“We see women universally jealous of the reputation of their beauty, and frequently look with contempt on the care with which they study their complexions, endeavor to preserve or supply the bloom of youth, regulate every ornament, twist their hair into curls, and shade their faces from the weather.  We recommend the care of their nobler part, and tell them how little addition is made by all their arts to the graces of the mind.  But when was it known that female goodness or knowledge was able to attract that officiousness, or inspire that ardor, which beauty produces wherever it appears?  And with what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that

THE TIME SPENT AT THE TOILET

is lost in vanity, when they have every moment some new conviction that their interest is more effectually promoted by a ribbon well disposed than by the brightest act of heroic virtue?” Listen to the praise of practical John Ledyard, whose word has the solid ring of fact about it:  “I have observed among all nations [that he had seen, the statement not being applicable to a majority of the savages] that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that,

WHEREVER FOUND, THEY ARE THE MOST CIVIL,

kind, obliging, humane, tender beings; that they are ever inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest.  They do not hesitate, like man, to perform a hospitable or generous action; not haughty, nor arrogant, nor supercilious, but full of courtesy and fond of society; industrious, economical, ingenuous; more liable, in general, to err than man; but, in general, also more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he.  I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving

A DECENT AND FRIENDLY ANSWER.

With men it has often been otherwise.  In wandering over the plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the widespread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so:  and, to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that, if I was dry, I drank the sweet draught, and, if hungry, ate the coarse morsel with a double relish.”  Woman may read

THIS CANDID TESTIMONY

with a blush of gratification, for there breathes no flattery in it—­only the serious observations of an old man bent on getting knowledge by personal experience.  “A man may flatter himself as he pleases,” says Sir Richard Steele, “but he will find that the women have more understanding in their own affairs than we have.”  Man suffers in his loves for woman.  She often casts him on the rocks like an angry unfeeling sea, but when, at last she has smiled upon him, he becomes a broader, better man.  Without the companionship of woman, man is truly half-made up.  He loses his self-esteem, he lives without laws, without churches, without hospitals.