matters with gravity. What we may think trifles are often treated by them with a seriousness that borders at one

time on the pathetic and at another on the ridiculous.

Being thus largely endowed with credulity, one would expect woman to be specially fond of flattery, and ready to swallow it in any quantity and of any quality. But this is not so. Women, as

a rule, do not care for flattery; in fact, they dislike it. And perhaps this is not to be wondered at, seeing that the flattery with which men favour women is generally of the poorest description. Men, it must be confessed, are not good flatterers; while

women, owing partly to their credulity,

flatter with a delicacy and sincerity that is often irresistible. Women are not, of

course, insensible to flattery. It would, indeed, be strange if they were, seeing that admiration is to them the very breath of life. But flattery, to be palatable to even the densest of womankind, must be something more than transparent blandishment, something more than "the tinselclink of compliment; for women are ever on their guard with men, and always on the look out for an attack upon their more vulnerable weaknesses. So far from being too credulous of men's flattery, they are apt to regard all men, say, with suspicion,

and often receive a well-meant compliment with impatient incredulity. But if they are not to be caught by flattery, they fall an easy prey to what, for want of a better word, we must call cajolery. To tell a woman that she is passing fair will probably only make her angry; but tell her that you love her love her "with "with a passionate devotion that has no parallel in the annals of the heart," and you will at once satisfy her that you speak the "words of truth and soberness." There is, as Mr. Thomas Hardy says, nothing in which "woman astonishes her helpmate more than in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she knows to be false

except, indeed, in that of being utterly

sceptical of strictures that she knows to be true."

CHAPTER XI.

WOMAN AT HER WORST

Tantæne animis cælestibus iræ!

WE soon learn in this imperfect world to expect a thorn with every rose; and even in so sweet a thing as woman, we look for the amari aliquid, and are not surprised to find a sting in the honey of her disposition. This sting is spite; and is a fault without redeeming charm, for, unlike most of her faults, there is little or nothing to be said in its defence. There is no blinking the fact that woman's spite is a most objectionable feature.