rrow, men shrink from it. A man cannot
bear to be continually reminded of the woman he has loved and lost,
while woman's dearest keepsakes are old love letters and the shoes of a
little child. If the lover or the child is dead, the treasures are never
to be duplicated or replaced, but if the pristine owner of the shoes has
grown to stalwart manhood and the writer of the love letters is a
tender and devoted husband, the sorrowful interest is merely mitigated.
It is not by any means lost.

[Sidenote: "The Eternal Womanly"]

Just why it should be considered sad to marry one's lover and for a
child to grow up, can never be understood by men. There are many things
in the "eternal womanly" which men understand about as well as a kitten
does the binomial theorem, but some mysteries become simple enough when
the leading fact is grasped--that woman's song of life is written in a
minor key and that she actually enjoys the semblance of sorrow. Still,
the average woman wishes to be idealised and strongly objects to being
understood.

[Sidenote: "Tears, Idle Tears"]

Woman's tears mean no more than the sparks from an overcharged dynamo;
they are simply emotional relief. Married men gradually come to realise
it, and this is why a suspicion of tears in his sweetheart's eyes means
infinitely more to a lover than a fit of hysterics does to a husband.

We are wont to speak of woman's tenderness, but there is no tenderness
like that of a man for the woman he loves when she is tired or
troubled, and the man who has learned simply to love a woman at crucial
moments, and to postpone the inevitable idiotic questioning till a more
auspicious time, has in his hands the talisman of domestic felicity.

If by any chance the lachrymal glands were to be dried up, woman's life
would lose a goodly share of its charm. There is nothing to cry on which
compares with a man's shoulder; almost any man will do at a critical
moment; but the clavicle of a lover is by far the most desirable. If the
flood is copious and a collar or an immaculate shirt-front can be
spoiled, the scene acquires new and distinct value. A pillow does very
well, lacking the shoulder, for many of the most attractive women in
fiction habitually cry into pillows--because they have no lover, or
because the brute dislikes tears.

When grief strikes deep, a woman's eyes are dry. Her soul shudders and
there is a hand upon her heart whose icy fingers clutch at the inward
fibre in a ve