titled to say with Pope that

"Woman's at best a contradiction still."

She is a contradiction. Man is a contradiction, apparently of a
different kind, and that is all. Thence spring misunderstandings and
sometimes dislike, as between people of different nations. I do not want
to labor the point, but I would suggest that in a very minor degree the
apparent difference between man and woman may be paralleled by the
apparent difference between the Italian and the Swede, who, within two
generations, produce very similar American children. But man, who
generalizes quite as wildly as woman when he does not understand, is
determined to emphasize the difference in every relation of life. For
instance, it is commonly said that woman cannot keep her promise. This
seems to me entirely untrue; given that as a rule woman's intellect is
not sufficiently educated to enable her to find a good reason for
breaking her promise, it is much more difficult for her to do so. For we
are all moral creatures, and if a man must steal the crown jewels, he is
happier if he can discover a high motive for so doing. Man has a
definite advantage where a loophole has to be found, and I have known
few women capable of standing up in argument against a trained lawyer
who has acquired the usual dexterity in misrepresentation.

In love and marriage, particularly, woman will keep plighted troth more
closely than man; there is no male equivalent of jilt, but the male does
jilt on peculiar lines; while a woman who knows that her youth, her
beauty are going must bring things to a head by jilting, the male is
never in a hurry, for his attractions wane so very slowly. Why should he
jilt the woman,--make a stir? So he just goes on. In due course she
tires and releases him, when he goes to another woman. That is jilting
by inches, and as regards faithfulness a pledged woman is more difficult
to win away than a pledged man. (To be just, it should be said that
unfaithfulness is in the eyes of most men a small matter, in the eyes of
most women a serious matter.) A pledged woman will remain faithful long
after love has flown; the promise is a mystic bond; none but a tall
flame can hide the ashes of the dead love. And so, when Shakespeare
asserts,--

"Frailty, thy name is woman,"

he is delivering one of the hasty judgments that abound in his solemn
romanticism.

This applies in realms divorced from love,--in questions of money, such
as debts or bets. Wome