ent a poker and left it lying near the body smeared with blood. In the
morning the servant girl found her mistress and ran shrieking into the
street.

At the trial she swore positively that she was first obliged to unbolt
the door in order to get out. Nothing could shake her testimony, and she
thus unconsciously negatived the entire value of the defendant's adroit
precautions. He was justly convicted, although upon absolutely erroneous
testimony.

The old English lawyers occasionally rejected the evidence of women
on the ground that they are "frail." But the exclusion of women as
witnesses in the old days was not for psychological reasons, nor did
it originate from a critical study of the probative value of their
testimony.

Though the conclusions to which women frequently jump may usually be
shown by careful interrogation to be founded upon observation of actual
fact, their habit of stating inferences often leads them to claim
knowledge of the impossible--"wiser in [their] own conceit than seven
men that can render a reason."

In a very recent case where a clever thief had been convicted of looting
various apartments in New York City of over eighty thousand dollars'
worth of jewelry, the female owners were summoned to identify their
property. The writer believes that in every instance these ladies were
absolutely ingenuous and intended to tell the absolute truth. Each and
every one positively identified various of the loose stones found in the
possession of the prisoner as her own. This was the case even when the
diamonds, emeralds and pearls had no distinguishing marks at all. It
was a human impossibility actually to identify any such objects, and yet
these eminently respectable and intelligent gentlewomen swore positively
that they could recognize their jewels. They drew the inference merely
that as the prisoner had stolen similar jewels from them these must be
the actual ones which they had lost, an inference very likely correct,
but valueless in a tribunal of justice.

Where their inferences are questioned, women, as a rule, are much
more ready to "swear their testimony through" than men. They are so
accustomed to act upon inference that, finding themselves unable to
substantiate their assertion by any sufficient reason, they become
irritated, "show fight," and seek refuge in prevarication. Had they not,
during their entire lives, been accustomed to mental short-cuts, they
would be spared the humiliation of s