fell on the following lines: "Now that Woman is learning to face
the right way when she steps from a street-car, she has demonstrated her
right to the ballot." "How true." But I had scarcely expressed my
approval when it occurred to me that I had read the same thing elsewhere
in the book. And when I searched out the earlier passage and compared
the two and found that they did not say the same thing, but quite the
opposite thing, it did not seem to make a very great difference after
all. They both sounded plausible. I recited one sentence aloud and then
the other, and they rang equally true; and the more I repeated them the
truer they rang.

Delighted with my chance discovery I proceeded to make a thorough study
of "Maxims and Fables" with the object of bringing together the author's
widely scattered observations on the same topic under their appropriate
heads. The work went slowly at first; but after a little while I found I
could pick out a maxim and turn almost instinctively to one that
directly contradicted it. The occupation is fascinating as well as
instructive. It sheds a new light on the conditions of human knowledge
and the workings of the human mind. Consider, if you will, the following
half-dozen sentences that I succeeded in compiling in less than ten
minutes. They all deal with the question of a woman's age:

"A woman is as old as she looks.

"A woman is as old as she says.

"A woman is as old as she would like to be.

"A woman is as old as the only man that counts would have her be.

"A woman is as old as any particular situation requires.

"A woman is as old as her dearest woman friends say she is."

Let any one read these maxims to himself quietly, and admit that not
only would each of them impress him as true if found standing by itself,
but that they all ring quite as true when taken together. But that is by
no means all. It may be shown that if all these propositions are true,
taken singly or together, the negative of each and all of these
propositions is also true. Thus:

"A woman is seldom as old as she looks.

"A woman is never as old as she says.

"No woman is just the age she would like to be.

"A woman is rarely as old or as young as the one man that counts would
have her be.

"Few women are ever of the age that a particular situation requires.

"No woman is as old as her dearest woman friends say she is."

How all these opposites can be equally true, I will not undertake to
exp