sh.

Men are always wishing they knew all about girls. It is a precious good
thing that they don't.--Not that this is in any way disparaging to the
girls. The fact is

A girl is an infinite puzzle, and it is this puzzle, that, among other
things, tickles the men, and rouses their curiosity.

What a man doesn't know about a girl would fill a Saratoga trunk; what
her does know about her would go into her work-box.

* * *

The littlest girl is a little women. No boy knows this--and precious
few grown up men. Thus

Many a grown up man plays with a girl, then finds himself in love with
her. As to the girl---

Always the girl knows whether the play is leading: she probably chooses
the game.

* * *

Very late in life does a man learn the truth (and significance) of that
ancient proverb that Kissing goes by Favour. For

The masculine mind is the slave of Law and Justice:

Aphrodite never heard of Law or Justice: she was born at sea. That is to
say,

Few are the men who at some time in their lives have not wondered at the
vagaries of girlish complaisance: the foolish, the ne'er-do-well, the
bully, the careless, the cruel,--it is to these often that a girls'
caress is given. And,

Curiously enough, that is, curiously enough as it seems to purblind
law-loving man,--should the favored one be openly convicted, that
alters not one whit his statue with the girl; for,

A girl, having given her heart, never recalls it not wholly: she may
regret; she never recoils. In other words,

To the man of her own free lawless choice a girl is always loyal; to
subsequent and subordinate attachments she is dutiful. So,

Even the renegade, if loved by a girl, will be upheld by that girl
through thick and thin--secretly, it may be, for often the girl,
nevertheless devotedly, and only under compulsion will he listen to the
detractor: he may desert her, or, if he sticks to her, he may beat her;
no matter: he holds her heart in the hollow of his hand. But, But,

Few things mystify poor law-abiding man than this, that the central, the
profoundest, the most portentous puzzle of the universe--the weal of woe
of two high-aspiring, much-enduring, youthful human souls, should be the
sport of what seems to him the veriest and merest chance.

* * *

The unconscious search of sweet sixteen is for (in mathematical language
which will not sophisticate her) the integral of love.--Yet

In the short years between sixteen and twen