lain. It is probably inherent in the very nature of the subject. The
French, a people wise in experience, knew what they were about when they
laid it down that if you have a mystery to solve, you must look for the
woman. What they meant was, that, having found a woman, you may make any
statements you please about her; the world will accept them
unquestioningly and your puzzle will consequently be solved.

Sometimes, however, it has seemed to me that a possible reason for this
very curious fact may be found in the established fashion of speaking
about men as individuals and about women as a class and a type. And that
class or type we saddle with all the faults and virtues of all its
individual members. When Smith tells me that his automobile cost him
three times as much as I know he has paid for it, I record my
impressions by telling Jones as soon as I meet him that the man Smith is
an incorrigible liar. But when Mrs. Smith tells me that her family is
one of the oldest in Massachusetts, which I have every reason to believe
is not so, I invariably say to myself or to some one else, "A woman's
appreciation of the truth is like her appreciation of music; she likes
it best when she closes her eyes to it."

Or Smith may be a very straightforward man, given to plain-speaking, and
when you ask him how he liked your last dinner he may say that in his
opinion the wine was better than the conversation. In that case you will
probably tell your wife that Smith has shown himself to be an
insufferable ass, and that you have decided to cut his acquaintance. But
when Mrs. Smith tells you that your expensive dinners are rather beyond
what a man of your modest income should go in for, you merely writhe and
smile; only on the train the next day you will say to Harrington, "Has
it ever occurred to you that a woman loves the truth, not because it is
the truth, but because it hurts? Take a cigarette."

For these reasons I would urge every one who can possibly find time, to
write a book of maxims about Woman, provided he has not done so already.
In the first place, as I have shown, it is an easy and delightful
occupation, which, for that very reason, is in danger of becoming
overcrowded. But there is another reason for losing no time in the
matter. Now and then I have the foreboding that some day in the near
future the world may suddenly lose its habit of believing that, where
women are concerned, two and two are four and are not four at the