Many a man has been put on his guard by female institution.

* * *

The fragilest woman will be ill content with suppressed embraces.  And

The ablest-bodied woman loves being petted.  Even

A prude is a shy coquette.

* * *

The man who judges of a woman by her letters is a fool.—­Her gesture will contain more matter than her journal.  Besides,

The woman who could punctuate could reason.

* * *

The debut of a younger sister evokes mixed emotions.

* * *

The prayer—­uttered or unexpressed—­of many an undowered young woman is, May a moneyed man fall in love with me !  And she is not always over-careful to add, And may I fall in love with that moneyed man!

* * *

If the “New Woman” (3) turns out to be a fitter companion for men than the old, no man will complain of her novelty.  Yet

Men regard the advent of the New Woman rather askance.  Why?  Because

To judge from certain feminine utterances, the New Woman seems more inclined to aim at rivalry than at companionship with man.  —­However, there need be no fears as to the result, since

Such is the mysterious potency of womanhood, that, whether new or old, woman will always lead man captive.  Besides

As every new variety of fashion in dress seems becoming to women, so, it is probable, every variety of fashion in manners will become them also.  But probably

The phrase the “New Woman” is not unlike the phrase the “New Chemistry”:  the materials are the same; what is new is the nomenclature.

(3) A phrase (and not much more than a phrase) much in vogue in Europe and America in the last two decades of the nineteenth century of the area known as Christian.

* * *

A woman’s peccadilloes are generally worse than a man’s.  At all events they are more reprobated.

* * *

Abashment intensifies a woman’s love for him so making her abashed.  And

There is a shame that is sweeter than joy. (As

There is a fear more tremulous than delight.) For

Mastery is a woman’s standard of man.  And
There is an element of the freest and frankest savagery in the most
refined and spiritual of women. (How otherwise

Can any one explain the extraordinary fable of Selene and Pan?(4)
—­And man?

—­But that man was ever a savage.  It may be added that

The defenselessness of woman is a conventional fiction:  she can avert an attack by a look; she can terminate a siege by a taunt.

(4) Though Browning tried.  See “Dramatic Idyls”, “Pan and Luna”

* * *

Solomon has objurgated the invincibly garrulous woman.  The invincibly taciturn woman is so rare as to have escaped objurgation.  Yet she too is a terror to men.

* * *

Every woman is suspicious and jealous of any woman that opens a man’s eyes; even though she knows that