PLEA:
CONFESSION AND AVOIDANCE
“. . . aphorism are seldom couched in such terms,
that they should be taken as they sound precisely, or according to the widest
extent of signification; but do commonly need exposition, and admit exception:
otherwise frequently they would not only clash with reason and experience, but
interfere, thwart, and supplant one another.”
·
Issac Barrow
“The very essence of an aphorism is that slight
exaggeration which makes it more biting whilst less rigidly accurate.”
·
Leslie Stephen
I. On
Girls
“A Pearl,
A Girl.”
·
Browning
There are of course, girls and girls; yet at heart
they are pretty much alike. In age,
naturally, they differ wildly. But this
is a thorny subject. Suffice it to say
that all men love all girls-the maid of sweet sixteen equally with the maid of
untold age.
* * *
There is something exasperatingly something-or-otherish
about girls. And they know it—which
makes them more something-or-otherish still:--there is no other word for it.
* * *
A girl is a complicated thing. It is made up of clothes, smiles, a
pompadour, things of which space and prudence forbid the enumeration here. These things by themselves do not constitute
a girl which is obvious; nor is any one girl without these things which is not
too obvious. Where the things end and the girl begins many men have tried to
find out.
Many girls would like to be men—except on
occasions. At least so they say, but
perhaps this is just a part of their something-or-otherishness. Why they should want to be men, men cannot
conceive. Men pale before them, grow hot
and cold before them, run before them (and after them), swear by them (and at
them), and a bit of a chit of a thing in short skirts and lisle-thread
stockings will twist able-bodied males round her little finger.
It is an open secret that girls are fonder of men
than they are of one another—which is very lucky for the men.
Girls differ; and the same girl is different at
different times. When she is by herself,
she is one thing. When she is with other girls she is another thing. When she is with a lot of men, she is a third
sort of thing. When she is with a man. .
. But this baffled even Agur the son of
Jakeh.
As a rule, a man prefers a girl by herself. This is natural. And yet is said that you cannot have too much
of a good thing. If this were true, a
bevy of girls would be the height of happiness.
Yet some men would sooner face the bulls of Bashan.