the youth of twenty knows more than any
one on earth could teach him, and more than he ever will know again; a
time when, no matter how kind his heart, he is incased in a mental
haughtiness before which plain Wisdom is dumb. But a time will come
when the keenness of some girl's stiletto of wit will prick the empty
bubble of his flamboyant egoism, and he will, for the first time,
learn that he is but an untrained man under thirty-five.

This elastic classification does not obtain with either geniuses or
fools. It deals with the average man as the average girl knows him,
and may refer to every man in her acquaintance or only to one. It
certainly _must_ refer to one! Misery loves company to such an extent
that I could not bear to think that there was any girl living who did
not occasionally have to grapple with the problem of at least one man
in the raw, if only for her own discipline.

You cannot argue with the untrained man under thirty-five. In fact, I
never argue with anybody, either man or woman, because women are not
reasonable beings and men are too reasonable. I never am willing to
follow a chain of reasoning to its logical conclusion, because, if I
do, men can make me admit so many things that are not true. I abhor a
syllogism. Alas, how often have I picked my cautious way through
three-quarters of one, only to sit down at the critical moment,
declaring I would not go another step, and then to hear some
argumentative man cry, "But you admitted all previous steps. Don't you
know that this naturally _must_ follow?" Well, perhaps it _does_
follow, only I don't believe it is true. It may be very clever of the
men to reason, and perhaps I am very stupid not to be able to admit
the truth of their conclusions, but I feel like declaring with Josh
Billings, "I'd rather not know so much than to know so much that ain't
so."

Conversation with the untrained man under thirty-five is equally
impossible, because he never converses; he only talks. And your chief
accomplishment of being a good listener is entirely thrown away on
him, because a mere talker never cares whether you listen or not as
long as you do not interrupt him. He only wants the floor and the
sound of his own voice. It is the trained man over thirty-five who can
converse and who wishes you to respond.

The untrained man desires to be amused. The trained man wishes to
amuse. A man under thirty-five is in this world to be made happy. The
man over thirty-five t