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 twenty a girl’s love will undergo rapid and startling developments.

* * *

A girl with lots of brothers has more chances of matrimony than a girl with none:  she knows more of men; especially of their weaknesses and idiosyncrasies.  And

To know the weaknesses and idiosyncrasies of men is perhaps a wife’s chief task; unless it be to put up with them.