who has to win, and Nature,
knowing this, has endowed him with the means of conquest. Not so with
us. Man is about the ugliest creature of all that breathes on the face
of the earth, and woman was intended to attract and charm him, and, in
order to enable her to do so, Nature has given her a beautiful face, a
divine figure and a taste for attractive plumage. During the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries men paid attention to their dress,
which, in many respects, was as attractive and fascinating as that of
women. But now! Man is a guy, a cure, a remedy for love-sickness, and I
sometimes wonder how it is that women think his conquest worth making.
To make himself lovable, man has to turn himself inside out; for only
his moral and intellectual qualities can help him to get at a woman's
heart. Soldiers are supposed to be more successful with women than any
other men because their profession appeals to the minds of women; but I
can't help thinking that their uniform has a great deal to do with it.

Now, if Nature has endowed woman with the powers of charming man by her
amiability and winning grace, who is to blame if she does not avail
herself of all these advantages, and does not use them carefully,
discreetly, skilfully, to prevent love from flagging and cooling in
matrimony?

Of course, intelligent women feel, after the wedding ceremony is over,
that a man's love is not secured by a few sacramental words pronounced
by a priest in solemn tones and in the presence of many witnesses. She
soon discovers that man is not like woman; she understands, as the male
bird does, that plumage has a great deal to do in order to excite
happiness and keep it alive in matrimony, and that her cheerfulness and
tactful ways will obtain what remonstrances and sulks will invariably
fail to secure.

There is no doubt that many women, women spoiled by loving husbands, by
lover-husbands especially, become dull and irritable when the husbands
do not exactly detach themselves from their wives, but, through
circumstances too numerous to enumerate, pass from the stage of lovers
to that of friends.

Women are, as a rule, the embodiment of prejudice, and they will not
understand. There is seldom any philosophy in them, and, when they do
understand, they will not resign themselves cheerfully to the
inevitable, and either make a careful study of the position and see the
only possible way to revive what appears to be dying, or make the best
of wha