Happy that family the parents of which are bound by cosmic not by municipal affection.  Nevertheless,

Say what one will, Love scoffs at laws; howsoever marriage and divorce may be regulated by parliamentary statute.

Man, as a member of a political community, may make marriage laws to suit that community—­laws to suit that community—­laws “de vinculo matrimonii” and laws “de mensa et thoro”, decrees “nisi prius” and decrees absolute; but

Law can no more bind the affections than it can bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades.  And yet, at bottom,

Beneath all municipal and parochial regulations, a great and cosmic law does govern the relations of the sexes; and

The lightest whim of the lightest lady has a definite, perhaps a cosmic, fount and origin.

* * *

A man can never know too much.  Perhaps a woman can.  And

It is a question how far a man admires a woman who knows too much.  For,

If there is nothing a man can teach a woman, not even of the ways of love, the man is apt to be chagrined.  Besides,

Too much knowledge is inimical to romance.

* * *

War is a man’s true trade; love, woman’s.

* * *

There is no stronger argument against the equality of the sexes than a woman’s hand.  It was made to toil?  No; to place in her lover’s.  In truth,

Is there anything more fragile in nature than a woman’s hand?  But put it in her lover’s. and what a force it has!

Anomaly of anomalies, with women, fragility, delicacy, dependence, beauty, grace,—­it is by these weak weapons that she wins.  So,

We watch a demure damsel of some sixteen sunny summers much as we watch a delicate dynamo of some thousand kilowatts.

Both seem so calm, so quiescent.  Yet both, we know, can generate such startling energy, can bring about such marvelous results.

* * *

Many women forget that things which men have no objection to their female friends doing they often have a very particular objection to their mothers, sisters, and wives doing.  So, too, they often forget that

It is not the girl he flatters, compliments, and is conspicuously attentive to, that the man always marries.  Perhaps this goes to show that

There is a deeper and more serious current in the flow of male emotions, which, much as light and fitful breezes may stir the surface, is moved only by, and mingles only, with a similar and confluent stream.  For

It is not man’s highest instincts that are stimulated by the more superficial of feminine blandishments; though, no doubt, many a man there is has been made permanently captive by their lure.  The truth is that

Man is a many-sided creature:  he will reflect many different rays; but it is only under the ray that pierces the surface and irradiates the interior that he truly glows.