Some foolish men—probably poets—have sought for and asserted the existence of the ideal girl.  This is sheer nonsense: there is no such thing.  And if there were, she could not compare with the real girl, the girl of flesh and blood—which (as some one ought to have said) are excellent things in woman.

Other men, equally foolish, have regarded girls as playthings.  I wish these men had tried to play with them.  They would have found that they were playing with fire and brimstone.  Yet the veriest spit-fire can be wondrous sweet.

Sweet?  Yes.  On the whole a girl is the sweetest thing known or knowable.  On the 6 whole of this terrestrial sphere Nature has produced nothing more adorable than the high-spirited high-bred girl.—Of this she is quite aware—to our cost (I speak as a man).  The consequence is, her price has gone up, and man has to pay high and pay all sorts of things—ices, sweets, champagne, drives, church-goings, and sometimes spot-cash.

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