no sociological studies of "Woman in Business," no ponderous analyses of "The Industrial Condition of Women" in weighty journals. Still more than a man, a woman needs a home, though it be but the tiniest room.

Even the self-reliant woman of affairs who battles bravely by day in the commercial arena has her little nook, made dainty by feminine touches, to which she gladly creeps at night. Would it not be sweeter if it were shared by one who would always love her? As truly as she needs her bread and meat, woman needs love, and, did he but know it, man needs it too, though in lesser degree.

Lacking the daily expression of it which is the sweet unction of her hungry soul, she seeks solace in an ideal world of her own making. It is because the verity jars upon her vision that she takes a melancholy view of life.

One of woman's keenest pleasures is sorrow. Her tears are not all pain. She goes to the theatre, not to laugh, but to weep. The clever playwright